Viking Challenge

Back around October, I decided to motivate myself to get back into running by joining a virtual race. The basic concept is, you join the race online, run or walk the distance on your own time, enter your workouts to count toward your total, and when you are finished, you get a medal or a t-shirt.  In my never-ending over-optimism, I joined a Viking Challenge.  Total miles?  Oh, a mere 65.3!

Yeah, I have no idea what I was thinking.  Well, okay, I was thinking it would push me to start running again so that I could rack up those miles.  Instead, I have mostly ignored the challenge, occasionally adding a mile here or there when I worked up the ambition to stroll reluctantly around the neighborhood.

Since I recently started working out again, I really want to finish my miles so I can get my Viking Challenge t-shirt.  I have 44.3 miles to go.

Since I’ve had so many brilliant ideas lately, I decided to run with this one (no pun intended): my birthday is in April.  I have 6 weeks until my birthday.  That means if I walk or jog about 7 miles per week, I will finish the virtual race by my birthday.

When I told my fiance that last night, he said, “That’s only a mile a day!”

He’s right.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of it that way.  I had instantly ruled it out as impossible, I’m not in good enough shape to handle 7 miles a week, I can’t run or walk that far, blah blah blah.  But one mile a day?  That sounds really do-able, right?

So my goal for the next 45 days is to walk or jog one mile per day.  That won’t be my entire workout, of course, but let’s say I want to weight train tomorrow.  Great, weight training is wonderful!  And when I’m done, I can do one mile, either outside or with one of my many indoor walking workout DVD’s.

My plan this evening is to hit the treadmill at the gym and try out some easy, slow jogging.  I’m too overweight and out of shape to handle anything more than that right now, and that’s okay.  I have to start somewhere.  I will do the same thing Friday evening and add on a walk around the neighborhood on Sunday.

“One mile a day” is my new motto.  Gotta earn my Viking horns!

Two-Tenths of a Pound

I weighed in on Saturday for a 0.2 pound loss.  *eye roll*  Yeah, not exactly on fire about my progress.  It left me wondering why I am bothering.  Suffering through workouts to lose two tenths of a pound?  At this rate, I might reach my goal weight roughly two days before I retire, for pete’s sake.

Okay, deep breath.  It was a disappointing weigh-in, to be sure.  But it’s not like there are no areas where I can improve.  I’m going to keep logging my food this week, make sure I’m not going over on calories.  I’m also going to cut way back on soda.  And I need to step up my workouts.  A few days a week isn’t cutting it.

On Saturday I worked in the yard, pulling weeds and rearranging the rocks in our flower beds.  I counted that as my workout for the day.  On Sunday I went for a 2.5 mile walk, then came home and helped my fiance clean out and detail his truck, then I also swept and mopped the floors, vacuumed, and cleaned the wood floors.   Definitely got plenty of activity on Sunday!

The disappointing weigh-in this past week has left me determined to have a good weigh-in this week. My goal is to drop two pounds.  I joked with my fiance, “I worked out three days in a row and I’m not skinny yet.”  He told me, “You will be.”  I like knowing he is in my corner.  I want to make both of us proud of me.

I Hate Working Out!

Working out when you are overweight and out of shape is not exactly an enjoyable experience.  I am now at my highest weight ever, and that’s not going to change unless I get moving and start eating better.   I set a goal of doing some sort of activity, anything, even if it’s just walking around our yard flapping my arms and squawking like a chicken, every day in March.  (And no, I don’t really do that. Or at least I haven’t yet!)

Great plan, until I actually had to do it.  I came home from work on March 1st wishing I had never set such an evil, masochistic goal.  I didn’t want to work out.  Have you ever just absolutely, positively not wanted to do something with such a passion and intensity that you could declare it from the rooftops?  That’s how I felt.  I’d rather have done almost anything else than work out.

I remembered I hadn’t done the other workout sections of my new Wedding Workout DVD, so reluctantly I popped in that DVD and tried the cardio section.  Not bad.  I like simple choreography, nothing complex, since my feet have their own mind and aren’t always on the same page as my brain or any other part of my body.  The instructor gives clear cues and isn’t annoying, which is important when you already didn’t want to work out.

Last night I went for a walk, which is boring as hell when you are by yourself, but my fiance was still working.  The neighborhood nearby has sidewalks on most streets, and a LOT of hills, so my legs got a good workout.

I’m thrilled that my fiance has decided to lose weight too.  It’s going to be so much better doing this together instead of flailing around on my own.  He has cut back on soda and is eating better, and he lost 4 pounds in the first week.  Right now he is even more averse to working out than I am, but I’m looking forward to working out with him and losing weight and getting healthy together.

Hello, March!

Remember my February goals?  Nah, me either.  I’m just going to pretend they never existed.  February was pretty much a huge bust, and I accomplished nothing.

Onto a new month, a new start!  A new workout log is on the fridge, and I already logged my breakfast on my food diary today.  Back to logging, back to workouts.  No excuses.

My main goal for March is to lose 10 pounds.  I need to kickstart this weight loss and get some progress under my belt.

Sad

Just when I vow to blog more frequently, everything seemed to blow up all at once.  My diet and fitness activities are pretty much non-existent.  I forced myself to weigh in this past Saturday, and I am at a new all-time highest weight.

It will be a few days before I can hopefully slow down and settle back into any routine.  The worst thing that has happened is, we had a death in the family, my fiance’s uncle, who is one of the coolest people I have ever known.  He has been sick, and thankfully last weekend we drove several hours to spend some time with him and take him drawings and notes from the kids.  The first time I met him, he hugged me and told me to consider myself part of the family.  How could I not love him?  Especially when he soon revealed his smart-alecky sense of humor and willingness to just speak his mind, usually to comedic effect.  I loved to just watch his facial expressions during a conversation.  He didn’t have to say a word to communicate a ton.

The kids were with us this weekend when we found out he died.  I’m glad they found out with us, face to face, and were able to cry and hold onto us and talk about it.  I have nothing positive to say about their egg donor, and with good reason.  If we would have had to call them while they were with her to tell them he was gone, she would have gotten angry and irritated with their crying, as if he didn’t matter.  She’s done it before.

I’ve given in to emotional eating in a big way, and I know it has to stop.  I’m just adding more unhealthy weight and hurting myself.  This evening I will go along to drop the kids off with Psycho, so no workout today, and then we need to travel for the funeral.  I will deal with all this diet and weight loss stuff when we get back.  For right now, I honestly don’t have the energy.

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