Marathon Training Week 5

Month 2- Monthly Update

November

 January

November

January

6.5 more lbs lost

3 inches lost this month

What can I say about this month?

Well in two days I will have finished my first month doing the concepts of Pure Weight Loss and also finishing my first month of marathon training!

I am more excited about finishing my first month of training. 

I am going to see how this month goes with the Pure Weight Loss thing and if I don't feel like its working for me any differently I might go back to just counting calories?

We shall see? I know for sure I want to try and keep my fruit and veggie intake HIGH and this is a diet that guarantees that. Also Daniel and I are going to try and get a juicer when we get our tax return money and really try to get our fruits and veggies in that way.

It's so easy to know how bad fast food is for you, but so easy to stop and get it. Especially when you are really hungry and don't have anything planned. That happened to us today, we almost got two different places on our way home but we didn't.

I am sure there will be times when we will, I think I just have to keep in mind that it is the "on occasion" and not 4 times a week like we had been.

BALANCE!

I have come across some good blogs recently and I am looking forward to reading and learning from them. One talks a lot about Intuitive Eating and the little I have read on it, it sounds really good. I will do a post about my thoughts on that soon.

2 months down...many more to go!

Weekly Weigh-In & Update: 1/26

This week I am down another half a pound, so 186.

That is fine, I will take it, it is still a step in the right direction, regardless of how small.

The time will pass anyways, so I may as well be taking steps toward my goal rather than being frustrated in any way and giving up.

I feel like I have this fighter spirit in me, that I want to fight this, I want to struggle with it and win, for ONCE!

Any other times I have lost weight, I don't think I ever went through the emotional part, I never made myself recognize and deal with. I just went through the motions, and it worked, but if the reason I overeat and choose the wrong foods are because of the emotional side then I have never really dealt with it in whole.

Take yesterday as an example. I was soooooo tired. This is a huge detriment to me and I know that from the past. It's like my body shuts down because my mind can't find the strength. These past couple days have been the first that I have really felt like, uhhhhhh this is so hard and getting old.

I considered writing here in order to get it out. It was a scheduled "CORE" workout day for my marathon training which I had planned to do Bob Harper's Warrior Yoga (PS all his dvds are $5 right now!). But my hip sockets or the top of my legs were very sore. I am thinking from doing two hard workouts in a row this weekend, like I probably shouldn't have done and I really didn't feel like it.

It was a sunny day and my son has been trapped at home all day for too many days so I decided we would go on a walk. It was a GORGEOUS day! Usually I run around the lake that is in our apartments and I don't get the same points of view as when you walk and take it all in. It was melting and I don't know if the geese were excited to finallyclean their feathers but not joke about 500 of them flew into the lake while we were walking around it. (I hoped they would not poop on us on the way!)

Plus I love when you can start feeling spring in the air, you know where its warm, sunny and beautiful. I know its still January and we have snow due us, even tomorrow..but it was so nice just the same. My son fell asleep on the walk and therefore would NOT take a nap when we got back, which was what I was planning on doing to feel better!

All  I could think about on our way back was how I was tired of salads, I wanted something fast easy and tasted really good. How my run the night before had sucked because it was cold, and I was sore, and I didn't particularly enjoy it. This was my first real attack of, THIS IS DUMB! I couldn't figure out why I was feeling this way but pinned it to the fact that I was really tired.

My hips were still so sore when we got back, so I started to look online about what I could do for it. Mostly I read that they are connected to the back which compensates for lack of a strong core, the very reason I was supposed to be doing my core work out. I REALLY want to be able to finish this marathon and I need a strong body to be able to do that. Plus I thought, maybe doing yoga would stretch out my legs in order to feel better.

At the end of his work out Bob says that sometimes when we are tired and stressed we go to get some chocolate for a little boost, but try a spine stretch..it gives you a burst of blood to the head. He went on about having energy to finish the day, blah blah blah. As I was laying there in my yoga sweat I thought, yeah right. But when I was finished I felt a MILLION times better. I did have more energy and my hips were warm and not sore. I was really amazed by this.

This week has also been hard as my sister-in-law who usually watches my son for me while I run is out of town so I have been trying to find alternatives. Like today I am considering taking my son in the jogger for my hard 3 miles, ahhh....we shall see?

Sunday is my monthly picuture update and measurements. 

I feel like this month went by pretty quick and although maybe I didn't lose as much this month as my first month, I can tell my inches are different. So I am looking forward to measuring and seeing.

See ya Sunday!

Awesome Peanut butter Fruit and Spinach Smoothie Recipe

Sorry I don't have any great photos for you of this, I will try to take some the next time I make it.

It's very simple and tastes SO good and filling!

In a blender:
1 C ice
1 C spinach
1 C Vanilla Soy Milk
1/2 C coffee
1 Tbs reduced fat chunky peanut butter
1 tbs honey
1 cup blueberries or whole banana

Blend

So good and NO, you can't taste the spinach at all!

Wholeness: Mind, Body & Spirit

In this journey that I am on, where I have asked the Lord to AWAKEN me, I have taken to trying to learn bits and pieces here and there. I have started watching the food documentaries on Netflix, the ones I used to avoid. {They just spoke to me like an exclusive club that I wasn't allowed to be in, a reminder of what a failure I was}. Not much has changed but I was/am in a better mental state to be able to watch and listen.

There are so many that speak about such similar things, and they are very interesting. 

{If you want to know a secret I am a bit of conspiracy theory lover so things being "uncovered" are always intriguing to me}

I never understood the point of eating "organic" other than what I saw as people who thought they were better than everyone else and RICH and looked down on the rest of us chemical eaters. I always thought, well we have lived this far on pesticides and the like, so I think we are doing JUST fine.

After watching these documentaries I realize that people 30 and under may have way different health problems then those before us because of the extreme way our food is being treated, thus the reason to consider organics.

More than that, it is the foods we are choosing to eat that are way more available to us then in previous generations and we eat them as much as we should be drinking water!

One of the first docs I watched was Food Matters, I believe that was the first. They talked about the effects of food on our body. I suddenly made the connection, it made so much sense, why had I never thought about this before. Perhaps it had crossed my mind, but I had never thought about it in this way.

God made our bodies, God made food for us. He made these foods so we could care for our bodies and for them to function well, have energy, even heal when we are sick. I had fallen on the ice a couple weeks ago and scraped up my knee pretty good! It was really bloody and nasty. I didn't feel the need to go to the doctor, because I have fallen many times in my life and I already know it will heal itself. This is what the body does.

With all the best intentions in the world that our countries have had to produce mass amounts of food to feed us, and the world, as cheap as possible, things have been compromised. Although I do not think that eating fast food and the like is wrong, its not!, I do think that eating it ALL the time...is. Why? Because too much of anything isn't good for us. I think we know this in some part of our logical head, but we still choose to eat out way more than is probably good for our bodies. I know I have.

This is the thing, I am going to be 31 is a couple of months. In my humble estimation this is still YOUNG! What do I have to worry about? And I am not that worried about it to be honest, because I don't like to fill my mind with worries about things I certainly can not ever control. But if I continue to eat the way I have been, not only will I be more obese, I will certainly start getting sick. I don't think God ever intended our basic diets to consist of greasy, fatty, foods, as good as they might taste.

Why is this so separated  in our minds. We know that if we can not stop drinking we are an "alcoholic", we know it will destroy our livers, we know we will probably die earlier than necessary (like my grandfather). We know if we start robbing banks, even as great as that might feel and as rich as it might make us, it is not our money and when we get caught, we will go to jail. There are consequences to our actions, we know this.

Yet with food, if someone questions our habits we take it very personally. I know I do! How dare the proverbial YOU tell me there is something wrong with me?? You don't know me, you don't know my life, you aren't better than me because you are skinny..etc etc etc. But perhaps that comes from a place of hurt, disappointment, and ultimately self hatred. We know in our deep core that this is not the best way for us to be eating, or living.

Many times being over weight accompanies depression. We feel bad about our bodies, so we eat, then we get sad because we are fat and the cycle repeats. We are stuck. But something they pointed out in the movie was that when we eat junk when already struggling with depression we actually feed the depression. The cycle is deadly in my opinion. How eye opening to think about the fact that stuffing my body with some vitamin-C or cashews actually might be as beneficial as an anti-depressant.

It just made so much sense to me.We can't think we can neglect one part of ourselves and think the rest of us won't be affected, if just doesn't work like that. Just like you can't work out just your abs, or your legs and hope only that part will lose weight. You can not spot reduce, because your body works as a whole component. We have to care for ourselves in every way for us to work properly. If only ever put junk in my body, why should I expect to feel awesome..it will eventually effect my mind, spirit, and I will feel sick, sluggish, and the spiral downwards becomes a slippery slope.

This is where the verse about everything is permissible, but everything is beneficial. Just like having a drink is not bad, but being an alcoholic is, the same applies for our eating habits. Not that this will be easy, or that I have this mastered or figured out. But I feel like the Lord is helping me see.

I can get mad that the Lord has limitations that He would like me to abide by, not cheating on my husband, loving him when I don't feel like it, having patience with my son when he is being out of control, controlling my temper with idiots and not punching them in the face, not robbing banks, not eating crap all the time. Some of these things seem ridiculous, of course we wouldn't do those things. But these are the things we could get mad at that we can't do, people get mad they can't do them all the time, or they get mad that there are consequences. How is it that how we eat is any different? We are the ones who choose our diets and yet we don't associate how we feel or our health with how we eat. We just want to run to the doctor for a pill to manage our aches, pains and diseases rather than take a look at what we are putting into our bodies on a daily basis.

{granted this is not everyone's situation, but its something I need to consider greatly in my habits}

Taking care of ourselves is not being selfish, its being responsible with what we have been given. It's not being prideful when so many people depend on us and need us in their lives. I know its easier, faster, and cheaper to eat fast food and junk...but if we always treated our bodies in other ways only as easy, fast and cheap..wouldn't we be likened to hookers? Since when is easy, fast and cheap the best?

These are all thoughts from a food addict, someone who loves grease, fat, fried! 

Not someone who has never struggled, because I ate 4 pieces of pizza this weekend. 

No, but if I want to be free...I have to learn. 

I have to understand the boundaries God has set up for me,

 even in eating, 

are for my good and protection, not to steal my fun or my right to choose!

Not that we NEVER get to enjoy them, 

but we wouldn't let our kids eat ice cream for every meal,

 why would we treat ourselves any different?

Because we are stressed, tired, etc??

Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. 

I can not spot treat my life. 

I can't want to feel better in my life and not change anything.

Marathon Training Week 4

{Don't mind my son having a fit towards the end!}

Weekly Weigh-In and Update 1/19

I was convinced this week I wouldn't see a loss. 

I was vacillating between 188-189 all week, which was kinda annoying considering how very hard I had been trying.

{These are the things that can really get you considering what the point of all the might be}

BUT this morning I was relieved and excited to see 186.5, finally! Come on body, get in the groove por favor!

So another lb and a half this week! Yeah!

Slowly but surely!!!

Here are some motivating images for you....