I'm still here. I've been doing much more blogging at my other blog, www.reticenceunveiled.com, because that is where my head has been. If you haven't checked it out yet, I'd love you to give it a read. I definitely pour a lot more of my heart out related to my faith there than I typically do here...so give it a shot if you have the time.
If you do read that, you know that I recently finished my first marathon, which is insane. Despite training for a marathon, I have found myself about 20 pounds heavier than my lowest weight so far on this journey.
I tell myself that some of it is muscle. Some of it is needing to have more fuel to power my body through long runs. Some of it is stress. All of those things have contributed to the 20 pounds gained, but, if I'm honest with myself, it is 20 pounds of weight gained because I stopped caring enough about the food I was putting into my body.
So here we are. It is time to refocus, get my head back in the game so to speak and get the rest of this stinking weight off.
In order to stay focused on eating well, I set a restriction for myself, which would probably seem a bit silly to anyone else, but it is something I think I needed to do.
I made a rule that I'm not allowed to train for or enter any races above a 10K unless the first number on the scale is a 1. This might seem counter intuitive, but it isn't. I can assure you.
After I ran my first half marathon last year, I fell in love with training for longer races. Yes, I hate it when I'm in the thick of it, but when I complete the race and look back, I'm always incredibly proud of the work I have put into it. Somewhere along the way, I started loving running more than losing weight and eating healthy, and I can't be the runner or the person I want to be unless I start eating better and lose the rest of this weight. Training for longer races has given me an excuse to treat myself to unhealthy foods far too frequently. I am REALLY good at finding an excuse to eat more, and I need to give that up.
The minute I decided this, all I wanted to do was sign up for the Monster Dash Half Marathon and the Polar Dash 15 Mile Race. I want to be running longer distances badly, so when I finally reach the point where I feel like I'm under control, it is going to be a great reward to actually sign up and train for a longer race. As of today, 48 pounds stand between me and a half marathon training plan. I'm going to try really hard to have this completely by Mid-April so I can be ready to ramp up my training in the spring.
I don't regret focusing on running because completing a marathon with Team World Vision was probably one of the most amazing experiences of my life, but I know that I don't want it to be my only marathon, and the only way my feet are going to make it through another one is if they are carrying significantly less weight.
For the first time in a long time, I feel like my husband and I are in the same place with our health related goals, so I'm hoping we'll be able to work together and both make some progress. We set a goal of running the Twin Cities 10 Mile race together next October.
So that is that. I'm hoping to have at least weekly updates, maybe more, as I get back to business and finish what I started. I'm hoping to maybe share some recipes that I'm enjoying and some things that have been helpful and not so helpful as I continue on.
Thanks for reading after not having anything to read for quite a while. I hope you'll stick around, I'm looking forward to the journey!
Ok, that is a lie, I really am not looking forward to denying myself the food I love to eat, but I've got to start somewhere, right? I'm looking forward to being honest about it at least.
