Weekly Recap

Last week, we discovered just what the extent of the damage was that my depression and binge eating did in December.  I was up 12.1 pounds.  I am determined to get back down to as close to 165 by the end of February.  To do that, I have to be very diligent and honest and consistent. 

• Saturday: ran 15 miles for my long run.  The first 8 miles were solo and I started before the sun came up.  It sprinkled on me a couple times and it was chilly (low 40’s).  I had originally put on a short sleeved tech shirt with a lined pullover, but turned around and changed that for a long sleeved tech shirt and my new all-weather jacket.  I stayed comfortably warm, but my shirt was drenched when I got done with the whole 15.  The final 7 miles were with my friend Stacey.  My overall pace was 10:40, which is faster than it should have been, but it’s done and there’s nothing I can do about it now.  Cold just makes me (and Stacey too, apparently) run faster without my perceived effort increasing.  My Bluetooth clicker’s battery died so Stacey and I couldn’t take my action selfie together this time, so she took a pic of me running instead.  Booo!  Not as much fun.

• Sunday: went to the gym and did 45 minutes on the elliptical followed by my superman/chest press TRX, tricep extension TRX, pistol squats TRX, ab tucks TRX, BOSU squats, BOSU lunges, and side steps with the ankle strap resistance band.

• Monday: got up early to get 4 miles of intervals done.  I had 2 appointments before work this day and the first one was at 8:45 so I had to leave the house by about 8:10, so I needed to be done running around 7:30 to have enough time to shower and have my coffee…that spelled a 6am wake up.  My 1 minute fast intervals all ranged between 7:25 and 8:33 pace.  I would really like to see all of my intervals be more consistent in their pace, with a preference of all below 8:00 and leaning toward all being around 7:30.  Overall, a great workout run!

• Tuesday: had my therapy appointment this day, so I just did a bunch of walking pre- and post- appointment.

• Wednesday: Mixed up my mid-week run a little bit.  My runner friend Kirsten recommended that I switch up my mid-week run with one week of the hilly route I do over in the Far West Blvd area and then the next week of a partial Austin Marathon route semi-long run.  So that’s what I did!  From the trail where I usually park, I ran north instead of around the lake and then made my way to Exposition Blvd and on the part of the route that I would be running between Enfield and 35^th.  Then I turned around and came back to where I started.  That was only a 10K, however, so I added the Mopac to Lamar loop to add another 3-ish miles for a total of 9.25 miles.  I didn’t eat all my food on Tuesday so I was starting the day off with less than normal, but I had a bagel pre-run and took in a Honey Stinger gel at mile 5.  Even with all that, by mile 9 I was sputtering to the end on fumes only.  And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, my right calf was trying to Charlie horse all afternoon.  Not sure if that was due to running so long in zero drop shoes or not, but it sucked.  The run was great, though!  Will definitely be looking forward to that run every other week!

• Thursday & Friday: worked overtime Wednesday and Thursday nights, so no workouts these days.

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Last Friday, January 1^st, I started back up with making better food choices and tracking what I eat in a more honest and consistent manner.  Already by January 4^th I was feeling so much better and could even see a difference in the mirror(and it may have been just a mental thing as I was already feeling so much better from lack of crap food in my system).  My food for this week was my standard 6 eggs for breakfast, then for lunch I had 8 oz of lean turkey lunchmeat, then 10 oz of broccoli with Greek yogurt with ranch seasoning mix and 10 oz of cauliflower, also with the Greek yogurt ranch mix.  My average daily calorie intake was right at 1000 calories.  A little lower than I usually prefer, but on the 2 days I worked double shifts (Wednesday and Thursday), I took a couple apples with me to help me make it through the whole 16 hour shift with less stress, so those days were around 1200…much better.  I figure that I will only cut my calories this drastically for just one week to help beat the bloat that happened with that 12.1 pound gain I had in December and then next week it’ll be back around 1200 average again.  I am serious in hoping to be back to as close to where I started December as possible by the end of February (so that would be 165-ish).

Let me tell you something, 10 oz of broccoli is a lot, and then to be followed up by 10 oz of cauliflower…boom, no hunger later in the even AT ALL. 

I really love what mixing up my running routes and locations has done for my running.  I’m more excited for my runs when it’s run day…and that’s saying a lot because I was already pretty excited for my runs.  But when I’m not just running around near where I live for every single run, it makes it more scenic and just more fun in general.  I’m not seeing the same thing every single run.  Plus, there really isn’t hills near where I live, so driving to different places to runs allows me to get my experience with running up and down hills…so that’s nice. 

Last week I had a slight issue with my Fitbit Aria scale.  I’m guessing because I didn’t step on it for a month and that I gained 12 pounds, it no longer recognized that it was me stepping on it.  So, it assigned my weigh in as “guest,” which after a quick email to Fitbit support I found out how to reassign it to my profile so it would update my Fitbit and MyFitnessPal accounts automatically.  But, it still wasn’t displaying my initials when it was processing my weigh in, it was still saying “guest” on the little digital read out.  But, support said that after a few weigh ins that it should start recognizing me again, and this morning it did, displaying my weight AND my body fat % and my initials instead of calling me “guest.”

Eating was fairly good this week.  Even though I ate some “off plan” stuff over last weekend (like popcorn with extra butter when I went to see Star Wars on Sunday), I tracked everything as best as could and was honest about what I ate when I tracked my food each day (even if there was ice cream or a hotdog or two…oops).  Lying or omitting things in my food tracker doesn’t negate it, it just means I’m ignoring it.  It doesn’t do me any good if I ignore them.  And that is why I made one of my New Year’s goals to be more consistent and honest with my food tracking.

I was honestly hoping it would say around 172, but I’m still happy with a 3.6 lb drop.  I know most of the weight I gained in December was bloat and water retention from all the extra sodium I was taking in with the junk I was eating, so I knew I’d have a decent drop in weight this week as a result.  

Also, Dailymile.com (the website I use to track all my miles) puts out an end of year report within the first week of the new year.  Here's mine: