Earned My Shower!

My week started off on a bad note: I came home from work on Monday feeling exhausted and lethargic, and my stomach hurt for some reason.  I was planning to work out anyway, but then my boyfriend came home and started talking to me about his day.  Of course I don’t mind, because lord knows he listens to me endlessly talk about mine, but the longer I stood still and listened, the less motivated I felt to work out.  He suggested taking a rest day, and I admit I didn’t fight the idea very hard.

A rest day is fine, but then I ordered pizza and wings for dinner. And I didn’t eat just one wing, or a few.  I devoured a barnyard’s worth of those bad boys.  When I entered my meal into my food diary, I was stunned at how many calories I had just consumed.

Tuesday was time to redeem myself, right?  I went for a run that evening that turned into limping around and stopping to stretch every five minutes.  I gave up on the running part altogether and just walked.  I came home discouraged and angry and frustrated.  I don’t know what the issue is.  Almost instantly, when I try to run outside, I get a deep pain in both shins.  And I think I can train for a half marathon?  I came home, ripped down my 5K training schedule from the wall, and threw it away.

Finally, Wednesday, I got a great workout in.  I have the Les Mills Combat set, and I have never done the hour-long workout.  I decided to give it a go last night and hopefully make up for two crappy days.  I felt pretty strong, definitely sweating and working hard, for the first 40 minutes, then suddenly hit a wall.  I had 20 minutes to go and felt like I was going to die.  I really wanted to finish, so I modified what I had to and completed the workout.  Booyah!

I definitely earned my shower last night!  I was sore almost immediately after the workout, so I knew I’d be feeling it today, and I certainly am.  It felt good to finally have a good day.

Once upon a time, a bad day would have been an excuse to write off the entire week, go for broke, pig out, and forget about working out the rest of the week.  I may have struggled to get this week started, but I am proud I didn’t let it turn into a week-long binge.  I have a long, long way to go, and my weight loss so far isn’t even noticeable, but changes like this in mindset and attitude are crucial to me finally getting to my goal.

Long Road to Go

My fourth loss in a row!  After wasting so much time on the lose a bit, gain a bit more dance, it feels great to see a loss each week.  I want to keep feeling this way, so I need to keep working hard.

I get discouraged and almost panicky when I realize how far I have to go and how long I need to keep working.  I haven’t even broken out of the 200’s yet (hit 202.8 this morning), and my goal weight is somewhere between 130-140.  That is a loooooong way to go.  I need to put in the work each day, every day, for weeks, months, probably over a year.

Well, so be it.  I did this to myself, and I need to fix it myself.  The only way to do that is to stay focused, and to keep working at each day.  I can’t let myself get weighed down and frustrated by how much farther I have to go.  I need to focus on each day that is in front of me and how I can keep improving.

Not Perfect, But Better

I started the week off with a Monday night Spinning class, and I put my inner geek on full display when the first song was Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America”!  I adore Neil Diamond, and I happily sang along.

My boyfriend and I went grocery shopping after my class, and since I hadn’t eaten yet, I started to feel woozy and ready to gnaw on a cardboard box.  The store had a Subway nearby, so we decided to duck in there before heading home.  I spotted the steak ‘n cheese sub on the menu, but I ordered the roasted chicken instead.  Problem was, I was so hungry, I ordered the 12 inch sub without thinking.

When I got it, I almost wanted to hand half of it back.  What was I thinking?  A 12 inch sub?  Double the calories?  Ugh.  But I ended up eating half and wrapping the rest up to take home, and I saved it for my lunch today.

That may not seem like a big deal, but not long ago, I would have hit McDonald’s drive-through on the way home and thought nothing of a huge value meal, size large, please.  Oh, and an apple pie.

Today at work I had my performance review, and it went really well.  I got a nice raise, which I am very excited about!  My first thought was going out to dinner to celebrate, but eating out is such a trigger for me.  I don’t want it to kick off bad eating the rest of the week.  I might wait until after weigh in on Saturday!

Half Marathon

This past week, my stepkids were home for the week as part of their summer time with their dad.  I knew the kids being home was going to be a challenge.  Their dad cooks more when the kids are home, and we’re talking fried this and battered that and everything dipped in Ranch dressing!  Time goes by so much faster too, partly because we have precious little time together before they go back to Psycho and I go back to worrying about them.  The only time I am 100% certain they are safe is when they are with us.

I scheduled my workouts and stuck to them.  I fit in all three runs for my 5K schedule!  So I knew I did well on the workout front but was worried about my eating.  I expected a small loss at best.

On Saturday, I weighed in and was so surprised when I saw 205.  That’s 3.6 pounds down from last week!  Yesssss!  Talk about motivation.  Let’s keep this going!

I was also excited this past week because during run #3 for the week for the 5K training schedule, I hit 2.5 miles, the most I’ve run this go-round, and decided to see if I could hit 3 miles.  I did it!  So I’ve already met the 5K goal for the 8-week program, and I am only in week #3.

I got so excited about it, I looked up the half-marathon information online.  It’s in November.  That is about four and a half months to go from 3 miles to 13.1.  Is that possible?  Is that realistic?  I would really like to aim for that, but I don’t want to disappoint myself by not being able to finish.  There’s another half marathon here in February, and my conservative side says to wait for that one and give myself more time to train for it.  Opinions?

Spinning and Running

Morning workouts are a struggle for me.  I don’t sleep very well, so getting out of bed and having energy for a regular day is hard enough, let alone having the energy for a workout.  I set the alarm last night for my 6 AM Spinning class with the best of intentions, but when that alarm went off this morning, I instantly started making excuses why I should stay in bed.  It’s too early.  I’m tired.  I can work out after work.  Mmmmm, pillow!

The Spinning class is pretty small, so you have to sign up ahead of time.  I hid under the covers and seriously considered going back to sleep, but I thought about the fact that signing up for class took a spot from someone who may have wanted to be there but couldn’t.  I would be a jerk to take that spot and then not show up.  Plus, my Spinning teacher is the one who prayed for me the other day.  Was I really going to let her down?

I reluctantly tossed back the covers and got up.  I can’t say I felt excited or eager to get sweating, but I got dressed and grabbed my water bottle and gel seat (one of the greatest inventions ever) and headed out in the dark.

I felt a bit sluggish during class, but I still got a great workout.  I left feeling very proud of myself and happy that my workout for the day was done already.  If I had reset the alarm and skipped class, I’d have felt more than a little disappointed in myself.

Yesterday I hit the treadmill for my 1.75 run to stick to my 5K training schedule.  At first I felt like crap and wasn’t sure I was going to make it.  At some point my body stopped fighting the workout, or my head stopped fighting itself, not sure which, but I made it to 2.5 miles!

When I came home and told my boyfriend and the kids that I did 2.5 miles, my boyfriend congratulated me, and then I turned it into a math problem for my 9-year-old stepdaughter, and she figured out how many extra miles I did.  I showed her how to break down a mile into quarters and how to work with decimals.  She came to me later with a notebook and gave me some math problems: “If I was supposed to run 7.6 miles, and I ran 8.9, how much extra did I do?”  I loved that she got into the running and the math!  I was more proud of that than my run.

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