The Scale

I am putting you on notice that I am breaking up with you!!!!  I have spent too much time and energy over the last 2 years focusing on what you have to tell me.  Instead I should be looking at the fact that I have shaved at least 10 min off my 5K time (that is with killer hills), I have successfully completed 4 half marathons (not to mention 30 something odd other races) and I will be doing the NYC Marathon this year.

I am done looking at the number you give me every other day and trying to figure out what I ate or didn’t eat that might be effecting that number.  I am strong!!  I go to the gym 6x a week at minimum and work out like I have never worked in my life.  I choose to meal prep for the week, I choose to educate myself and others on the benefits of eating healthy.  I will no longer be subject to the number you give me.

I am down from a size 18/20 to a size 8/10, I bought a size medium bathing suit for the summer and a size 8 dress for a party I need to go to soon.  You, scale, are no longer my friend.  I need to measure my victories in other ways.  I need to look at the fact that I can leg press 230lbs and squat 110lbs bench press 70lbs (hey it is getting there) and I can plank for almost a minute now (up from 30sec).

People tell me all the time how great I look and how far I have come and I need to celebrate that more.  I need to love the fact that I have more excess skin in my stomach because of how hard I have worked and that my bat wings add character, lol.  I have found a new love of running and strength training and well I absolutely love kickboxing.  Let me tell you, there is no better feeling then beating the hell out of that bag.  At my heaviest I would have never thought of doing any of these things.  Wait yes I would have but I never would have done them because well I would have thought I couldn’t.

So to everyone out there that is living by the number on the scale, break up with it.  It doesn’t define you, it doesn’t define your progress and it certainly does not need to be the only way you feel good.

Meal Prep Day

Sunday’s are always my meal prep days.  Well they have been for the last almost 2 years.  Once it became part of the routine it just became easy to do.  In total it usually only takes me about 30-40 min and I typically just prep dinner for myself of the nights that I work (Mon/Tue/Thurs).  Lunch is usually a tuna wrap or turkey depends on what I have and what I am in the mood for.  Today I decided to do a little more.

I made lunch for the days I am at work also ( I work 10am-8pm) so I am in there for a good bit of the day.  Today I found chicken sausage on sale at the local grocery store, Sun Dried Tomato (one of my favorite flavors).  I take the casing off the sausage and then cut them up and throw them in a pan, today I also cut up some red and orange peppers and threw them in there with it.  Since the sausage is already cooked it is just a matter of heating them up and I have a microwave at work so I will heat at work.  I divide into 3 parts and then I will have that for lunch in a wrap and probably some pretzels or goldfish.

Simple and easy and not a lot to clean up either.  For dinner I decided to give myself some protein and carbs.  I took ground turkey (one of the staples in my eating plan) and cook it then diced peppers (same colors as lunch), diced tomato, black beans and some salt/pepper.  I them cooked protein pasta and mixed it all together in a dish, sprinkled some cheese on top and baked in the over for a little while.  This will then get divided up into 3 (or 4 as it seemed to make a lot) containers and I will cook some sweet potatoes later to have with dinner or lunch depends on the mood.

Simple and easy.  Trust me when it comes to food prep the easier the better but I still want it to taste decent.  I tend to stick with a lot of the same things during the week because I don’t want to spend all day in the kitchen on Sunday.  Since I am only at work 3 days a week it makes it a little easier although eating at home the others days isn’t always great but it has gotten a lot better.  I know a lot of people say they don’t have time to prep a meal, etc but really in the long run it is less time then it is to run to the convenience store or fast food for lunch.  I am busy just like everyone else.  This am I got up, went grocery shopping, ran a 5K race, went to lunch with my hubby, back to the grocery store to get fish to cook for dinner, picked up my girls at a friends, meal prep and now I can relax before I start organizing my room and working on dinner for tonight.

Like if about the choices we make, this has been hard to learn over the last year and a half, but my choices whether good or bad are my choices.  We all have a choice as to be the best version of ourself or the version we think others will want us to be.  Recently I have started to choice the version I want to be.

Fear

Fear has totally taken over my life the last few weeks.  I am trying to figure out this marathon training and I am starting to stress over which plan is the right plan and what if I start too soon will I get burnt out, but what if i don’t start soon enough will I have enough time.  How am I going to keep losing weight when everyone tells me I am bound to gain weight, how do I keep strength training and kickboxing when I know I will have to be running more.  There are so many what if’s in the scenario and so many unknowns.

I am starting to wonder what I have gotten myself into.  Why did I think I could run a full marathon? Why did I even want to run a full marathon? How do I pick a plan? What is the best plan? How do I stay injury free? Am I even injury free now (doctor on 4/25)? Is this the biggest mistake of my life?

Yes these are questions I ask myself on a regular basis.  My eating has been less than stellar as of late and I could make a million and one excuses but there aren’t any.  I know better then to not eat before going to an event when I don’t know what the choices will be so that I don’t end up eating chocolate chip cookies, swedish fish, and peppers for dinner (yes seriously that is what I ate).  A year ago I never would have done that, I would not have even put myself in the position to do that.  So I live with these choices and hope that I can get myself back on track.  I am responsible for my own choices, I am responsible for my food and for making sure that i am the one how makes the healthy choice.  I don’t say I am cheating I made a bad choice.  This bad choice will come back to haunt me on the scale but I have to let fear stop having complete control over me.

I have lived with fear for so long. Fear of not being liked, fear of failure, fear of not being able to do certain things.  FEAR is my biggest enemy and my greatest excuse.  I haven’t done so many things because I have been afraid of what might be.  Never realizing what could be the outcome on the other side.  Yet I still live in the constant state of fear because typically when I make a decision someone will get hurt or be effected adversely and I don’t want that to happen.  I worry so much about what others think and feel that I often forget how to just be and that will often manifest itself in the other choices that I then make.  I need to figure out how to stop letting my fears getting in the way of my success.

Human

I am human!!  I have good days and I have bad days.  My husband reminded me of something today.  I was telling him how I was feeling after the weekend and he responded with “Prior to the last couple years you would have let one day of crap win.  You won’t let that happen now.” He is right.  Today I was back at it, 2mile at the gym, trainer session for 30 min of legs and core work and then 30 min kickboxing.  I packed all my food and so far I am eating it.  I did stop for coffee but didn’t buy candy or extra stuff.

I feel                                                                 Because

___________________________________________

Discouraged                                                I haven’t lost anymore weight

Uncertain                                                    there are a lot of changes

Overwhelmed                                             yearbook, pto, running my business

Alone                                                              no one in the house eats or trains like I do

Afraid                                                              trying something new with the marathon

Hopeful                                                          I am no falling into old patterns

Lost                                                                  sometimes I don’t know what direction to go

 

This was something I started doing as I was working on my emotional eating.  When I started to grab food I would do this.  I have read and worked through the book “Life is Hard, Food is Easy” by Linda Spangle, RN, MA, and this is one of the chapters in this book.  It is very helpful to just go back and identify the feelings that I am having on any given day.  I don’t do it as much as I should and I thought this was a good of time as any to figure it out a little.  Life will never get easier, my girls will not be any less stressful but I have to find new ways to handle the issues that arise.

Yes I am a small business owner and yes that is overwhelming but how many people get to say that they love what they do for a living and truly enjoy going to work.  As much as I want a “real” job I know this is where I need to be.  As far as my journey to healthy I am closer to that goal then ever before but I don’t know why I can’t check off the box on my bucket list.

 

Relapse

I don’t talk about it often but I have an addiction.  My addiction is not to alcohol or drugs but to food.  Laugh if you must but it is real.  I have been addicted to food for a while and I also have an issue with binge eating as well.  I don’t talk much about it because most people don’t believe in it.  The past few days for whatever reason have been really hard on me emotionally.  In the past year and a half I have done really well with keeping track of these emotions and not allowing them to get the best of me but not the past two days.  I have not quite hit the binge eating but I can feel myself going there.  I certainly am using food though to comfort the emotional trouble I am having.  Hence the term relapse.

I am between clients right now and I drove to WaWa (there is one way too close to my office).  I got coffee, no biggie well I also got Skittles, now I know I am not really hungry.  How do I know this.  I ate at 12pm, I ate again at 2pm (high protein food) and then I ate 2 snacks before my 3:30pm even came in.  I know that eating isn’t going to do anything expect cause me to spiral even further but right now it is where I am at.   I did work out today and I know I am within my calories to eat the Skittles but it is not the point.  Candy has been my go to when emotional eating and when binge eating.

I am not asking for anyone’s sympathy, I am just putting this out there to hold myself accountable.  I know this rabbit hole is not good it is far from good and if I go to close I will fall in and I fear not getting out.  As much as a part of me wants to give up and just keep eating, the other part of me knows that it will not help me to feel better.

Today also would have been my parents wedding anniversary were they still married and my nieces birthday is in 4 days.  We no longer have contact with my nieces (since my brother’s death) and I think that is where a lot of this emotion is coming from.  I have no control over these situations and I am not a fan of not having control.  In addition my training sessions at the gym come to an end in two weeks and a part of me is scared to stop.  I am just finding a grove again with strength training and given that I might be injured (going to the doctor on the 25th) that is all I can really do to work out.

And with that I know where all the emotion is coming from.  Not able to run, scared of what is not in my control, missing my family, overwhelmed with work (what else is new) and trying to do too much as a mom/parent volunteer.  Time to take a deep breath and reevaluate the situation.  Oh and I didn’t eat the entire bag of skittles.

Week 2 Update

Week 2 was great!! I felt like I was finally getting in a grove especially with the bag work (which I love by the way).  Still not a huge fan of all the leg work, but that is only because my legs are on fire when I am done, lol.  I feel great when I leave and honestly wish the classes were longer than 30 min.

It has become a running joke that at the end of class I always say “that’s it?”.  I swear the class feels much shorter than 30 min which in my opinion is the sign of a good class.  Now down to the nitty gritty.  Have I lost any weight?  Am I down any inches?

So yesterday was my rest day from kickboxing.  I did go to the gym and did back and calves. When I came home I tried on some dresses that I had bought for a party that I need to go to.  I had bought one on Friday that I loved and wanted to show J to get his opinion.  Well he didn’t like it said that it looked weird in the stomach area (my biggest issues with my self confidence).  So I immediately went into this funk.  Now let’s also add on top it stupid National Sibling Day.  Seeing everyone post current pictures with their siblings was just gut wrenching since my brother died 7 years ago.  I did my best to stay away from FB but the ground work was already set.  From this point forward the day was a wash.

J and I went out to lunch and I just made poor choice after poor choice food wise, I found myself snacking on chips at home right before dinner (I haven’t done this in a very long time).  I just was eating to eat because I was sad.  Ready to throw in the towel and say Fuck it because why should I care anymore.  Just one of those days.

Still not sure how I feel today, but got up and went to kickboxing. I am up 3lbs from the damage yesterday.  It is what it is.  I will own it and make some decisions.  I know that it is stupid to give up but I am just tired of fighting for something that is just out of reach.

Do you like running?

That question was asked of me yesterday by my husband.  Initially when I read that I thought WTF??!!  Why is he asking me this, what does that have to do with anything?  So I thought about it and the honest answer is I don’t know.  I like the idea of being challenged.  I like the idea of trying new things.  Do I like running though?  I don’t really know to be honest.  I have days where I hate it and can’t stand the thought of running another mile.  Then there are moments when I feel like I wish I could run more and faster. My husband is trying to find his way and what he likes.  He doesn’t like running, he actually thinks running sucks and doesn’t quite get why I like it.  Sometimes I am not sure if I even like running though.

What is the point of this post?  The point is that I am confused.  I am confused with what I want to even do anymore.  I know I need to improve on my strength training to lose the rest of the weight.  I am loving kickboxing right now though but fear that I am doing way too much cardio.  Thus being totally counterproductive because I am not building muscle only burning it.  Catch 22, I enjoy my cardio but I have to find a better balance.  I also need to figure out how to stop getting injured doing the things I really like.

So the answer to the question is no I don’t like running, I really do love it.  I love how I feel when I do it.  I love that not even 2 years ago I couldn’t do it.  I love that I feel human and happy when I run.  I love challenging myself with new races, new distance and new people.   I just need to find a balance.  I need to figure out how to keep doing what I love but also keep getting healthy.

FitCom Update

One week down.  Today actually started week 2 of it.  I did 6 days last week, 30 min each day.  It was a killer workout that is for sure and I sweat up a storm.  I am going to try to wear my heart rate monitor again tomorrow and see how it goes.  I tried on Saturday but with the gloves on I kept hitting the stop button I think on the watch.  Maybe I will put the watch on the other wrist to try it that way.

So I did weight myself this am although it was after the workout and eating breakfast (because I forgot to do it when I got up at 4:30am) and I stayed the same.  While I am not happy with that I guess I should be because it means I am not gaining.  I am just trying to figure out how to lose this weight.  I know a big part of it is my strength training and I really need to kick that up a notch it has just been hard.  I am training for a 10mile race that I have on 5/1 so I need to also run.  I have been neglecting my running but not fully focusing on the strength training either.  I think I am just getting bored and since I am almost done with my training session I am nervous as to where I go from here.

It was easy when Martin was training me I had a schedule to follow I knew what to do and I felt like I was able to stick to it.  I just need a change but don’t know how to come up with that change effectively.  I think my goal for this week is to do some research on some new exercises but to come up with a plan like Martin did and have it written down so when I go to the gym I know exactly what I am doing.

I was lazy this week with everything , yet I worked out every day but yesterday (Sunday).  I don’t know what is going on or why I am feeling this way.  Doing my best to stay focused now though and not allow the emotions of late to take over the eating.