Long Run Sunday

Today was weigh in day…however…I was not happy with what the scale said.  Either last week was a fluke or today was some sort water retention/needing to poop thing…because the scale showed I was up from last week.  I took some laxatives because (TMI in 3…2…1…) I actually haven’t pooped in a couple days and figured that would help a little.  Anyway, I’m going to weigh in again tomorrow morning after that’s had a chance to work AND today I ran 8.5 miles.  Oh, another thing that makes me not get too upset about the scale today is that 2 weeks ago, my waist was 35.5 and now it’s 33.  So, I *KNOW* I’ve lost inches and, frankly, that’s the more important numbers for me to pay attention to.  Also, I need to get to the gym and have one of the trainers do my body fat and see where I’m at there.  I mean, yea, I’ve got the widget on the left-hand side of my blog, but I want to have it done with calipers and be as actually accurate as possible (and then I’ll plug in the measurements to the widget and compare the two…if they’re super close, then I won’t bother with the caliper measurements and will just use the widget).

But, long story short, I may have to abandon my mini goal of hitting 172 by the end of February if the scale doesn’t show a loss tomorrow and still shows a gain, or maybe the same as last week’s weigh in.  Either way, tomorrow I will post my scale pic…no matter what it says.

The fact that I showed a slight gain from last week made me have urges…urges to just throw in the towel and call it a wash.  But I was able to keep the larger picture in the forefront of my mind and resisted the urge to binge (it would have been on the healthy food that’s in my house, but you can still have too much of a good thing).  Also, I reminded myself of the re-weigh in I want to do tomorrow morning…I don’t want to screw that up by bingeing today, do I?  No, I don’t.

So, I was going to sleep in until about 10am today because, well, it’s the first day of my weekend.  However, my body had other ideas and I was wide awake well before 8am.  Ugh.  I tried laying there and dozing for a bit, but that was utterly unsuccessful, so I just got up and started some coffee.  Last night I had done up my food selections for the next 7 days of my meal plans for the Shred Diet and had written a shopping list.  So, I went to the store and bought everything on my list and now my shelves, fridge and freezer are all fully stocked!  Woohoo!  I do need to adjust just one of my snacks for the week…I picked the 4 pot stickers snack on one day and when I went to buy the pot stickers from the sushi bar inside the grocery store, I noticed that they come in a pack of 8 and not 6 like I thought they did…so, I don’t want to throw away 4 of them, so I’m going to change one of my snacks elsewhere during the week so I can eat them a second time and not waste them.

I bet you’re wondering how my run went today.  Well, it went GREAT!  It was an awesome run.  I had a fast mile of 10:36 and a slow mile of 11:18, other than that all my miles were within 24 seconds of each other between the slowest and fastest of that group.  I hit an 11 min/mi average on the nose. 

kinda looks like a hoodie...hahaha

Nailed it!  On an 8.5 mile run, right now, I’m very happy with that pace.  I’m happy with it because I’m running by feel and not obsessing about my pace anymore.  Sure, I run about 45 seconds slower per mile on average, but I’m a happier runner than I was before when I was obsessed with my pacing.  I do, however, plan to buy a paceband to wear during my half marathons this year to attempt to pace out for a 2:37:30 half marathon.  My goal for this year with the half is to run one in 2:41 or less.  So…no port-a-potty stops this time…hahaha.  I am picking the 2:37:30 paceband because they have that one or a 2:45 one…I’d rather shoot for slightly faster than my half goal for the year than slower. 

Anyway, this company sells 5K, 10K, half marathon and full marathon pacebands in all different colors.  I wish they had a 15K paceband.  I’ll have to google that and see what I can find.  Maybe I’ll have to take the idea to someone that makes custom rubber bracelets and order them that way.  Of course, I wouldn’t be able to get just one most likely, which sucks.  But I can try, right?

Oh, back to my run today.  Since I was doing 8.5 miles and I like to wear my calf compression sleeves when I run anything 8.5 miles or longer, I was wearing my sleeves.  As I was running, I was mulling over the fact that I was wearing them and that this was my longest run since I started running again regularly...also this is my first run that I've worn them for since the RNR half in November!  I felt very proud of myself in that moment.  

So, my dinner tonight (per the Shred Diet) was a 4x2x1 inch serving of lasagna.  Oh my god…I just wanted to get a second serving!  Good thing the other two servings are frozen!  Oh and there’s the whole re-weigh in I’m doing tomorrow that I don’t want to screw up for myself to keep myself from thawing out of the servings in the freezer.  Hahaha.

Out of curiosity, with the whole showing a gain on the scale this morning thing still weighing on my mind, I decided to take my measurements and plug them into the widget I have on the left that is supposed to determine your body fat %.  When I first put it on there a couple weeks ago, my measurements through the widget determined I was 36% body fat.  Well, I just plugged them in and this is what I got:

that's what a 2.5 inch off your waist and about .5 off your hips will do

Finishing Up A Good Week

Today, I had planned to run 4 miles, however, I wasn’t feeling a run that long so what did I do?  Ran 3 miles instead.  And it was a pretty good run too.  First mile was 10:16, second was 10:39 and the third was 10:15.  Very nice splits.  If only that second mile could have been a little faster…like 15 or 20 seconds faster…haha.  But, it’s okay because I didn’t want to wear my legs out because tomorrow starts the new week and, as I said yesterday, I’ve got 8.5 miles for a late afternoon long run planned.  As far as the rest of the week, the weather looks like this

So, my exercise schedule, as far as I am planning right now, looks like this:

• Sunday – 8.5 mile run

• Monday – trainer workout

• Tuesday – run

• Wednesday – rest (will have worked a double shift on Tuesday)

• Thursday – run or rest, depending on how I’m feeling

• Friday – 2 mile run w/the gym

• Saturday – rest

I only have the one shift of overtime for next week, so that means I can definitely get in my 4 workouts next week, or even 5 workouts if I’m feeling up to it…but that would just be a bonus workout.  I actually had a chance for a 5^th workout this week as well thanks to how my overtime shifts were scheduled, but opted to sleep in on Wednesday morning and then missed my run on Thursday due to weather…so I ran on Friday which had originally been a rest day.

Tomorrow is weigh in day…YAY!  I’m very curious and excited to see what the scale says when I step on it tomorrow.  So long as I lose a pound a week between now and the end of February I will meet my goal to get back down to 172 by the end of February.  And then, at that point, I will start allowing myself a “cheat” meal like every couple weeks.

I have now made it 25 days “on diet” and I couldn’t be happier with myself because of this.  I’ve kept up with my goals to exercise 3-4 times a week AND remain “on diet.”  2014 is starting off quite nicely for me. 

Today one of my snacks was “Mediterranean salad.”  That consists of a medium tomato, a medium cucumber, ½ of an onion (preferably a red onion…but I used a yellow sweet onion because that’s what I had) and crumbled feta cheese.  You dice up the veggies and then crumble the feta on top.  It was delicious and, since it was a volumetrics kind of food, it was a lot of food for very little calories.  And I just plain love feta cheese on just about anything.

Oh and someone left a bag…like one of those reusable shopping bags…FULL of candy at work today.  It had lollipops, butterfingers and other “fun size” candies.  Not only did I resist delving into and blowing my diet…just like that first time when I was faced with my favorite donuts in the world, I didn’t even want any!  Score!

Ice Day Treadmill

Read something in a blog the other day that sparked my interest.  She asked “if I never binge again, what will I look forward to?”  WOW.  This makes me think of my own eating disorder/disordered eating as an emotional binge eater.  For the last almost 4 weeks I have abstained from eating anything “off diet,” which in turn means I have also abstained from any binge eating behavior.  Now, I want to ask myself the same question she asked…if I never binge again, what will I look forward to?  Well, let me try to answer that.  First, I will look forward to knowing that I am enjoying my food without overindulging to the point of feeling sick or becoming fat again.  I will look forward to not feeling guilt over my eating habits.  I will look forward to eating the healthy (and very tasty) foods that are good for me and help my body function the way it’s supposed to.  I will look forward to the little indulgences that I allow myself every now and then that much more because they will actually be a treat and not a daily occurrence like it was in the past.  I will look forward to wearing whatever clothes I want to and actually looking good in them (without lying to myself or being in denial about what I actually look like).  I will look forward to having an athletic body that will do just about anything I want it to because I’m not weighing it down with excessive amounts of fatty and otherwise bad for me foods.  I will look forward to LIVING LIFE…plain and simple…cut and dry.

Now I want to talk a little about the diet I’m doing.  It’s is strictly portion controlled.  I do bend the rules a little bit with certain things.  For instance, if it says to have half of a baked sweet potato here and there.  Instead, I just eat an entire small-ish one.  Also, when I choose the half of an avocado sprinkled with sea salt for my snack, I just buy a regular sized avocado and eat the whole thing.  If I didn’t eat the whole thing, I would throw away the other half because it would turn brown and aesthetically, I wouldn’t be able to eat it…just like a brown banana…just gross to me. 

So this morning, as I mentioned yesterday, I had planned to go for a 3.3 mile outdoor run, but after my treacherous drive home on patchy ice, I opted to shoot for the treadmill instead as I was sure the sidewalks and paved park trails would all be icy and unsafe to run on.  When I got up this morning, I had intended to drive to the gym and use their nice treadmills with the TV’s that you can see because they’re in front of you.  However, I was foiled by patchy ice and determined that it wasn’t safe to drive if I didn’t HAVE to.  So, I braved the icy walk from my apartment to the front of the complex where the fitness closet (it’s so small that’s the best way to describe it…seriously) is located.  I walk in and a lady and her young daughter were just leaving.  She saw my “will run for Boston” headband and said she really liked it, and then scooted out the door, leaving me all alone in the closet.

I take off my outer layer of clothing and hop on the treadmill.  After about a third of a mile, I realize it’s going to get quite warm and needed to turn on the ceiling fan…also, maybe I should go ahead and turn on the TV even though I had no plans to take off my earphones and stop listening to my music…also despite the fact that the TV was not in front of me.  The treadmills in the closet are up against the wall and the TV is up in the corner and to the right.  So, I can see it out of the corner of my eye.  Anyway, I had set my Garmin for me to manually mark the “laps” (aka-miles) as I hit them.  Instead of pausing my Garmin when I paused the treadmill to turn on the fan and the TV, I instead hit the lap button.  Dammit.  So I just marked the time and reset my Garmin and then reset the treadmill to start over.  I had gone a third of a mile…so, if I did another 3 miles on the treadmill, I will have gotten in the 3.3 miles I was originally going to run outside.  Cool!  As I ran the 3 miles, I epically failed at hitting the lap button at the correct times…twice.  Ugh.  So, I just used it for my overall time and added the time from the first third of a mile I did and got a total of 34:33 minutes for 3.3-ish miles.  Also, I set it to a 1.5% incline.  I started at 6.0mph (10 min/mi pace) and ended it going at 5.5mph (10:54 min/mi pace).  Honestly, I should have set the treadmill for a 10:20 pace and just went with that.  At the end of the run, I desperately wanted to grab the handles, but managed to resist the urges.  Also, as I was running, I’m guessing it was a combination of the cold and dry air plus my clothes rubbing together, but every time my fingers brushed the hand bar in front of me, I got a little shock. 

Tomorrow is supposed to be nicer…up into the 60’s.  The good news is that, at the very least, the ice will be melted off the sidewalks and it will be safe for me to run outside for the 4 miles I want to do tomorrow.  Then, Sunday, I will run 8.5…I’ll be running in the late afternoon as I’m going to go paint shopping around noon with my friend Amanda.  I prefer this for a few reasons…1) I don’t have to wake up early to run before meeting Amanda, 2) I will have run the two days prior and running later in the day to give my legs a little bit more rest will be beneficial, and 3) I like running my longer runs in the late afternoon/early evening anyway.

Ridiculous!

Today, I was watching The View before work...and in place of my planned 3.3 mile run.  You see, a cold front was blowing in this morning and, while I have no problem whatsoever of running in the cold, I *DO* have a problem with running in cold wind.  And it wasn't just a little wind, no it was over 20mph winds.  The temperature was around 40, so as far as running goes, it wasn't really cold.  It was quite comfortable a temperature to go running in, but that wind.  Ugh.  So...run tomorrow!!!  Anyway, back to my original statement...I was watching The View this morning.  One of their distinguished guests today was Jennifer Holliday.  Back in the 80s and 90s she was a very popular R&B and soul singer.  She was also a Broadway actress.  Then, she lost 200 lbs and found herself completely out of work.  Seriously.  No one wanted the new her.  They wanted the large woman that she used to be.  Appalling!  This is one reason people have such a difficult time losing weight...they get NO support or respect for their efforts.  Their friends and family (and even employers it seems) are more than content to keep them as they are.  I just think it's ridiculous that she made the best decision for herself and her life and her health and she was punished for it when no one wanted to hire her. 

So, back to the weather.  The past few days it has been quite nice here in central Texas.  Like tank top and shorts nice.  But, like I said, a cold front blew in this morning. 

And boy did it blow in!  Crazy winds made it colder than the air temperature, which, for me, made it too cold to make for a comfortable run.  So I didn't run today as I had planned and as I had itched to do.  But, like I've said before, I'm not going to stress over a missed run.  And, really, I'm no longer in the "business" of making up for lost or missed miles.  But, I still have 2 days to this week and I still want to get in 3 runs this week if I can.  So, while I had originally planned to run 3.3 this morning and 4 on Saturday, I will now run 3 on the treadmill tomorrow (I had held out hopes of doing a 3.3 mile loop outside tomorrow but it's been sleeting all afternoon and evening and all the sidewalks and streets are frozen...so it wouldn't be safe to run outside tomorrow...but I still want to run!!) and, weather permitting, I'll run 3.3 or 4 on Saturday...then my 8.5 mile long run on Sunday. 

What's the weather like where you are?

The Past Couple Days

So, Monday and yesterday I worked overtime on the night shift, hence the no blog posts from me until tonight.  Sunday night I stayed up until about 3am with chores and food prep for the week.  I woke up early afternoon on Monday and finished up with the food prep and then got ready to head to my trainer session.  As I was getting ready, I noticed the battery icon was up on my heart rate monitor.  Good thing I had enough time to stop at the electronics store on the way and get a new battery.  After I put in the new battery, I had to redo my settings.  It had saved all my personal info like birthday, height and weight.  Let’s just say I needed to update my weight with it…it said 188, which is what I weighed when I first bought it a year and a half ago.  So, I plugged in my new weight: 177. 

I got to my trainer session and it kicked butt.  It was legs day, so I knew he was going to make me work for it.  Started it as usual with the jump rope, then medicine ball slams.  Then he had me do squats with a weight vest and a kettlebell, then it was lunges and farmer’s walk with kettlebells, then we moved on to doing what I’m going to call a squat-walk (you use the cable machine with the cable all the way at the top with the tricep rope thing, then you squat down and walk in short steps all the way back and then walk back to the machine…oooo did it burn!  I’ll be doing this exercise on my own in the gym for sure!).  Four sets of that, then 2 sets of suicide sprints and forward-backward bear crawls.  Then we went on to some kickboxing and ended with abs.  Burned almost 650 cals!

I had a thought while driving to work Monday night.  I was thinking about how well I’m doing with sticking to the Shred and I love the portion control and meal planning.  Then I thought about the retirement party for my coworker that is happening on the 31^st.  I have said that now that I’ve hit the little mini goal I set for myself, to lose 7 lbs by the party, that I would allow myself to partake at the party.  However, now I’m thinking I don’t really want to do that.  I mean, I’ll still go to the party, I just don’t know that I’ll eat anything or drink anything there…besides unsweet tea, of course.  But, we’ll see how I feel on the 31^st.  I might change my mind back to partaking.  Haha.

I was a little miffed to find out that the overtime shift I was scheduled to work next week is canceled.  The only good to come out of this is that I will be able to make my session with my  trainer.  YAY!  Also, I can exercise any and all days I want to next week as a result of having not one shift of overtime.  So, what I think I’ll do is this

• Sunday – run 8.5 miles

• Monday – trainer workout

• Tuesday – run

• Wednesday – rest

• Thursday – gym

• Friday – run

• Saturday – rest

We’ll see if that’s what happens or not when next week rolls around.  I just put “run” because I’m just going to run what I feel like running that day.  I do want to do the 2 quick miles run, but then I was thinking of doing that this Saturday before a trip to the gym…IF I wake up in time to do both, of course.

The other day I was watching something, Mankind something on H2.  They were talking about the role sugar plays in our history as a species.  Then they rattled off an interesting and disgusting factoid.  We ingest HALF of our body weight in sugar EVERY YEAR!!!  I’m pretty sure I don’t because I try my hardest to keep my sugar consumption to a minimum, but the fact that the average person eats THAT MUCH sugar…it’s mind boggling.  No wonder Americans are so prone to obesity.

Shortly after my shift began today, my supervisor called me and asked if I wanted to work overtime tonight on the night shift.  I had to decline because I was so tired.  I didn’t sleep well today.  Plus, I’m itching to run so I really want to do that tomorrow morning.  We’ll see how I feel when I wake up if I’ll run 3 or 4 miles.  And, actually, I’ll run either 3.3 or 4 miles.  That way either way I’ll be doing a loop instead of an out-and-back route…which I prefer.

My friend and coworker, Kim, told me today that last week, when I resisted those donuts that I became her hero.  Hahaha!  That means a lot, it really does.

Well, good news!  My supervisor sent out the schedule for February and I got the vacation day I asked for so I can go to the expo for the Austin Marathon AND get a full night’s sleep the night before the race!  Awesome!  That makes my day, it really does.

Friend Making Monday

Quick and Easy Questions

 

1. What time did you go to bed last night?  about 3am...working the night shift tonight, so i had to stay up late last night so i could sleep late today

2. What is the last thing that made you smile?  my weigh in yesterday...4.4 lbs GONE!!!

3. What is the last movie you watched? i actually have no idea.  i watch movies so infrequently

4. What did you have for breakfast today? a grilled cheese sandwich on 100% whole grain bread, a pear and a cup of papaya juice

5. Would you rather mop all of your floors or do laundry?  laundry

6. Do you drink coffee? yes...i love it!

7. Will you watch the Superbowl?  yes

8. How often do you shop for groceries?  at least once a week

9. What kind of workout will you do today? i worked out with my trainer today and it was AWESOME!

10. Do you use a fitness tracker? yes, i have a heartrate monitor that i wear for non-running outside workouts and then my Garmin for running

1st Week Numbers In The 3rd Week

Today was weigh in day!  Hooray!  I weighed in at 

I feel amazing about this weigh in.  I mean, that's a 4.4 lb loss in a week.  That is a first week number, NOT a third week number.  CRAZY!!!  But I'll take it!  That means I have met my goal to relose 7 of the 14 lbs I had regained by my co-worker's retirement party on the 31st!  I will be able to relax and enjoy the party and have a Frito pie and a couple beers (hopefully they have Michelob Ultra).  This also means that I am just .6 of a pound away from reaching my 2-month short-term goal for the fitness competition of losing 5 lbs!  And I did it in the first week!  WOW!

For this week, I plan to continue with sticking 100% to the Shred Diet.  Just because I got this crazy number on the scale doesn't mean I can let up on the diet.  I have to keep chugging along and going strong.  Like I said in my earlier post, I already planned out all my food selections for the through next Sunday.  Having things planned out for an entire week at a time really makes prep and portioning so easy and quick.  I’ll do my cooking for this week this evening too.  I need to pop the family sized lasagna in the oven and then portion out and refreeze…haha.  I also need to cook up 10 oz of chicken breast.  I’ll probably season those with some Mrs. Dash.  I’ve got the portobello mushroom stuffed with roasted veggies on the menu for Tuesday, so tomorrow I’ll cook that up.  I want to put some different veggies besides zucchini in it.  I’ll keep the onion and the tomato.  Not sure what I’ll add in place of the zucchini though.  I’ll have to browse the veggie section to see what pops out at me.

The other day while I was at the store, I bought some vacuum packed beets.  I want to make beet salad with them as that’s one of the allowed snacks here and there in the daily meal plans.  Since I had no idea what was in a beet salad, I Googled it.  I found a few different recipes, most of which were kind of plain.  One caught my eye, though.  This one was diced beets, diced apples and diced orange pieces.  Mmmm!  I’ll be making that one.  Of course, I’ll have to wait for week 5 to come around again before I can try it out.  Haha.

My exercise plans for this week are, 6 mile run today, trainer workout tomorrow, then no workout Tuesday or Wednesday due to working overtime.  Thursday I think I’ll hit that quick 2 miles and do what Carina suggested with running as fast as I can sustain out and back for the whole 2 miles…maybe taking a slight breather break when I get to the turnaround point before hitting it hard again on the return mile.  Then, I’ll run an easy 3.5 or 4 miles Friday and try and hit the gym for a “Paige workout” Saturday.  If I manage to get all that in, that will actually be 5 workouts this week.  Saturday is “optional,” however because if I skip either Thursday or Friday, I will be rolling the skipped workout to Saturday.  But…then again…I could do the 3.5 or 4 miles on Thursday, rest on Friday and do the quick 2 miles + the gym Saturday morning.

About today's run...it was *supposed* to be a 6 miler.  I mapped out my route on Map My Run to be exactly 6 miles.  However, when I got to this one section where I was doing a little loop through a neighborhood, the streets that I had picked turned out to be the "streets" of a gated apartment complex.  But, I didn't figure this out right away.  I ran past this complex and took the 2nd left and then kept to the streets on the right.  I knew something wasn't right when I went to make the first right turn an that street was a cul-de-sac, then so was the second street.  I went down the third street and it curved all the way back around and became the street I had entered the little neighborhood on.  As I run past the complex again, I realize that the complex is probably what the map thought was regular streets and that I was at least 1/2 over the 6 miles I had originally set out to run.  So, when the run was over, I had gone a full mile over my planned miles and did 7!!!  Nice!  So, next Sunday's run will be 8.5 instead of 8 as a result.

check it out!  i kept my split times within 26 seconds of the "fastest" and the "slowest" miles!

this is the map i made before the run.  that little detour on the left is the oops area

this is the route i actually ran