Home Stretch

One week left in April!

I really can't believe I stayed off the scale this entire month. I feel like I've been eating a LOT this month, but my tracker tells me I'm still doing OK because most days I still had calories remaining. However, my calories have averaged right around 2000 calories/day this entire month! I was talking to my friend yesterday (while we were covering 12 miles) and I told her how I'm so curious to see what the scale will say next Monday. I have a level of "fear" that it'll be up because I feel like I've been eating so much this month. But, I decided that I'm not going to fear the scale on Monday. I have been tracking my food EVERY day this month so those days that I eat WAY more than I should (like Easter or days that I do my long run) are tracked. In the past I would have at least 1 or 2 days a week where I would maybe not actually track everything or I would just not track at all. So of course my calories those weeks averaged around 1500 or so (and actually a lot of those weeks were more like 1800-1900 average), but if I would have tracked those higher calorie days my average calories over the week would certainly have increased.

This month is my experiment of sorts. If I actually lost weight perhaps I will FINALLY believe that I can just trust the process. If I gained weight or even maintained my weight, then I will know that I can't sustain 2000 calories/day and still lose weight regardless of the amount of activity I am doing. So really this month will give me some answers and will hopefully put my obnoxious mind at ease.

Having said all that; I will tell you a little secret.......I already know I've lost weight this month! WHAAAAAAATTTT?!?!?! But, I've been being SO good about not getting on the scale! Well, I didn't get on my scale.

After my run yesterday I decided it was time to go see my doctor regarding what is probably exercise induced asthma. I once again had a run where I was unable to continue my intervals due to the fact that I couldn't breathe. I ended up walking pretty much the entire last mile because I could NOT get my breathing under control and therefore could not get my heart rate to come down. Anyway, so I went to the doctor this morning. I had to have a lot of self-talk last night in preparation for what that scale might say (the same type of self-talk I would have had prior to weighing myself on May 1st). The saving grace about today was that I still have this week before my "official" May 1st weigh in.

My sleep pattern NEVER looks like this! Apparently running 12 miles does wonders for my sleep! 

What's kind of funny is that I've been going crazy this month about not getting on the scale, but in reality I've been weighed twice. April 3rd I had a follow up appointment with my Crohn's doc so I had to get on the scale then. This morning I had the appointment with my primary care doc (who did give me a script for an inhaler and also scheduled me for a pulmonary function test). The difference of weight between the April 3rd doc visit and today's??? 3.1 pounds!! Let me tell you how excited I am about that!

**side note: I only compare doc office weights to other doc office weights. I have no idea what my scale would have said this morning in terms of weight loss from what my scale said April 1st. I ALMOST used this as an excuse to get on my scale today, but I resisted that urge!**

Now, some people may look at 3lbs in the course of 3 weeks and be disappointed. At some point in my journey I would have TOTALLY been one of those people. I mean, I can lose 3 (or more) pounds in a WEEK. However, when I'm losing 3, 4, 5 pounds in a week I can guarantee you I'm not eating 2000+ calories per day. Losing an average of 1 pound a week is nothing to be mad about. It still means 52 pounds in a year.

Time for the home stretch. The goal this week will be to not only stay the course, but to be a little more strict with my food choices/calories so that I can be even more excited about the scale on Monday!

This picture has nothing to do with today's blog post but I absolutely love it! My dad and my son watching my daughter's track meet the other day. 💗

How is YOUR April going??

This month has been far from easy.

I had 5 goals that I targeted for the month of April. I have been doing pretty well with all of them, but it hasn't been without struggles.

Honestly I think the absolute easiest goal this month has been to stay away from wine. I've barely even thought about the fact that I "can't" have wine. It's more just a matter of fact - I gave up wine this month so I'm just not having it.

McDonald's has been pretty easy too. I've had some days (like yesterday and today) where I just want it for no real reason. I get into these lunch funks where I just don't know what I'm in the mood to eat. I don't really want anything, but I want to EAT because I like to eat (and I'm hungry)! Those are the times that I used to just head to McD's for lunch because it was easier. But I have continued to resist that urge. You would think after almost 3 full months of not having McDonald's this wouldn't be this hard still.

A beautiful sight before a 4 mile run.

The one goal that I haven't succeeded in is exercising 6 days per week. I'm actually totally fine with this though. Last week I had 11 miles on the schedule and we did that on a Wednesday. I didn't have my workout class that Thursday like I usually would so I decided to rest on Thursday. I then rested on my usual Saturday rest day and couldn't bring myself to get up and run on Easter morning. And now I'm having some slight discomfort in my knee so I'm planning to take it easy the rest of this week so that I don't end up doing serious damage. After doing some research today I think it's just a little case of "runner's knee". So, I will be moving my 12.5 mile training run from this Friday to next so I can take some time to rest my knee. Interestingly enough though, my knee feels the best while I'm running.

Long runs = ice baths!

I have miraculously tracked the entire month of April so far. This has been an amazing feat because I have been eating like crazy. It'll definitely be interesting to see what the scale says come May 1st given how much I have been eating.

Coloring Easter Eggs

And that brings me to my last April goal - the damn scale. It's April 19th and I'm feeling like May 1st can't come soon enough! The start of the month I was thinking it was considerably easier this time than it was back in February; but now I'm feeling it. It's funny (weird) because the whole reason I want to get on the scale is because I'm scared I've gained. I can't seem to get myself back on track this month and I think that if I get on the scale it'll just help something to click. That's probably not the case. I'm really not "off track" even though I FEEL like I am. I have been tracking all month and there have only been about 3 days all month where I ate more calories than my Garmin said I burned. All the other days that I felt like I was eating way too much (because I ate over 2,000 calories), I still had at least a few hundred calorie deficit. So IF any of these devices actually work to even estimate calories burned and consumed I should have lost at least some weight this month.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what the scale says. I know that I've been struggling to keep my calories lower this month and if the scale isn't down I know why. If it IS down it will show me that perhaps I CAN eat slightly higher calories and still lose weight because of the activity that I do and perhaps I just need to CHILL out and TRUST THE PROCESS. I am trying to remind myself and convince myself that it really doesn't matter how long it takes to lose this weight as long as I'm losing it. As much truth as there is in that statement it also isn't always helpful. I've said it before. I've said it lots of times over the last 5 years since I started this blog and yet, I STILL have the weight to lose. It may not matter how quickly it happens, but it needs to be happening.....and continue happening until I'm where I want to be....

If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time you may have noticed that I go back and forth between different "diets" or ways of eating. I hate the word diet and when I use it I just mean it in terms of what I'm eating at the time. My diet will never be perfect. I know that my diet will forever consist of tracking of some sort if I want to lose or maintain my weight. I tend to switch up the way I track and that doesn't necessarily mean I'm changing diets; but that I'm just trying to change things up to keep from getting bored. Right now I'm struggling with tracking calories. I'm not eating nearly enough fruits and veggies and am just worrying about how many calories I'm eating and not where those calories are coming from. I get into this funk when I'm counting calories. Sometimes switching to WW (Weight Watchers) and counting points helps because fruits and veggies are "free" so if I'm feeling like I want to eat I can eat lots of those and don't need to feel like I have to weigh/measure/track, etc. But, it annoys me because why can't I just up my fruit and veggie intake without having to change the way I track things? Why can't I just choose the foods that I KNOW are better for my body than the ones that aren't the best choices? And herein lies the problem. And this is my journey to try to figure it all out!

TOWPATH TRILOGY - 5 MILER

A race report?!?!?! WHAAAAAATTTT????

I haven't written a race report since 2012!!! I have only participated in one race since that time. Back in 2014 I did a Glow Run 5k with the kids. It was horrible. I mean, it was fun in that it was at night and we all had things that glowed on us (glow sticks, glow shoelaces, glow rings, etc). But, the race part of it sucked. I was pretty close to my highest weight ever. I was in a very negative place and was still having issues with my Crohn's. I attempted to run some of it, but just really couldn't. We walked the majority of the 3 miles and I think it took us almost a full hour to complete the 3.1 miles.

I have tried many times to get back into running since getting admitted to the hospital in January 2013. I would get started and then would get too sick to continue. I mean, in 2013 I registered to do the Columbus Half Marathon. By the time the race came along I had to drop out because I was too sick to train. That was the last race I even registered for........until now!

I started Entyvio in April 2015. By September 2015 I was pretty certain that Entyvio was "my drug" and I had felt better than I had felt in 3 years. I gradually started back to exercising and run intervals as I was starting to feel better. By June 2016 I was back to pretty regularly running after convincing my mom to start intervals with me. We did that pretty consistently until maybe October, but I continued with the running on my own. Around November was when Leslie and I started running together and started talking about training for future races.

Back in 2012 I completed the Towpath 10-10 and the Towpath 10k. For whatever reason I didn't do any distance in the April Towpath race, but if I had I would have completed the Towpath Trilogy. When I was making my goal list for 2013, completing the Towpath Trilogy was on that list. We all know how 2013 turned out for me. It is now 2017 and I still have not YET completed the Towpath Trilogy. I quickly decided this year would be my year to try. The April Towpath event is the Half Marathon, but it has 3 mile and 5 mile distance races as well. I decided to sign up for the 5 mile event since it is a distance I have never "raced" before so it would be an instant PR regardless of how slow. I also had it in my mind that it would be easy to PR again later because I would likely be quite slow since I'm still early in the year.

It didn't matter that I didn't have anyone signing up with me. I was determined to complete this race and have a good start to completing the trilogy this year. I was talking to my mom about it earlier in the week and she ended up signing up to do the 5 miler with me! She had never run 5 miles before, but since she has lost a ton of weight and does her elliptical for over an hour every day I figured she could handle it no problem. I told her that I am SLOW and if she just stays with me I'm sure she'll be fine. But, I never asked her to do it. She wanted to do it so that I wouldn't have to do it alone. My mom is awesome. Did I mention that she just turned 70 in March!?!? No? Well, yea, she did!

Anyway, so we met there and froze our butts off while waiting for the race to start. It was such a beautiful day though. Chilly to start, but then perfect running temp for the rest of the race. The sun was shining and I can't even express how happy I was to be back out there at a race! It honestly did not feel like 5 years since I had done that.

When I signed up for the race I decided to put my estimated finishing time at 1 hour and 9 minutes because I hadn't done 5 miles faster than that in all of my training runs. And, I felt like I have been going slower lately (which you know was really making me mad). It ended up being such a great day and even though my legs felt like lead when we started; we finished our first mile in something like 12:14! I knew I wouldn't be negative splitting this race because I didn't think I could go much faster than 12:14, but I didn't care. I felt good pretty much the entire time. We kept our 2/1 intervals (run 2 minutes/walk 1 minute). There were people we kept leap frogging until we eventually just passed them for good around mile 4.

Official results......1:03.42!

That's a 12:44 minute/mile average pace! I am BEYOND happy with that! Considering my absolute best race pace was 11:03 m/m for a 4 mile race (back in 2011 when I was at my PEAK) and my best half marathon pace was 12:20 m/m (again, back in 2011 at my peak); I am beyond happy with 12:44 m/m in my first 5 mile race back! When I completed that half marathon and 4 mile race in November 2011, I also weighed probably 15 lbs less than I do right now.

Needless to say; I am EXCITED and I am BACK! Next up.... Cleveland Half Marathon!

Trickery

In my last post I discussed my April goals. I put together some pretty good goals for April (I thought). But I also thought that putting together those goals might bleed into other areas as well. Here's exactly what I said:

"I'm not even trying to be "perfect" and stay within my calories every day. I am simply challenging myself with tracking every day. I know that if I'm tracking every day the chances that I will go over my calories is lower than if I'm not tracking. "

That statement still holds true. The goal is NOT to be perfect, but to track what I am eating every day regardless of what that may be. But man, I really thought putting that particular goal out there would trick me into actually staying within my calorie range the entire month. It's stupid, really. If I really wanted to challenge myself to stay within my calorie range all month than that is what I should put out there. 

Also, I didn't talk about the fact that I made a change with my tracker, which would make the challenge of "staying within my calorie range" even more challenging. I used to have my Garmin and my tracker "communicating". I have the Garmin Vivosmart HR+ and I LOVE it. I wear it 24/7 and pretty much only take it off when I have to charge it. It calculates my calorie burn throughout the day regardless of the activity I do. On days when I don't do any exercise (like the Monday I had my infusion) it tells me I burn around 2300. When I fill in the information on MFP or Sparkpeople or any other calculator you can find online I usually get around the same number of calories burned in a day based on my height and weight so I trust that my Garmin is fairly accurate (as accurate as any of these trackers can be). 

On days I workout that calorie burn goes significantly higher. On days I run my end of the day calorie burn is higher than days I do other workouts - even if the calorie burn during the workout was similar. Interesting to me. I believe that I DO continue to burn more calories, even at rest, on the days I run than the other days. I ran on Sunday, only 3 miles, ended up covering over 5 miles that day with my other steps and my calorie burn at the end of the day was 3383. When I had Garmin and MFP communicating those 1378 active calories would be added to my calorie allotment for the day. So, if I had my "net" calories set to 1300 (which I did), it would mean I could eat up to 2678 and still be considered in range. 

Towards the end of March I decided that I needed to be even more strict with my calorie deficit and the way I should do this is to disconnect MFP and Garmin. I would only enter the calories burned during a specific workout (which is nothing compared to what my Garmin says I've burned by the end of any given day). I upped my "net calories" allowed because I knew that I pretty much never ate only 1300 calories. I didn't want to see RED numbers the one day a week I didn't workout; or even the days that I didn't burn many calories in my workout. Anyway, I set my new number to lose 1lb per week (still totally fine with me) and that put me at 1560 calories/day. Of course April not only starts on a Saturday, but the ONE day a week that I rest. I knew keeping my calories even below 2000 on a Saturday would not be easy, but I didn't let it bother me since I knew my goal was to just track everything. Saturday I ended at 1626 calories. My Garmin had my calorie burn at 2165 (yea, I take my rest days seriously! LOL). MFP has my "base" calorie burn at 2350 so it wouldn't have given me any extra calories on Saturday so I would have gone over regardless. 

The picture on the right shows a day with a long run. Not only did I have a 9.5 mile run to start that day, but I had a busy day and did not do a TON of sitting for the rest of the day. I ended the day having taken over 24,000 steps. I ate probably 3,000 calories that day,  but was still 2,000 calories under my max goal. Now; I don't really believe that if I ate 5,000 calories that day that I would still be losing weight. BUT, I do believe and know that I need to consumer more calories when I burn that many in a day. 

This is a long post to basically say that my plan of trying to trick myself into eating less calories has completely back-fired. I have eaten WELL over 2,000 calories for the last 3 days straight. And it doesn't frankly matter if my Garmin and tracker were communicating or not. I don't want to eat more than 2000 calories more than twice a week. And, frankly, that's only if I'm doing a good job at staying around 1500 calories the rest of the days. It's just interesting that when I try to put a little more pressure on myself I go so far in the other direction. This is nothing new. I wrote this post back in 2013 about sabotage. I was basically talking about how as soon as I started stressing about losing weight I started gaining. It is 4 years later and I'm STILL doing this to myself. 

I know partially why this is happening this week, but this is the worst string of high calorie days I have had since January. It needs to stop now. I'm not weighing myself so I can't see what damage I'm doing, but I can feel it today. I feel like my belly is more bloated than it's been. Tomorrow is a new day. It is NOT about perfection; it is about persistence. I will continue to meet my April goals. I will not stress about high calorie days and I will get back to my lower calorie days. And perhaps I will re-link my Garmin and my tracker.......