I'm really starting to hate this challenge. I'm dying to eat something sweet--and I mean SWEET like sugar, not sweet like a medjool date or honey. The first six days or so weren't bad at all, but the last few days have been awful.
I'm extremely tired and lacking energy, my skin feels greasy and is breaking out like a teenager, and I've turned into a superbitch. If anything, I was hoping that eating "real" food would make me feel better, not worse. When I was trying to think of something to make for dinner, I kind of flipped out and yelled to Jerry that I was quitting the stupid challenge--but I didn't, of course. I'm going to stick to it for the entire month.
But just for the record, I'm NOT happy about it.
There, tantrum over. I never did think of something decent for dinner, so I had shredded wheat with frozen blueberries. I don't like shredded wheat (unless it's frosted), so I just ate the blueberries and milk. And too many pistachios.
So my food log looks strange, but something like this:
Breakfast--usual oats cooked in milk with dates, walnuts, and maple syrup
Lunch--usual salad with chicken, almonds, feta cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette; piece of homemade cinnamon raisin bread
Dinner--couple bites of shredded wheat, blueberries, milk, pistachios, 3 medjool dates
Snacks--pistachios, and probably something else tonight (not sure what yet)
I'm going to write out a food plan for tomorrow so I don't feel like I'm always scrambling for something to eat when I get hungry.
On a positive note, I finally get to spill the beans on a project I've been working on for a couple of months. Shortly after my surgery, a man named Rik e-mailed me. He's a reader of my blog that lost 90 pounds and had the same surgery as me. He also became a runner, and he's done a few Ragnar Relays.
I've been wanting to put together a Ragnar team ever since I ran the one in 2010, but I'd be lost as far as being a team captain (it's a lot of work!). Rik said he'd captained a team before, so he would be willing to do the busy work if I could help come up with a team. We thought it would be really fun to put together a Ragnar team of people like us--that had lost a significant amount of weight and become runners along the way. I sent out invites to people that immediately came to mind (people whose blogs you may even read), and after some planning, we are "officially" registered as of today...
We are going to be running the Ragnar Relay Key West in January 2013!!
I am so psyched about this! I'm really excited to meet everyone. We are all strangers to each other from around the country, so this should be really interesting.
We're still waiting for some of our team members to confirm, but so far, here is our list of confirmed runners:
Moi, of course ;)
Rik
Mary from a small loss
Jen from From FAT to FINISH LINE
Andrea (a reader of mine who I "met" via e-mail... she was on Oprah!!)
Allison (an online friend of Rik's)
The course starts in Miami and finishes in Key West. My brother Brian just ran this one last month and said it was awesome. So this is how I'm going to be kicking off 2013!
Okay, I just took a break from writing this to go for a run, and I feel so much better now. I had a four miler scheduled, but I decided to do intervals. I decided to run (and try to PR) a 5k next month, and I want to get faster before then. (Anyone else doing the Corktown 5k?) So I'll be doing more speed work. Today I did four miles broken up into: warm-up, then 1/2 mile fast, 1/4 mile slow (5 times).
The half-mile intervals were HARD. I wanted to quit so many times and just run slowly, but if I'm going to PR a 5k, I'll have to run about an 8:41/mi (which will give me a sub-27:00 time). But I'm really hoping to get a sub-26:00 time, which would mean a 8:21/mi pace. So I have some serious work to do in the next four weeks!
My pace for my 1/2 mile splits was: 8:22, 8:44, 8:24, 8:53, 8:45. That's an average of 8:38/mi. pace. It felt so hard that I was thinking, "I really don't need to PR. What does it really matter? This isn't even fun." But it DOES matter, because I wrote it on my 30-in-30 list, and I really want to do it.
Speaking of the list, I got to cross one off today... and it was totally unintentional. I did a nighttime run! I was just about to head out the door at 6:00, when I thought I'd better grab my reflective vest from the Ragnar just in case it got a little dark. Well, it actually got really dark pretty quickly, and I was glad that I grabbed the vest.
I'm extremely tired and lacking energy, my skin feels greasy and is breaking out like a teenager, and I've turned into a superbitch. If anything, I was hoping that eating "real" food would make me feel better, not worse. When I was trying to think of something to make for dinner, I kind of flipped out and yelled to Jerry that I was quitting the stupid challenge--but I didn't, of course. I'm going to stick to it for the entire month.
But just for the record, I'm NOT happy about it.
There, tantrum over. I never did think of something decent for dinner, so I had shredded wheat with frozen blueberries. I don't like shredded wheat (unless it's frosted), so I just ate the blueberries and milk. And too many pistachios.
So my food log looks strange, but something like this:
Breakfast--usual oats cooked in milk with dates, walnuts, and maple syrup
Lunch--usual salad with chicken, almonds, feta cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette; piece of homemade cinnamon raisin bread
Dinner--couple bites of shredded wheat, blueberries, milk, pistachios, 3 medjool dates
Snacks--pistachios, and probably something else tonight (not sure what yet)
I'm going to write out a food plan for tomorrow so I don't feel like I'm always scrambling for something to eat when I get hungry.
On a positive note, I finally get to spill the beans on a project I've been working on for a couple of months. Shortly after my surgery, a man named Rik e-mailed me. He's a reader of my blog that lost 90 pounds and had the same surgery as me. He also became a runner, and he's done a few Ragnar Relays.
I've been wanting to put together a Ragnar team ever since I ran the one in 2010, but I'd be lost as far as being a team captain (it's a lot of work!). Rik said he'd captained a team before, so he would be willing to do the busy work if I could help come up with a team. We thought it would be really fun to put together a Ragnar team of people like us--that had lost a significant amount of weight and become runners along the way. I sent out invites to people that immediately came to mind (people whose blogs you may even read), and after some planning, we are "officially" registered as of today...
We are going to be running the Ragnar Relay Key West in January 2013!!
I am so psyched about this! I'm really excited to meet everyone. We are all strangers to each other from around the country, so this should be really interesting.
We're still waiting for some of our team members to confirm, but so far, here is our list of confirmed runners:
Moi, of course ;)
Rik
Mary from a small loss
Jen from From FAT to FINISH LINE
Andrea (a reader of mine who I "met" via e-mail... she was on Oprah!!)
Allison (an online friend of Rik's)
The course starts in Miami and finishes in Key West. My brother Brian just ran this one last month and said it was awesome. So this is how I'm going to be kicking off 2013!
Okay, I just took a break from writing this to go for a run, and I feel so much better now. I had a four miler scheduled, but I decided to do intervals. I decided to run (and try to PR) a 5k next month, and I want to get faster before then. (Anyone else doing the Corktown 5k?) So I'll be doing more speed work. Today I did four miles broken up into: warm-up, then 1/2 mile fast, 1/4 mile slow (5 times).
The half-mile intervals were HARD. I wanted to quit so many times and just run slowly, but if I'm going to PR a 5k, I'll have to run about an 8:41/mi (which will give me a sub-27:00 time). But I'm really hoping to get a sub-26:00 time, which would mean a 8:21/mi pace. So I have some serious work to do in the next four weeks!
My pace for my 1/2 mile splits was: 8:22, 8:44, 8:24, 8:53, 8:45. That's an average of 8:38/mi. pace. It felt so hard that I was thinking, "I really don't need to PR. What does it really matter? This isn't even fun." But it DOES matter, because I wrote it on my 30-in-30 list, and I really want to do it.
Speaking of the list, I got to cross one off today... and it was totally unintentional. I did a nighttime run! I was just about to head out the door at 6:00, when I thought I'd better grab my reflective vest from the Ragnar just in case it got a little dark. Well, it actually got really dark pretty quickly, and I was glad that I grabbed the vest.
