I guess I run now

183 pds, and I’m 5″

I’ve gained and lost the same damn 20 pounds for 3 years now.

Kidding myself about my weight…fine, whatever.

Killing myself with my weight…NOT OKAY!

Hubby got us a new doctor who is pretty proactive. Not medication wise, it’s just a different attitude about health that I think I like.

So…history of heart disease and high cholesterol in my family and she’s got me on 3000 mgs of fish oil (put it in the freezer and the whole belching up fish oil all day side effect disappears…new doctor’s idea).

Low cholesterol diet and much, much more exercise. I’ve got three months to improve the following numbers:

total cholesterol: 243 (should be under 199)

triglycerides: 131 (I’m okay, but would like to be even lower…recommended is less than 149)

LDL (the bad stuff): 153 (should be below 129)

HDL (the good stuff): 64 (I’m okay here…should be more than 40).

So…three months of veggies and fruit and oat meal and walking and yoga…progress on the scale and progress in the blood.

Here goes everything!

The Fast Five site says to wait 3 weeks to start seeing results, mostly because people take the “eat whatever you want between 5-10″ as an invitation to eat as much as they want during that time. I’m guilty of a little of that, and hubby and I have had pizza twice in the last 20 days, but for the most part we have a nice dinner around 5:30 (I know, so early) and then around 9:30 I have a piece of toast with peanut butter or a small bowl of cereal.

Yesterday I was a little crazed at 4:30 after spending most of Saturday in the office and heading right from there to Costco to stock up on stupid supplies, so I had a McD’s cheese burger on the way. 300 calories and 1/3 of the daily salt limit. WOW! But then when we got home I had only a small bowl of pasta and chicken (about 1 1/2 cups) and later a slice of toast with peanut butter and that was it for the night/day.

I came in around 1000 calories, so there’s where the fasting for 19 hours works.

We’ll see on Thursday if I’m losing at this point, and I suspect I will be. And I suspect that, yes, I can lose a pound a week (easily and without feeling at all deprived) doing this.

I’ve been doing some intermittent fasting this week to break through it & I think I have, finally.

Thinking about trying this for a bit: Fast Five.

I don’t mind fasting…even kinda like it, like the way it makes me feel, and like the way it alters my relationship with food. And after 6 months on Atkins with only a 10 pound loss (I know, at least it’s a loss!), I’m loving the thought of a one pound a week loss while I get to still eat the foods I like. I’ll probably make my break-fast food Atkins-friendly, but for tonight it was a thrill to eat a whole mess of carbs.

Anyway, today was my first Fast Five day. Broke the fast with 2 eggs, 2 slices of wheat toast, a handful of peanuts, 2 cups popped corn with butter, and coffee with cream. Not a huge number of calories for my first night (about 800), so we’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

I haven’t taken the dog for another run because every run is rainy these days and I’m regularly surprised about making it through a normal day without breaking my own neck: add running, rain, and dog to the mix and I figure I’d just be tempting fate.

So…happy about the runs. Angry as hell about the plateau (better be TOM). Craving all things carb, but especially chocolate.

Maybe it’s stress? Have I heard this somewhere before? I’m majorly stressing the last two weeks and have more planned for the next two until I can get some work out the door…maybe long days in the office, long nights working at home, more/less constant indigestion, and stress are all making me hold on to the weight?

Or what I’m doing’s not working. Yeah, it’s probably that last thing.

Hope your week went better and your weekend is fun, but temptation free.

Does it count if it was unintentional and the miles were spread out over a 12-hour period?

My guess is, no. Doesn’t count. Nice try, though.

Ran/walked my two miles in the morning. The bike pants (really, quite long) worked pretty well under sweats, but add to that my jacket that I use to carry my iphone (gps run tracker, music, 9-11 when I pass out on the road), a t-shirt, and a sports bra and I was pretty dern toasty towards the end there. Figuring out the i-phone issue tonight so I can leave the jacket behind…although if the weather turns.

And then tonight while hubby was at choir practice I figured I’d see how the dog might do on a one-mile run/walk. Answer: not too bad. He slowed me down by about a minute, but then maybe it wasn’t him so much as me tired after a long day. Hubby said the dog gets very upset when I’ve gone out to run these past 3 times, so I thought maybe I’d bring him along for the 1 mile runs twice a week. He’s good, distracting, company.

So I ran/walked 3.24 miles in 50 minutes today. Not exactly fast, but faster than slow. I think my goal is to get my run tracker to call these little adventures “runs” rather than “walks.” I think of them as runs, and my lungs, sore legs, and aching back think of them as runs. Why won’t the technology do me the honor of calling them runs even if they’re pathetically slow ones?

The two pounds I gained last week are gone again and good riddance. Now to add a two-pound loss onto next week to make up for it.

I did a 1-mile run/walk yesterday in the pouring down rain. But I think I’ve decided I never learned to run when I was running on the treadmill, so nothing was going to keep me from hitting the very wet open roads.

Sounds so romantic, doesn’t it? Open roads, pouring down rain, the lone determined runner. Ha! Picture damp and squishy shoes, soaking wet head, fogged up glasses, red and patchy red face, huffing and puffing, oh, and chafing, lots and lots of chafing. I’ll never make it on a Nike billboard, that’s for certain.

Tomorrow’s a 2-mile run. Solving the chafing problem with truly unattractive biking shorts under my sweats. I will be, once again, a dreadful spectacle roaming the neighborhood. But just the thought of making myself do a run, get stronger, increase my speed and stamina, makes me happy.

So maybe I didn’t just break even this week. I know many of you have said this before, and maybe I have as well, but there are more measures of progress than pounds lost. This week so far I’ve had a 4-mile run/walk gain. And that’s not bad at all!

Happy week chicks!

Inspired by the weather and a sense of bravery I can’t account for, I did a run this morning, a 5K in 45 mins.

Not fast for a normal runner, but for me this was FAST!

So the plan is a long run on weekends with shorter runs during the week: Monday=1mile, Wednesday=2mile, Friday=1mile, Saturday=5K.

Outside rather than on the stupid treadmill. Monday I’m going to try my Zem Ninja barefoot running shoes

We’ll see if this works for me!

Back on Atkins induction for two weeks as well: I gained two pounds last week & I’m livid about it!

Happy weekend ya’ll!

And apparently I can live with that.

I’m finally seeing new movement on the weight tracker to the right, which means I’ve caught up to and slightly surpassed where I was in the summer. Phew!

Now with full-on atkins living, I’m losing about 1.2 pds one week and 2 the following. So…3.2 every two weeks or 6.4 every month. It’s a lot slower than I’d like, but it’s fast enough that I can see and feel the progress.

Next week will be a milestone for me: 20 pounds lost from my record heaviest (last fall). 20 pounds in a year…also not a huge loss, but gosh I’m glad to report a 20 pound loss this year rather than a 20 pound gain!

So, slow and steady old chums! I might not get there tomorrow, but I’m on the right path now at least!

Back to school, back on Atkins, back to losing. It was a near-wasted summer, but I’m back to losing 1.4 this week, 1 last week, and because of past efforts (that I really shouldn’t forget) I’m fitting into fall clothes that didn’t fit last fall. So that’s a big YAY! I’ve also tried on those that don’t fit still, and imagining when they will…five pounds will put me back into most of the ones in my closet now, ten will get me rooting through the crates in the basement (a goal for me).

So here we go again. Happy fall everyone. Okay, it’s early yet for that, but when you live life by semesters, fall has begun and it’s glorious so far.

20 pds!

Me? Not so much.

In fact, I gained in Baton Rouge. I’m still under, but I’ll be digging myself back to where I was for the next few days. Oh, and over the next few days, I’ll be taking a very quick trip to Denver…

But I’m not going to get down about the recent…um…non-losses. Back on the horse and try, try again.