C25k Fail

I do my 3 times a week runs on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday these days work best for my schedule. I usually wait until my 14 month old daughter goes to bed to start the run on the treadmill but yesterday I decided to go ahead and get it over with while my 12 year old stepdaughter played with her. They were in the "bonus" room and I was in the living room, so like 20 feet away with no walls separating. Anyway, I started out as usual - at about minute 5 I have to push myself to go the next 20 minutes...it is a total mental thing because I know I am physically capable of doing it. Anyway just before I hit 18 minutes of straight running, and I am thinking to myself I will be finished soon and I am starting to feel proud for not giving up, I hear my daughter start screaming - not regular crying- but loud, I got hurt, crying. So I stopped and went over to see what happened. My stepdaughter said she fell of the couch (lesson learned that I always have to watch her when she plays with her sister). Once I got there and was holding her she calmed down pretty quick so I guess it wasn't to serious but then I was faced with the choice. Do I go back and finish the 7 minutes I have left even though I just took a break? Do I wait until my daughter goes to sleep so I can do the whole 25 minutes over??? Or do I try again the next day (today) to do day 2 of this week? I chose to try and do it again today. I don't think I am at the level yet where I can do for 18 minutes and then an hour later do 25 minutes (maybe I can but I was too scared to try). So maybe I will actually only count this as a C25k fail if I don't finish today. I will let you know if this is a true fail or not. I've got to keep myself accountable :)

***I had a Hersheys Miniature at the lunch meeting we had at work today, I absolutely need to make sure that I do the 25 minute run today. Not to make sure I burn the calories (because its not that many and I am not that obsessive) but I need to reassure myself that I am staying on track and not slipping into junk food land.

I am a creature of Habit

I have very little variety in my diet. I find something I like and I stick with it. The problem is that I usually at some point end of loathing what I have been eating for months (except for pizza, I am pretty sure I could eat that everyday for the rest of my life and never be sick of it). This time though so far what I have been eating has been working for me.

This is an example from sparkpeople on what I eat on a typical day (completly lacking in veggies and although I entered my snack in once, it was actually two seperate snacks - morning and afternoon). This is from last week because I am getting bad at entering what I eat everyday, mostly because it is the same as the day before. Sometimes I switch it up and have tuna instead of turkey for lunch or instead of toast with almond butter I scramble an egg for breakfast. Basically I eat the same things all the time. The problem with this is, that if I expect this to be a lifestyle change and not just a diet I need to figure out other stuff to eat because I am sure at some point I am no longer going to want to eat these foods.
So I am going to challange myself to find and make one new recipe a week for the next two months to see if I am able to incorporate it into my new eating habits. I will post pictures of what I have made and rate it how taste, healthiness (is that a word?) and ease of preperation - this is a big one for me because I really don't like to spend a ton of time making food beacuse after working all day I like to get as much time with my daughter as possible. Anyway I will start next week with the first week of May and hopefully this will help me transistion from eating foods like I am on a diet to a lifestyle change. Wish me Luck!

Confession

I just got the biggest craving for a hot dog, maybe even the nasty kind with the cheese in the middle, is that weird? Anyway...

I am not completing the C25K the way I am supposed to be. I figured this out at about the end of week 4. I was only going along with the times that it had listed and never really paid attention to the distances. Well, I am behind. It looks like I am supposed to be running a 10min mile and I am at a 12 1/2 minute mile. So I am starting to feel less accomplished in what I am doing and it bugs me. I should still be estactic that I can run for 25min with no walking. For me, that is Amazing...seriously I don't think even as a kid I could run 25 min straight. I was one of those kids that hated running the mile in PE and would walk as much as I possibly could and still finish under 12min. Now, I am running 2 miles. But I still have this little self sabotaging voice telling me that I am not good enough. Telling me that I have failed because I am not running 2.5 miles in 25 minutes like the program tells me I should. I need to let this go. I am a 210 pound person running for 25 minutes, I need to be happy. So, I will be repeating week 7 (Run 25min all 3 days) until I am able to run a 10 minute mile. This could take me a while but I am hoping to only have to repeat for 3 weeks but we shall see.

A case of the Mondays...

I want chocolate, more specifically, chocolate cake - the ooey gooey kind. I always get to a point when I am losing weight where I am doing really well and start to lose motivation and I'm not sure why. Am I secretly trying to sabotage myself? Do I not really want to lose weight? Every part of me, except my mind, really wants to lose the weight. I am finding it hard to stay the course.

I had a pretty good weekend but I am surrounded by people (read:my husband) who don't eat healthy food and don't watch their weight. My husband and I went to Macaroni grill on Saturday to take my parents out for dinner for their birthdays (so it was there choice). It was Hard. I have been craving pasta, ANY pasta, the last couple of weeks and all I wanted to do was forget all about losing weight and just order the Penne Rustica (see? I even remember the name of the pasta dish I thought about ordering) I ended up ordering a skewer of beef with a side of asparagus but the thing that bothers me is how Badly I wanted to just order the pasta. I haven't been this close to giving up in a long time and it scares me. I am losing hope, I feel like I am just not going to make it. I am not as strong everyone else...I need to get out of this funk. Anyone else have trouble with motivation out of nowhere? If so, how did you get through it? I'm struggling...

What started it all

I have been thinking for a while about what the turning point was for me in starting a healthier life style. I actually didn't have any sort of click in my brain that made me want to lose weight. I have always wanted to lose weight but a lot of times was not motivated to bother. The only diet that I ever saw success with in the past was extreme low carb and I had no desire to go back to that and didn't feel like anything else would work so why bother (Stupid, huh?) So, the turning point for me was after I had my daughter. Most people try to get healthy and lose weight before they get pregnant and I did lose weight, but not in a healthy way so needless to say when I was pregnant I gained ALOT of weight (about 60-65lbs) which on top of already weighing 211 made me huge but I Loved the idea of eating for two and eating whatever I wanted. I used the pregnancy as an excuse to eat everything I loved. Anyways...I am rambling. So I had my daughter at the beginning of 2009 and wanted to make sure I was around for her for the next 50 years, but I didn't take any action towards that - Just thought to myself that I needed to change my lifestyle if I wanted to be around for her.

So what changed to make me want to lose weight/be healthy? Without going into a lot of details lets just say that I had a lot of hormonal issues in that first year after my daughter was born. I went to see an alternative medicine doctor in addition to my ObGYN and she gave me vitamins and a diet to follow and the OBgyn gave me prescription. I started both of these the same week and within a couple of weeks I was feeling immensely better. It might have just been the prescription from my doctor and it might have been getting all the junk out of my system, but the point is if only one thing made the change or if it was the combo of both I wasn't sure what was working. So I kept going. It helped me stick with it through all the times when I wanted to quit. I would think of my daughter and how much she needs me around I would not give up. Now, almost 4 months into it I feel 50 times better than ever and feel good about myself. A lot of people say that in order to be successful at losing weight you need to do it for yourself, but there is someone who means more to me than any instant gratification food can give me and that is my daughter, I am doing this for her (and me as well, but she is the motivation). I want to be around for her first day of kindergarten, soccer games, first date, graduation, etc. and I don't want to just be around I want to be active and be able to keep up with her. I feel I will succeed this time and I owe it all to my daughter, I may have given her life, but she gave me my life Back.

Feeling Good

I did it, I DID it, I DID IT!!!! Twenty straight minutes of running (well, jogging probably). I finished week 5 day 3 of the couch to 5 k program and I have never felt better about myself.This blog is really becoming more of a C25K blog then a weight loss blog, I haven't really updated on my weight loss journey and how its going. I have been at this since January 5, so 3 and half months and I am doing better than I expected. I have lost 37 lbs total, which is amazing to me. I have been sucessful at losing weight in the past but it was on a "modified fast" diet when I was eating 9ounces of protein and 11 ounces of vegatbles a day. Thats it. No Dairy, no sugar, NO carbs. I would lost up to 5 lbs a week. This was a dieters dream diet in the sense that I would lose a ton of weight fast. But eneviatably I would miss all the food that I could not eat and when I was done I would Binge on all the food that I was not able to have. I would gain the weight I had loss and have to start the diet all over again. I cannot imagine how this damaged my body - the YoYo dieting all the time. It was how I lived my life. This time things are differnt. I am following a healthy food plan (whole grains, still no dairy) and I am losing weight at a nice pace. This way has made me feel way more accomplished about what I can do. This is something I can see myself following for the rest of my life. I feel powerful making healthier choices. I feel awesome :-)

I smell....

Which means I SWEATED (I'm the one of the right) my way through completing Week 5 DAY 2!!!! I cannot even express how excited I am that I finished this. The WHOLE time I spent reasoning with myself to just make it through the next minute of each 8 minute interval of running, telling myself not to give up, take it one minute at a time. I am not sure how I am going to complete day 3 (20min straight running) but I am not going to let that ruin how excited I feel to have made it this far. YAY ME!!!

Weight Loss to Report

I lost two pounds this week!! I am very exctied because last week I lost 3 pounds so that usually means that I will not lose that much, if any, weight the following week. I have to share this here because no one in my life really gets how exciting this is to me to be losing weight a healthy way. Everyone in my life (well, almost everyone) does not have a weight problem, do not struggle in any significant way to lose weight. So like when I told my husband (who has not made any comments on noticing that I have lost weight...) that I had lost 35 lbs so far his was response was basically like "ok, thats about right isn't it?" Well, HELLO, 35lbs is a lot of effort and even if he hasn't noticed shouldn't his response be something like "Yeah, I can tell you have lost some weight". I've lost almost 15% of my body weight, to me thats a big deal. I sometimes think that my husband wants me to lose weight for him (he would like me skinner...even thought he married/dated/etc me at this weight) he also does not want me to lose weight. My marriage and husband issues really needs to be a whole seperate post. I just wanted to celebrate, somewhere, that I am losing weight!!

C25k week 5 freaks me out

I am in week 5 of the C25k, tomorrow I have to complete day 2 and I am SCARED. How can I possible run 8 minutes staight? 8 MINUTES??? And thats not the only thing that is freaking me out, somehow I have to run 20 minutes on day 3. I am not sure that I can do this snf if I can't complete it I am worried it will ruin any progress I have made with exercise. I will feel like a complete failure. I think I may have set up myself up to fail, I am picked a program that I probably won't finish. I hope I can do it but I don't have much faith in myself. I HAVE to finish. I have to dig down deep and find the strenght to do this. I will not quit. Wish me Luck.

Week 4 Day 1

I finished week 4 day 1 of the C25K yesterday and I was soo excited that I made it through the 5 minute runs. When I first started, running a minute kicked my butt and I thought I would die. Even last week when I looked ahead to this weeks running plan I thought there was no way I would be able to do 5 minutes at a time and I did! I was so excited I wanted to tell everyone but I can't. Why? Because I am not telling most people in my life that I am dieting/exercising...it might sound weird but I don't want people to have expectations of how much weight I lost or how much exercising I am doing. I want to just surprise people once I run I 5k or if they haven't seen me in a couple of months they will be surprised to see how much weight I have lost. If I am constantly updating my facebook status with diet/exercise thoughts then there is a certain expectation to be making a ton of progress (at least in my mind there is). So, I will share with my weight loss blog (that I also haven't shared with anyone) how excited I am that I completed week4 day1 - Yay Me!!