Hello, Tweetsie, My Old Friend....

Wow. Can't believe the weather right now. It's been in the sixties for the better part of the last two weeks....and it's JANUARY. In the MOUNTAINS.  Not trying to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything...I know this could very well be extremely short-lived.  (As a matter of fact, they're calling for snow flurries tonight and tomorrow). But I sure am enjoying it while it lasts. :)

Even though it's been raining a lot too (today included), it's been nice enough for me to take advantage of the weather and get in a lot of outside walks.  That's good, because I really despise the treadmill (although I love having the opportunity to get my walk on, no matter how crappy the weather might be), so any time I can avoid it makes me hate it less when I actually DO have to resort to using it.

Yesterday, it was BEAUTIFUL outside. Blue skies, temps in the 60's....by the time I left work, I was ITCHING to get out in it. So I headed to the Tweetsie Trail...my first time in almost a year, and boy...have I missed it!!!

It was my goal to get four miles in yesterday, as it will be for the rest of this month. By my calculations, even with the spasmodic start I had, if I can finish strong in the next week, I will be on track to hit my monthly goal of 40 miles, which in turn will keep me on track to do 1000 miles this year. I really want to hit that goal.

I wanted to hit it last year...but Life happened...

I digress. It was a great walk on a beautiful day, and my body just hummed with happiness at being back out in it.  Unfortunately, my Runkeeper app apparently didn't share my sentiments, because the time spazzed at roughly the halfway mark, and started over.  Fortunately, the mileage didn't, but it completely threw the computations off, so by the time I finished my walk, it looked like I had run my best pace ever.  I'll get there...one day. But when I see that number, I want it to be because I worked for it, not because my phone decided to have pity on me and throw me a bone.

In other news, I've been doing amazing with my eating. I'm completely back in the groove...actually fell back into it pretty easily, to my surprise. Not that I'm complaining, I just thought there would be more head games involved.  I guess my body was as ready for me to start being good to it again as my mind was. 

Yesterday was Weigh-In Wednesday, and by my worn-out scale, I've lost another 1.8 pounds, for a total of 6.6 pounds...down 16 pounds from my highest. A good weigh in, but I think honestly it may have actually been more of a loss, for two reasons.

First...my scale is toast.  I've had it many years, and never changed the battery in it. It's been a really, really good one...but it's tired. Now, to get a reading, I have to keep stepping on it until I get the same reading 3 times, and that's the number I go with. Yesterday, I actually saw lower numbers than what I posted...but none of them read twice, so I kept with the higher number.

Second, I was an idiot Tuesday night, and ate something with a really high sodium content, forgetting that I would be weighing in the next morning, and that probably wasn't the smartest idea, even if it was within my calorie range.

Ahh....how quickly we lose our mindfulness.  Oh, well...all good things in time. If I'm correct in my assumptions, I should have a nice loss next week, too.  And in the meantime...I mean to keep on truckin', come sunshine or snow.

How about you? How's the weather in your neck of the woods? Have you been able to take advantage of it?

 

 

Weigh-In Wednesday

Well, the  Dreaded Week Two has come and gone. In all honesty, I actually fared better than expected. As committed as I am to this process, I haven't yet hit that moment where I feel like I'm 'all in', if that makes sense. I found myself cutting a few corners this past week that I wouldn't do in the full swing of things...corners like not eating all my meals, not making time for my workouts, eating stuff I should stay away from at this stage....and finding reasons to justify my decisions.

That's a dangerous place to be this early on.

This coming week, I plan on working on a few areas to see if I can improve my game a little:


1.  I want to make sure I'm eating at my scheduled times.

                I really have to make myself stop working to do this, and that's very hard to do most days. I have to keep reminding myself that my lunch time and breaks are not special privileges that I only get to take if my work is caught up...they are necessary parts of my day, and I need to take them, for my body and for my mind.

2.  I want to make sure I'm eating ONLY what's safe for me to eat at this stage of my program.

                Justifying sugar, simple carbs, junk food, etc. is not beneficial.  Even though I stay within my calorie allotment, all it's doing is slowing down my metabolic rate. Later, after my metabolism has started burning well again, there will be options to add small amounts of things, sparingly. Now is not that time. 

3.  I want to make sure I'm drinking all the water my body needs.

               I'm terrible at slurping coffee all day. The rule is No Coffee After 12:00 Noon. I need to stick to that, because when I do, I have no problem getting all my water down...and then some....especially on days when I run.  Which brings me to

4.  I want to make sure that I'm getting my workouts in.

               Right now, that just means walking, but very soon, that will graduate into walk/runs and running.  That needs to happen sooner, rather than later. But I'm battling chronic exhaustion, so I'm trying to be kind to myself and listen. I know that the more I exercise, the less tired I will be, but that first step (re-establishing the rhythm) is a real doozie.

I don't plan on acing all of these in the next week...this IS a process, after all...but I do want to see myself a week from now, having put a serious dent in each area, and there's no reason that can't happen.  So far today, I'm doing pretty well.

As far as my weigh-in goes, this morning I managed to pull off a .2 lb loss, despite not being completely on track.  Not huge or monumental by any means, but not nothing, either.  And considering how much I battled this week, I'll take it with thanks. 

I made a commitment yesterday to get 5 miles in this week, but was so exhausted last night, I couldn't think straight.  Tonight, our plans include dinner out with a friend (planned weeks ago). I know there's a nice salad in my future, but that's not until 6pm, and I've got some time to kill after work. I'm pretty sure I can get a nice walk in if the weather holds, so that's my plan.

How about you?  Have you set any small goals to help you achieve your larger ones? How are they working for you?

It's Been a While....

...but everybody's got to start somewhere, right? And I'm starting over. Yes, again. But that's ok, because I know I've got it in me.

Funny how your outlook can shape your life. I know I've talked about that in previous posts, but no matter where we are on our journey, there's always something to be learned. I could not have foreseen it going into 2016, but last year turned out to be one of the hardest years of my life, second only to the year my late husband, Bill passed away.

 Last winter was brutal. So brutal, in fact, that we were literally housebound for three weeks. I couldn't even step outside the door without sliding down the mountain, and there were a lot of other days scattered throughout the season as well where outside workouts and/or traveling to a workout place (gym, track, trail) were just not possible.

 Still, I did my best to hang on, and although I gained back about 20 pounds, I still felt positive about getting back on track with spring just around the corner. I battled a grueling speed-training session to meet my 10k goal in March, a bum knee, and the absolutely unexpected announcement that although we were already incredibly short-handed at work, my department lead threw in the towel and retired. I was left holding the bag with two just-hired trainees who had no clearance access to the system (and didn't know anything at all, even if they HAD)....so not only did I have to do ALL the things (bi-weekly payroll for 2500+ government employees), I had to train the newbies at the same time.

I won't bore you with the details, but all the extra time it took and the pressure I was under caused my stress level to shoot past the moon, and my health suffered tremendously because of it. All my wonderfully cathartic, afternoon process-the-day runs were a thing of the past. All my carefully prepared meals and intake monitoring gave way to full-blown survival mode as I did whatever it took to get through the day.

For food, I either shoveled what was easy or in front of me, or ignored it completely, never leaving my desk through the week, working crazy hours long into the night to keep pace, trying desperately to catch up with home life on the weekends I wasn't working. For exercise, I stressed. I let go of every single thing in my life that wasn't critical. And I lost every shred of my personal life in the process. I can say this now, one year removed from the turmoil...that it is amazing that I survived. But I did survive.

These days, my life has finally leveled off. I am now the head of my department with a staff of four doing the job I did alone for the majority of the year. The training is not over, and probably won't be for some time...but they are all self-sufficient. And I can now go home at the end of my shift, secure in the knowledge that the building will still be standing the next day when I come back. No more overtime for me (unless there is an emergency, which may be once or twice a year), and there is now time to breathe, to focus on my health, and to bring my life back into alignment.

The balance that I had finally found was utterly lost last year, but it's time to reclaim that. I know I can do it. I've done it before, and I have the knowledge and the tools I need already in place. For Christmas, I made sure Santa brought me a new treadmill, so that I will never again be caught in the winter with no way to get a workout in. I went to the store and stocked up on new Tupperware containers and the foods I would need to get back in the swing of my everyday, pre-disaster life. I updated the My Fitness Pal, Runkeeper, and Rock My Run apps on my phone, and I finally stepped back on the scale to face the ungodly gain that was the result of months of bad eating, stress and inactivity expecting to have surpassed my highest weight, and pleasantly surprised to find that despite everything, I hadn't quite gotten there, after all.

One week ago...I began again to put it all into place, to rebuild once again the life I had worked so hard to attain. I know I can do it, I know because I've been there. I know because I want that life back so bad, I can taste the sweetness of it from here. This morning, I stepped back on the scale for my first weigh-in of the new age. And I had lost 4.6 pounds.  

Confucius was a wise, wise man. That single first step is everything.