Get Your Rear in Gear 5k

So today was my 5K, I came in 925 out of 1018 with a time of 45:16 and a pace of 14:22/mile.  This was faster than I anticipated, but that's because I had Julius of Run Maul Run with me pushing me.  He's going to be an awesome coach for his group when they start training again.  He never left even though he could have finished way faster than that.

There we are getting ready to cross the finish line (I'm in pink and Julius is in blue).  It was good to get out and participate in an organized run.  There is a lot of positive energy at these events, no one to beat but everyone to help you and support you.  I finished it, which meant I won.  Doesn't matter how fast I was going but that I finished.  

That's what this journey is all about, it's not about how fast, it's just about the process.  I'm not the fastest one out there to the finish line but I'm going to make it to that finish line some day.  

The runner's high is amazing, isn't it?  I would have never considered myself a runner until a few years ago and even then, I'm not a very consistent runner, but the gauntlet has been thrown so maybe my consistency can improve.

And hopefully with improved consistency will come improved weight loss/health.  I ran today for my mom who's a colon cancer survivor and I hope with better health I, too, can survive anything.  

Here's to putting the runner's high to good use to continue using the positive energy to moving forward.  

Time

When am I going to find the time?  I am a full time teacher, a part time grad student, a part time retail store associate and am attempting to get a direct sales position going (I've got a year).  But amongst all of this I need to have the time and energy to pay attention to what I'm eating as well as the time to get out for some exercise.  I know that if I work out I feel more energized and can do everything I need to do, when I eat better I feel better, but when am I going to be able to squeeze it all in?

Now I've been asked to take on a partial overload at school to prepare students for the state biology test, I have practicum students once a week whom I need to mentor and my house elf will be going back to work (yay and nay...lol).  With my house elf heading back to work I will then need to also shoulder my part of the house work again.

So time, when am I going to find the time and the energy to do this right?

At long last....no more excuses

I've been a procrastinating poster as of late.  I was/am frustrated with myself, I have not really progressed at all with my weight lately.  My significant other moved in and he's a big cookie/sweet eater so that's not helping matters, can I blame him??  No, I can't but I can at least ask for his help in changing our home environment so I can be more successful.

I also made some excuses, you know the ones..."I'm tired" "PMS is acting up" "I'm sick" and a variety of other excuses.  But now I don't have the option of continuing to excuse myself, two reasons:
1.  My 5K race is in 17 days....so I'm running that whether I "feel" like it or not
2.  I'm not getting anywhere standing still

I always pride myself on moving forward, but right now I'm standing still and not getting anywhere fast.  So in an effort to kick-start myself, I changed gyms.  And I'm logging, whether I like it or not.  Even on days when my food consumption is 30+ points over what it should be.  Tracking my food forces me to own the truth about my food and forces me to look at it critically.  I do not have a good relationship with food, I still think I need more than I really do, but I have yet to identify why my relationship with food is still not fixed.  I didn't have a traumatic event as a child, my parents loved me, I did well in things that I tried.  I never am the smartest person in my family or group of friends and sometimes that made me feel inferior, but since childhood I've accepted my lack of traditional brains because I know I'm good at other things.

So tonight I'm making a new playlist to take to the gym tomorrow and I've got a log for my workouts too, so here we go.  That's the nice thing about life, we can always improve it.

"Don't call it a mistake, call it an education" ~Thomas Edison

"It's never too late to be what you might have been"  ~George Eliot

Snacks in progress

My mission from last week was to get my after-work snacking under control, and I found a technique that worked for me.  There's a million and one studies out there about how people who log their food do better than those who don't.  There's a very simple reason for this, you see what you've eaten in plain black and white, staring you in the face.  If you see that you've shoved 3 pieces of pizza and a slice of cake down your gullet you may think twice about that ice cream sunday later....and it really does work, it gives you a moment of pause and reflection.  In that vein, what I did this week as part of my after-work snacking habit is I sat down with my tracker.  When I got home from work, I made myself a cup of tea or poured a glass of water and sat down at the table and went over my tracker.  Did I write everything down that I had eaten thus far?  Sometimes I didn't so I had to add foods in.  Where are my daily values?  How many points do I have left (I like the points, tracking all the individual numbers just gives me a headache...I AM NOT a numbers person, if you like keeping track of the cals, protein, fat, carbs, fiber...etc...be my guest)?  After a drink and sitting and looking at everything, I could decide if I was in fact still hungry and it gave me focus to make the best decision possible for an after work snack.  So I think I created a new habit/tool for myself this week and will continue to use it to help my absent-minded snacking.

I lost 2 pounds this week, so that's almost all the weight I put on over the holidays so I'm happy with that.  What is my mission this week?  I'm going to get my butt back into the gym.  I am no longer a one-person household which now means that I will have help doing all the things that need to be done.  Part of that means that I have to take time to focus on me and that means taking time to go to the gym.  I need to practice for that 5K and I have the membership so I need to use it, especially because the sidewalks are still too narrow/dangerous to try running with the dogs outside.  My mission this week is to get my exercise in, through a mix of gym time and wii.  I also want to log my steps and average HR using the awesome pedometer/HR monitor watch my parents got me for christmas.  Of course I'm very sad at it's dramatic decrease in price after the holidays...if I'd have known I would not have asked for it for Christmas because I'm afraid to find out how much my awesome parents paid for it....

Here's to an activity filled week my friends!

Signed Up and a New Year

I signed up for a race on March 20th.  I'm running the Get Your Rear in Gear Colon Cancer Coalition 5K on March 20th.  When I found this race I decided I would sign up for it.  It's enough weeks into the year to give me time to get up to "fighting" strength but not enough time to slack off, I'm also running it because my mother is a colon cancer survivor so it's a cause I can get behind (haha).  I also got my friend Julius to run with me and then he challenged me back with "run the 10K bridge run in October with me" so I agreed.  A 5K on deck for March and a 10K bridge run coming in October, I have my work cut out for me.  I went to the gym on Friday night for a run on the treadmill and did a 5k distance as a gauge for where I'm at.  My time was 46:36, not too bad considering I haven't run in over a week and I don't think I've logged a 5K distance in how long, but at least I know what I have to work with between now and March 20th.

So on to the weight.  I weighed in on Saturday morning at 231 pounds.  That's only a 3 pound gain over the holidays which was impressive, I thought I'd be much worse than that.  But I'm recommitting.  It's 2011 which means it's time to get serious.  This week I'm focusing on re-teaching.  I've been on a weight-loss journey for so long that it's kind of been the same-shit-different-day.  I'm going to recommit myself to this process for 2011 which means I have to re-educate myself about health and healthy eating.  This week I'm going to take time to re-acquaint myself with healthy foods and healthy snacks.  My biggest problem is when I get home from school.  Once I walk in that door I'm instantly ravenous and once I start snacking I can't stop, so I'm going to find a healthy snack to eat when I get home that won't completely derail my plans.

What does this all mean?  Well, by the end of 2011 (51 weeks away) I want to be under 200 pounds.  As much as the NIH says I should be 170 (I'm 5'10"), I feel like that's too low for a goal weight so I'm aiming for 190 and then I'm going to decide from there based on how I feel whether I want to try and get to a lower weight of I'm comfortable staying there.

That's my plan for this week, what is yours?

Here Comes 2011....

As is the custom, the new year brings out resolutions, how are we going to live better?  How are we going to be better people?  But most of us ultimately lose our resolutions somewhere around February or March...so what can I do to keep my goals this year?  I definitely do want to work more on my weight loss and move forward from this currently stalled position, but what plan can I put in place to make sure that I keep moving forward instead of sliding backwards/staying static?

1.  I am going to find a 5K race to train for.  When I first started running, I signed up for a race so I knew that I had something to complete at the end of it.  It kept me from making excuses about why I couldn't run this day or that day.

2.  I'm going to re-start/continue my yoga practice.  Running and yoga are mirror images to me.  They both allow me to concentrate on the activity at hand and my subconscious can work itself out so I finish the activity feeling refreshed and my mind is a little calmer.  Yoga also has the benefit of keeping my body from getting stiffer as I get older (I will be hitting the big 3-0 in 2011).  I wake up better when I practice yoga.

3.  I'm going to carry my camera with me.  This has 2 purposes really, one emotional and one physical.  While I was sorting through some pictures from the Alaskan Cruise in July 2009, I realized that I didn't take many pictures of my life from then on.  Most of it was because I "hermitted," I didn't do much, didn't go out places, didn't really enjoy life due to the personal situation.  My camera is a link to life and the memories made with friends and family, but it will also chronicle me getting smaller!  When I look back on pictures I can appreciate where I was (almost 300 pounds...) and where I won't be again.  When you look at yourself in the mirror day after day it's hard to see the difference, but when you look at pictures from a month ago you can see the difference.

Here is my plan for 2011.  I am going to continue working towards a healthy, active lifestyle.

What is your plan?

Motivation.....

Since it's the holiday season and lack motivation right now is at an all time high, I thought I would write about motivation, hopefully to give myself some.  So here it goes....

Motivation is about what is inducing us to change, what is pushing us to become a better version of ourselves.  But what gives us that motivation?  Right now with the holidays, the motivation to eat right and finding time to exercise amidst all the other responsibilities that crop up this time of year, finding the energy/drive to get up off the couch, to cook dinner instead of picking up the phone is hard.

Motivation has to come from within.  I recently asked friends on a message board about their motivation, and while one of my bff's G had a great suggestion to help me get over the hump that is the holiday season, it's not going to help propel me into a new year with a new attitude.

Generally a journey like this starts with some outside pressure: an event you want to look pretty for (wedding or reunion), some health issue, or even societal pressure to fit into the norm.  Mine started as all of the above, but the long trek I've been on has kind of come to a halt.  This loss of motivation is part of what has stalled my journey in healthy living.  I have lost the outside pressure because I have lost weight already, feel better, look more normal, and have generally just improved my lifestyle over all.  But in order to continue the journey I need to find something intrinsic.  I haven't crested into the "I'm doing this because I want to" mode yet and I've lost the "I have to do this or else".

How do I transition into the next phase?  I started to climb out of the hole that I was in the past year and a half and that's a great feeling, but now what?  What do I do to transcend the issues?

Well, what I've decided to do is focus on the things that I love about myself and really look at the things I want to and can change.  I can change my weight, but I have to work at it.  I'm going to create little goals, I've always been good at working out plans, but I've never been good at the small steps.  Now I have to sit down and write those small goals....when I get to those, I'll let you know!!