Blessed

It's been an interesting week.

So, I resumed tracking my calories on MyFitnessPal on January 4th. That first week and a half was great and by Friday the 13th I was down 6.6 from my weight on January 1st. Needless to say I was quite ecstatic with this.

Last week I was exercising like a fiend. It wasn't necessarily on purpose, but more so because that's just how my workouts happened to fall. Here's what my week looked like exercise-wise:

• Sunday: Walk 3 miles (I didn't have anything on the schedule Sunday, but I decided to just walk on the treadmill leisurely). 
• Monday: Run 5 miles in the morning; an hour of Jazzercise in the evening.
• Tuesday: Run 3 miles in the morning; an hour strength class in the afternoon. 
• Wednesday: Jazzercise in the evening.
• Thursday: Run 3 miles in the morning; strength class in the afternoon. 

If you're counting, that's 8 workouts in 5 days. Needless to say I was burning tons of calories. MFP adds those workout calories to your daily target so my target was pretty insane most days. I didn't even come close to eating all my "allowed" calories on the days that I ran and did another workout. 

You can imagine how incredibly frustrated I was when I saw the scale creeping up during the week. By Friday (the day that I had decided to be my "official" weigh in day) my weight was UP 2.2 pounds from the previous Friday! W.T.F!?!?!?! 

Ok. So LOGICALLY I KNOW to just stay the course and it will come off. My body will catch up with what I'm doing and I'll have a great week where I just drop a bunch of weight. I also know that working out as much as I did this past week will result in some major water retention (especially since I incorporate weight training). But none of that makes it any easier to see THAT much of a gain when you feel like you've been working so hard. 

That dreaded scale. I've blogged about it several times before. That scale can sabotage me regardless of how I'm using it (every day, once a week, attempting to do once a month, etc). Seeing those numbers go up this week made me once again think that perhaps I need to just stay off the scale for a while and focus on what I'm doing. IT'S JUST SO HARD!! I mean, I am doing this because I just like how I feel when I'm more active. But, I also want to lose this damn weight. I want to see what I can do fitness wise when I'm actually at a "healthy" weight. That makes it hard to NOT focus on what the scale is doing. 

But then today happened. 

I got up early and met my friend for our weekly long run. We had 6 miles on the schedule today. I haven't done 6 miles since 2013. And frankly, I think in 2013 I got to about 7 miles into my half marathon training when I got sick again and had to make the decision to NOT do the Columbus half marathon. 

I told Leslie that we had to plan for at least 1 1/2 hours to get the 6 miles done. I haven't been too happy with my run times lately and I didn't want to expect any more for this one. I was also thinking that in the past I had taken close to that time to finish a 10k so it seemed appropriate to me. You can imagine my excitement when we finished in 1:24. 

But it wasn't even just that. I was actually able to put aside any negative feelings I was having before this morning and feel GRATEFUL that I was ABLE to get up early this morning and run these 6 miles. Was it tough? Of course it was. But I can't express how awesome I felt at 8:30 this morning when I completed the first 6 miles since 2013. What the scale says no longer mattered. I go back to thinking; man, look at what my body CAN do! 

I am sure there will be more times when the scale ticks me off. For today though, I don't care what that scale says. On to next week. The only day I have 2 workouts in one day will be Thursday when I am scheduled to run 3 miles and then have my workout class in the afternoon. Hopefully the scale will decide to reward me for my continued efforts. In the meantime, my official half marathon training starts this week! 17 weeks and I WILL be crossing the finish line of my 5th half marathon. An enormous thanks to my friend, Leslie....without her I wouldn't be where I am today and I wouldn't be talking about my 5th half marathon in 17 weeks either!

2,017 in 2017

As I was scrolling through Facebook one day I came across something in my newsfeed that caught my attention. There is this "virtual challenge" that is called Run the Year 2017. Even though it's called "Run" the Year, the purpose of it is to motivate people to get moving. You can sign up to cover the 2, 017 miles yourself or as part of a team. The miles don't have to all be running. You can actually sync your tracking device (fitbit, Garmin, etc) and count your total mileage for the day based on your steps.

You can see where this is going, right? So, yea, I signed up for it. And since I guess I don't tend to do anything small; I'm tackling the 2,017 on my own. That averages to over 5.5 miles per day. Sounds impossible, doesn't it? So, I may or may not hit this goal, but it'll be fun and interesting to reach for the stars.

2012 Cleveland Half

What's one way to help me reach my crazy mileage goal in 2017?? Why sign up for a race of course!

And that's exactly what I did! On May 21st I WILL be completing my 5th half marathon! The last half marathon I did was in May 2012. I hit my half marathon personal best in November 2011. I DO NOT think that I will beat this personal best (at least not yet), but I am so excited at the notion that I am actually getting back out there. And I do feel pretty confident in the moment that I can at least do as well as I've done in 2 of my other half marathons.

The official training has already started. The race is still about 20 weeks away so we have PLENTY of time. IF I can also manage to average a 1.5 lb/week weight loss in these next 20 weeks, I will be within 3 lbs of where I was when I hit my PR in 2011. And frankly, if I can average 1lb/week I'll still weigh less than I did when I complete my full marathon in 2012.

November 2011 Half Marathon

It'll be what it is. My hope is just that I can stay healthy enough during this training so that I can actually cross that start and finish line come May. The last time I signed up for a half marathon I ended up not being able to do it because I was too sick. This time I waited until I have been basically back to 100% for over a year before I even attempted to start running again. Health wise I feel better than I even felt in 2012 when I was training for a full marathon. This is probably pretty close to as good as I felt in 2011 when I started all this craziness. Eating healthy and losing weight (as well as exercising) should only help me to continue to feel good.

2012 Columbus FULL Marathon

Like I said, the training started on Tuesday with a 3 mile run. The re-focus on my food has started today. As I type this I am about to finish off an entire gallon of water on the day! My calories were on point with several left at the end of the day (when counting my exercise calories as well). We all know how this goes though. When I finally get my butt in gear and find my motivation I am RED HOT! The trick is keeping that heat for more than just a few days, weeks, months. There is nothing wrong with indulging once in a while; but this up and down has GOT to stop. I mean, how many years have I been saying this?? But, let's see if 2017 ends up being my year......again. ;)

Welcome 2017!

2017. Wow. How did we get here?

I can't believe I started this blog almost 5 years ago! I obviously hoped that after 5 years I would be at my "goal" weight and having to change the title of the blog. But, alas....

It has been a crazy 5 years and I feel like things are finally settling down. I have found a medication that has now been working for well over a year (**fingers crossed**). I continue my relentless battle with weight loss, but have gotten back on the fitness bandwagon.

Longest run since 2012!

In 2016 I got to a weight I hadn't seen since I started this blog. Unfortunately I welcomed 2017 having gained some of that weight back. BUT, I weighed less on 1/1/17 than I did on 1/1/16 and I am still down just over 20lbs from my highest weight. I'm obviously not happy that I let myself gain back so much of the weight I lost this year; but there's nothing I can do about it now so it's best to just MOVE ON.

I have found some new motivation in getting back into running and it makes me very excited. I found a new running partner and she is helping to get me back to running in a regular basis. She wants to complete a full marathon at least once in her life and I would love to do another one. We are helping to keep each other accountable to meet our goals. I've already told her that I can't do another full at my current weight and I frankly need to lose at least 30 pounds before that full marathon can happen. But, I know I can do this.


I am so hard on myself all the time and am my own worst enemy. I think when I got to my lowest weight in 2016 and realized I hadn't been there since 2012 I was a little disgusted by that. It made me realize how overweight I have let myself stay for the last several years. But this negativity doesn't motivate me. It ends up doing the opposite and I think subconsciously I somehow tell myself I can't do it anyway so I just stop trying.

When I feel like what I'm doing isn't good enough I try to find ways to show myself that they actually ARE good enough. Pictures are a great way to do this. In June 2015 we went to Disney and I was pretty close to my absolute highest weight. I had JUST started on this new medication and hadn't been off of steroids for all that long. I still had all the steroid puffiness; not to mention the weight gain from the emotional aspect of being sick. I basically hate looking at the pics from that trip; which is a shame because we get so many cute family pictures during these trips.

Well, over the summer we ended up booking our next Disney trip for December 2016. I started nutrisystem in June and was hopeful it would help me be around 200 lbs for this next trip to Disney. Yea. That didn't happen, so automatically I want to be hard on myself and basically tell myself what a failure I am. But this is exactly what I am trying to STOP doing. When I looked at the pictures from this trip I was actually mostly happy with them. Sure, I don't weigh 200lbs and I'm still very overweight; but I can look at them and see the improvement over the last 1.5 years. I decided to make a side by side pic comparison. I purposely brought and wore the same tank top as last year. The difference is amazing to me.

I don't have to tell you which picture is from which trip. To me the shirt even looks different. I can see differences from my head to my toes. I can't believe this is "only" about a 20 pound difference. I don't know when we're going to Disney again; but I do hope that I can add another picture to this comparison and see even more differences. Sure it would be great to be at my "goal weight", but it would still be cool to just continue to see differences.

So here's to 2017 and another year of my continued journey to "just fit".