The morning after

In the last 8 weeks, despite success in my new, healthy lifestyle, I've become all too familiar with the MORNING AFTER feeling. It's the feeling I have the morning after the evening a fast food binge on the way home from work. Every time this happens, when I wake up, I feel like crap. I've usually gained at least 2 or 3 pounds overnight from all the sodium and the CRAP sitting in my gut. I get off the scale wondering how long it's going to take me to get back just to where I was and continue on with my weight loss and I spend the rest of the week wondering "what would have been?".

Well, those feelings weren't there this morning as I made it through the storm yesterday afternoon. It was really the perfect storm. I had a stressful day. I forgot to eat an afternoon snack. I really didn't realize until I got in my car and turned on the ignition that I WAS STARVING. All the familiar patterns were there and I should have stopped at any one or two of several fast food places on the way home. But I didn't do it. I just sucked it up and got home without doing the thing I hate to do but love to do.

And this morning, I was soooooo happy I made that decision. Now I know the OTHER morning after feeling. The one where you step on the scale and instead of being 2 or 3 pounds OVER the day before, I'm DOWN a half a pound from yesterday. Instead of waking up and feeling bogged down and bloated with a bunch of CRAP in my stomach, I felt normal, even a little smaller. Now I have this reminder to replay in my mind whenever temptation strikes.

One of the ways I got through it was firing off an e-mail to Catherine from the car, while I was driving down the Beltway. It was something like, "Driving home. Skipped snack. STARVING!!! Must make it home." I didn't really expect a reply but just knowing the reply could come and knowing that Cat is behind me helped me make it through the trip home. When I finally did get home and got something good to eat, I received Cat's reply. She said some things and then she wrote, "This is your marathon!" Wow, that's profound and sooooo true. Even though my marathon isn't for another 14 months (WOW!!! over a year away), the decisions I make now and the work I'm doing now...well, let's face it. My marathon training and preparation has started. Yes, I want to be healthy. Yes, I want to feel good and there is a big picture to what I'm trying to do here. But the marathon, my comeback, this thing I'm working for is a huge motivator for me. So, thanks for the reminder, Cat.

Yo, peeps!!!

Where was everybody last night? The park was EMPTY!!! And it was a beautiful evening to run. The sprinkle was so refreshing. I got 2 awesome miles in with a mile walking tacked on. I snuck down in the 15's for mile 2 and really felt good. Flashback to October 2006, running the Space City 10-miler in the rain and how good that felt. Of course, the rain last night didn't compare to the deluge of 2006 but still, it brought back some memories that kept my mind occupied during the hump.

I've had good, consistent eating this week. Catherine said one of our goals is to make the junk food binges less and less frequent. I've gone to just about every day to about one per week. I'd consider it a huge success to get through this whole week without one slip up. This is "heavy" on my mind this week. I CAN DO!!!

Let's get this party (week) started!!!

Yes, today is Monday! For me, every Monday brings sort of a new start. This morning in my session with Catherine the Great, we did a good evaluation of the last week. We talked about successes and failures. There were a lot of successes. :)

Success #1 - After falling off the wagon for one meal on Friday, I got right back on the next day. My pattern in the past has been that when I mess up, I mess up BIG. One bad meal will usually send me into a tailspin where it's a few days before I get back on track. Not this past week. In fact I did the bad meal Friday night and still got right up Saturday morning for my "long run". So, that was a SUPER success (even though the mess up on Friday was a failure).

Success #2 - Sunday was a birthday lunch at my house for my Mom. I grilled yummy cheeseburgers. There were also all the usual villans: potato salad, macaroni and cheese, tons and tons of cheese and chips, and of course, MAYONNAISE. So, as long as I was grilling, I did some chicken for myself. And then, for a real treat, I grilled some yummy veggies on the bar-b. Red, green, yellow, and orange peppers, zucchini squash. So, my plate was chicken breast, just a spoon of potato salad, homemade pico de gallo, tomato slices, grilled veggies, and for the piece de resistance, a 100 cal pack of Wholly Guacamole. I was so stuffed, I didn't even have cake. The whole meal was just 685 calories.

Success #3 - I ran 4 miles Saturday.

Success #5 - I ran 4 times for 11.5 miles last week.

Failures - like a good boy who puts all the bad behind him, I don't remember any of my failures last week. :)

Things to work on this week - Overall, Catherine wants to work on keeping my FULL this week. What a great dietitian, right? To lose more weight, she wants me to EAT MORE? Wahoo!!! So, I need to add some fruit to my diet. I'll probably do that in the form of a mid-morning snack and/or for dessert at dinner time. Fortunately, honeycrisp apples are in season so this ain't gonna be hard. Also, I stuffed my desk at work with Smart Pop popcorn bags. Catherine said she'd of course rather me eat a big bag of hot popcorn on the way home than stop at James' Coney Island for a 6 pack. :)

By the way, congrats Catherine on finishing 2nd overall female in Saturday's Rocky Raccoon 25K. AWESOME!!!

What a wonderful morning

What a beautiful morning. Belated good luck to everyone running Rocky Racoon this morning. It's an awesome day for racing.

I'm eight weeks back on the horse and I guess it's time for some evaluation.

Weight Loss:

I've lost 21 pounds since starting. That's about 2.6 pounds per week and although I never realistically expect to lose more than 2 pounds per week, I think I could have done a bit better. I'll give myself a solid B on weight loss.

Running:

When I started, I was running just a quarter mile during the week at a comfortable ~18 minute pace with a long run on the weekend of a half a mile. Today, I ran 4 miles at a VERY comfortable 17:25 pace. I've progressed from 4 miles per week to ~11. Since my goal right now is 100% building base and endurance and not to get faster, I'll give myself an A on the build up to 4 miles.

Now, I've just got to stay positive.

Soduim Update

Ok, as predicted, the 7 pound weight gain from last week has all disappeared plus and extra 2 pounds. Total weight lost since Monday...9 freakin' pounds.

I've had a couple of good runs this week. I'm at a point where I can do the whole Memorial Park loop, no problem. So, that makes it nice to get away from the out and backs.

Not so good weekend

I have to admit, not all is rosy. I had a bad couple of days over the weekend. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday included trips to McDonald's, grilled cheese sandwiches, Halloween candy, chips and cheese...that's about it. Oh, and I totally skipped my workout Saturday. Oh, the shame!!! And something VERY WIERD happened with my weight. My weight went up over 7 pounds in just a couple days. That's crazy!!! If that were 7 pounds of fat, that means I would have taken in 25,000 calories more than I burned over two days. I may have binged a bit but there's no way I steered that far off course. So, what's the deal?

I'm just about 100% sure that the deal is the high, high sodium content in fast food. I just bloated me up like a balloon. I think most of the gain can be attributed to the water retention and just all that food sitting in my stomach trying to digest. I got right back on track Monday morning and in just a 24 hour period, I've lost 4 of the 7 pounds I had gained. I drank a lot of water yesterday and did some exercise. I ate a normal, good diet the whole day and hope to have that other 3 off soon so I can get back to business.

The important thing is to stay positive. It's been the pattern for me to look at a small failure and just say, "Screw it!" and go off on a major prolonged binge. I'm breaking that pattern and getting right back up on that horse. Besides, this is going to be a fun week. I may be posting BIG numbers, like Biggest Loser numbers, with 4 pounds lost already.