Weekly Recap

Last week I weighed in at an “all time” low for me!  I then promptly spent the weekend indulging at the renaissance festival.  Needless to say I was at least a little nervous that I was going to show a gain come this week’s weigh in.  I went into this week with the idea that I needed to cut my calories and really push myself in my workouts.  Cutting the calories was easy.  I cut about 300+ calories out each day this week (after the weekend was over, of course).  However, I skipped the strength training that I had planned to do on Monday and opted for a little extra sleep instead.

 

• Saturday: first day of the festival.  We walked about 8 miles throughout the whole day and spent basically the whole day on our feet.

• Sunday: second day of the festival.  We walked around 7 miles this day, again standing up the majority of the day.  And my feet were killing me by the time I broke camp and headed home.

• Monday: Happy Runniversary to meeeeeeee!!!!  3 years ago I went on my first run!  I ran 5 miles this day.  Mile splits for the first 3 miles were 10:27, 10:48, 10:58, then I dropped the hammer apparently and did a 10:01.  Then ended with a 9:27!!!!  Whoa!  I felt great and my heart rate was within my target area, so I know I wasn’t pushing myself too hard.  Breathing was only slightly labored.  I could've easily kept going like that for another mile or two before slowing down a little.  I hate to say that getting hurt is a good thing (because it’s not), but I think being FORCED to not run for almost 2 months was the best thing that could've happened to my running "career."  Weird, I know.  But, I get excited about running again now and running is just way more enjoyable than it was pre-injury.  I've rediscovered the true joy of running and I couldn't be happier!  In fact, if I hadn’t been starting to chafe in a rather sensitive female area, I would have changed my route and gone 7 miles instead of 5.  And, as I mentioned, I had planned to do my Sunday funday workout after my run, but because I slept in a little bit and then had meal prep to do, I didn’t.

• Tuesday: I had training instead of regular work this day, so no therapy appointment this week.  I packed 4 boiled eggs, 8 oz of turkey lunchmeat and my celery with Greek yogurt ranch mix to eat while I was at training.  Since I brought my own food, I wasn’t going out for lunch.  Literally everyone else went out to eat for lunch.  Instead, I made my way to the workout room with the intention of walking on the treadmill.  However both of the treadmills had signs saying they were out of order so I hopped on the elliptical and set it for 45 minutes + the 5 minute cool down.  I did 3.85 miles in that time.

My original plan for this day was to go to the gym after training and do the elliptical for an hour followed by strength training.  Since I did the elliptical on my lunchbreak, I didn’t “need” to do it at the gym.  So, since I was itching to hit the pavement, I decided to do a 3 mile run after the temp cooled down a little bit in the evening.  I just decided to nix the gym in favor of going to sleep early since I picked up overtime for Wednesday night and would be getting up early to workout before work and then be awake until 6:something Thursday morning.  Besides, I only ate like 850 calories this day and was fully satisfied with that.  It was a lot of food that was a lot of volume but super low in calories (celery, baked yellow squash & zucchini).  So, anyway, I ran 3.3 miles and my splits were 10:38, 10:16, 9:40 and the final .3 was at a 10:33 pace as I had lost my steam at that point.  Haha.  Still a fantastic run.

• Wednesday: I had planned on running 8 miles this day, but I had side stitches before I even got to the 1 mile mark.  I toughed it out and sort of controlled it through a breathing technique that has worked in the past for me in getting rid of stitches.  But, it didn’t completely work this time, just kinda kept it at bay.  I stopped a couple times to stretch in an attempt to get rid of the stitches, but within a couple minutes of starting to run again, they were back.  Ugh.  So, instead of turning left so I could hit my planned 8 miles, I turned right and went home and logged 7 miles.  Still a great run even though it wasn’t an easy one.  You know what they say, even a bad run is better than no run.  But I wouldn’t call this a bad run, just an uncomfortable one, but not in the preferred method of being uncomfortable (aka: pushing myself to run faster because I’m feeling great).  It also rained on me a little bit, which ever so slightly influenced my decision to turn right instead of left, but not much.  I love running in the rain.

• Thursday: worked overtime on the night shift Wednesday, so no workout this day.

 

• Friday: I set my alarm so I’d be out of bed by 8am, thinking this would leave me enough time to hit the elliptical for an hour and then do weights for about an hour as well.  As my hour on the elliptical wrapped up, I realized I would not have time to lift weights and NOT be rushed getting ready for work.  Boooo.  So, no weights.  Ugh, this was a week of strictly cardio.  Bad Sara! 

 

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Eating was really good this week.  I did indulge and eat whatever tickled my fancy over the weekend while I was at the renaissance festival.  The rest of the week, I was really good about controlling what I ate with the exception of a couple “fun sized” candy bars on Thursday…but I was still within my 1300 calorie daily allowance even with them.  Most days I felt over full even with my reduced caloric intake because I was eating volume foods like celery and zucchini and yellow squash.  Lots of volume, not much calories.  I do need to switch up the snack of celery with ranch seasoned Greek yogurt soon, though.  Might swap it for cantaloupe.

 

As I mentioned, the only kind of exercise I did this week was cardio…wah wah.  Walking, running and the elliptical.  No strength training AT ALL.  Ugh.  I really have to not do that again next week.  Must get my strength training!  Well, with that said, let’s see what that means for the scale this week…

I wasn’t really expecting much this week.  I mostly just wanted to not show a gain as a result of the indulgence from last weekend.  So the fact that I lost weight at all makes me happy.  And then, we have to take note of the fact that I have reached my GOAL WEIGHT!!!  However, there is still a small amount of flab, jiggle, fluff, whatever you want to call it around my middle, so I'm going to try and lose another 5 lbs and then, at that point, whatever is still there will most likely be just excess skin instead of excess fat.  And I'll take care of THAT in a year or so after I've paid off other things.  Unless it just happens to resolve itself, which I *guess* could possibly happen.  But, if it doesn't, there's no shame in a tummy tuck.  The only thing I'm upset about with this week's weigh in is that after doing the math, I discovered that only .5 lb was actual fat loss.  Wah wah.  That's what I get for not doing ANY strength training this week.  That'll learn me.  Definitely need to make sure I get to the gym 2-3 days next week (on top of my Sunday-funday workout I'll be doing tomorrow).

Timehop gave me a selfie from 5 years ago before I started losing the weight and WOW what a difference about 90 lbs makes!!!