I’m a real runner now

I visited The Running Room today. It seemed like the Thing To Do now that I’ve decided to run a half marathon. I have in the past felt very conspicuous if I’ve gone into any sport-type shop, as if the people there are looking at me and thinking, “Her? She’s fat. She’s not an athlete. She doesn’t belong here.” But it occured to me that there may be things that could enhance my running. Hubby went with and encouraged me to buy a book. So I bought The Running Room’s Book on Running by John Stanton. I have no idea if his ideas are backed by any kind of scientific research, but I’ll start somewhere and see how it goes.

Did going to The Running Room make me a real runner? No. But today I decided to think of myself as one. I think if someone had asked me “Are you a runner?” yesterday, as people are apt to do, I would have said, “No, not really. I mean, I run. And I’m planning to run a half marathon. But I’m not a runner, not like some people.” I’ve decided to think of myself as an athlete. This is bigger than it might seem. I’ve thought of myself for about 30 years in a few ways, first of all being I’m chubby/fat/overweight. This changed when I crossed that magic BMI line where the experts declared that now I am in the normal weight range for my height. But it’s still taking hold. I was recently talking to someone who is new in my life who is struggling with weight, and I shared with her that I’ve lost 75 pounds so I get it. And she said, “You mean you haven’t always been thin?” and I said, “You think I’m thin?” It takes awhile for this kind of thing to take hold.

The second way I’ve thought of myself is being non-athletic and uncoordinated. I’m starting to realize that after exercising regularly for 3 years and now getting to the point where I can train for an event, I am probably an athlete. No, I am an athlete. I’m a real runner now.

So my helpful tool today is thinking of myself in new ways, and transforming my identity.

Today’s training was to run 6.5 km. The rain made the treadmill the most reasonable way to do that, but after a week of running outside it felt a bit stifling to be down in the basement again. Outside I was finding I needed to stop and stretch every 2.5 km. I decided  to push for 3.0 today. At 3.0 I decided to push for 30 minutes, and at 30 minutes I decided to push for 4.0 km. So I did that straight running, no stopping. The last 2.5 km needed a lot of walking though; I was beat. I’m thinking to do my long run tomorrow (about 10 km) I should do a run walk cycle of about a minute walking every 10 minutes.

Eating wise – yesterday I ended up going out to eat for both lunch and supper. At lunch I was at Boston Pizza and chose a dish from their healthier selections area, which had whole wheat linguini, chicken and vegetables. It was disappointing – the vegetables were supposed to be steamed but they tasted raw, and I think softer vegetables would have suited the dish better. Hubby and I went out in the evening as it was our 16th anniversary. We went to Joey, and I had another pasta dish, asian flavours this time,  with chicken, cashews and lots of vegetables. That was wonderful, but I realized I was getting full and didn’t finish it. This almost astounded me as I’ve been a clean-your-plate person so much of my life, eating well past the point of fullness. To be able to say I’ve had enough and leave it is a pretty big thing to me.

What I continue to find challenging is figuring out the solitary and community parts of my life. How this relates to weight is in terms of the impact on my stress and emotional health, and my stress and emotions impact my use of food as fuel or as drug. I was thinking of it in reading the first part of the running book where he talks about running in groups and it being a group activity. Exercise is something I’ve done in relative seclusion. I do a lot of things in relative seclusion. On the Myers-Briggs scales I’m an introvert, and I’m fine with that, but I know it can, at times, get to a point of being unhealthy for me. I feel the need for community, but I’m not always sure how to meet that need.

It works, it really works

Today I made sure to read my reminders, and I kept on track with eating. I even stood up and moved around when I was reading reports (Remember NEAT). So my helpful tool for the day is definitely reading the reminders. If I do it in the morning, it feels like it sets my mind in the right frame for the day.

Breakfast was a funky monkey smoothie – banana with chocolate milk and yogurt with vanilla (yes – the chocolate sauce fits in within the Mayo

plan) and an egg, cheese and tomato sandwich.

  

Then for lunch, some leftover turkey “lasagne” and a salad with orange, broccoli and feta.

I went for my run right after work, doing 7 km today. I stopped ever 2.5 km to stretch and it makes a difference. But my legs still hate me. I noticed later that while my toes aren’t hurting anymore, the second toe on my left foot looks reddish/purplish under the nail.

After that I had more freezer leftovers – the salmon and sweet potato patties with lots of carrots and green beans.

For the heck of it I ordered  the Atkins Starter Kit (which I refuse to link to) because they were giving away free protein bars. I had half of one for dessert. It was not too bad.

As for what I continue to find challenging – today I don’t feel challenged. Things went right.

Yet again…

It is embarrassing to keep writing the same thing over and over, but I lost it with the sweets again. Not just one sweet. Three different ones at different times of the day. So now I’m analyzing what is going wrong. What did I learn from the Beck book? To keep reminding myself of the self-talk I need to do before I need it, by reading my messages through the day. That’s what I’m not doing. I’m not reading my reminders when I’m sane so that they help me when I’m going insane. So what I still find challenging is to incorporate the daily reminders into my daily schedule.

I graphed out my weight loss since January. It looks like this:

Not hard to see that I’m merely staying in the range of the same couple of pounds for awhile now.

My basic meal eating, outside of the sweets, is still good. I had an egg, cheese and veggie scramble and oatmeal for breakfast. Making sure I have a full protein at breakfast is a strategy that seems to stave off hunger for most of the morning. Hey, let’s make that my helpful tool of the day. Lunch was some leftover pasta I made with chicken sausage in a tomato vegetable sauce and a salad. I’m loving Renee’s Ravin Raspberry dressing at 20 calories for a tablespoon. Supper was pizza as hubby had ordered in by the time I got home and I had the carbs left for the day.

Today was a rest day for my training. I’m following a plan I found on Runner’s World. I’m still sore, but not like I was on the weekend. Weirdest soreness – the second toe on both feet. Why toes? Why those ones in particular? Alas, an internet search turned up no explanation.

Gearing up for the marathon and handling Feeding Frenzies

7 km today. I’m such a wimp. I keep thinking to myself, “Oh, this is so hard, I don’t know if I can do it!” And then I really start thinking about it and I realize that my heart is not beating that hard, I’m only taking about one breath per 4 strides, this is not a biggie at all.

My legs hate me, though. If my legs could talk, they’d say, “What the #@$%?” (YES! My legs would SWEAR!) “Here we were going 3.5 k a day in a nice walk/jog pace and now all of a sudden – pow! 12k! 7k! All jogging! And Running! She’s trying to kill us!” So they have conspired to seize up and prevent me from doing anything else. But I have a plan. I will keep stretching them out until they give in and just do whatever I’m telling them to do. I WILL WIN!

My eating has been falling apart over the last few days. Stress + temptation + not doing my daily readings as taught to me by Judith Beck = lack of progress.

Today – better. I actually feel sick to my stomach after allowing too much sugar into my pie hole. I didn’t actually have many cravings today. After work was the best time to have a run and by the time I got around to eating supper I was in the mood for health and had a mexican inspired chicken salad.

One of my helpful tools has been my Feeding Frenzy Plan. Feeding Frenzies are when I get in a mood that I want to keep eating and eating and it was little to do with hunger and everything to do with boredom or stress. My feeding frenzy plan is actually quite effective, when I use it

Feeding Frenzy Response

1. Stop
2. Get away from food. Leave the kitchen, go to a different room
3. Breathe deep
4. Identify what you’re feeling (Naming an emotion is quite a powerful tool. Once I can say, “I’m bored,”  or “I’m sad” the don’t seem to have the same influence over me)
5. Pray
6. Decide what to do instead.

The Beck book taught me that cravings will pass, hunger will diminish. Give myself a bit of time and things get better.

Something I find challenging is facing candy dishes at work. At least  3 coworkers like to have full candy dishes at their desks to share with people who drop in. Luckily, there isn’t a whole lot of candy I like, but every once in a while it happens to be something chocolate that tastes good. This is getting easier to deal with by using self-talk.

How to have your kid’s birthday without overdoing it.

I have no idea.
😦

A new challenge

I finished reading the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. The book is about the concept of story – Miller was asked to make a movie out of a book he had written from experiences in his own life. He is a co-writer for the movie, and ends up editing his own life, thinking of it in light of what the story of his life is. He evaluates his present life as not that meaningful, and so starts to get up off the couch and try new experiences, such as a gruelling hike or a new romance. I’ll skip the new romance – my hubby might have problems with that, but the book has inspired me to do something different, something stretching, and something that involves my pursuit of health.

I’ve decided to enter the Manitoba Marathon.

I have never done ANYTHING like this before. In gym class, running was something I hated, as I huffed and puffed and fell behind everyone else and sometimes got migraines later. I bought a treadmill and started walking and  running not because of any affinity for it but because it required the least coordination, and I could watch TV on the treadmill and hopefully kill the boredom of it all. Over time, I have come to like how I feel after walking, and then jogging. But to race in an event? All new.

My options are the full Marathon (HA! No.) the half marathon (possible?) and the 10K run (I can go 7 km on the treadmill in an hour, so not much of a stretch). Today I decided to take my exercise outside and use the path near my place which is marked according to kilometres. I aimed for 10, put on a heart rate monitor and started jogging, stopping to walk only if my heart rate went above 162 (don’t ask where I came up with that number. I programmed it in to the heart-rate monitor when I first got it and can’t remember why). To my surprise, I was able to maintain a jog almost all the way, just doing walking about 4 times and at that, quite briefly. Somewhere along the way it was going so well I decided to just go the whole way and do 13 km and see if I could do a half marathon.

Any of you familiar with marathons are probably laughing at my right now, so let me tell you, within an hour of returning home I did realize my error. A half marathon is not 13 km, it is 13.1 miles. Still, I wondered if I could possibly do it – an increase of 7.1 km over what I did today, with 8 weeks to train. I looked up some training websites, and found a lot of people writing that the half-marathon is usually attempted after doing a few 5 or 10K runs. Which I’ve never done.

Still, I think I could do it. I don’t need to go for speed, the victory is in the completion. Even if I have to walk part way, I think I could complete a half marathon.

Middle child is interested in doing the 2.6 mile run after I told her about it; what a great thing for me to do with my daughter.

I have until May 8 to register for the Early Bird Amount, so I’ll begin training and see if it could be realistic to do the half.

My new helpful tool: Having a goal

My challenge is figuring out what to do about eating. If I’m training for a run, should I consider increasing my daily calories above the 1200-1400 level I’ve been trying to maintain? Do my muscles need more protein?

Smaller pieces and Mom-guilt

Yesterday had it’s ups and downs. I was feeling very stressed, but to be honest, the bad eating I did (too many peanut butter squares) started before I was feeling stressed.

I made peanut butter squares a couple of days ago. My husband said his dad really liked them and suggested I made them. His dad has terminal cancer, was given a year to live two years ago. He’s hanging in there but not doing great. And whatever might add a little joy that man’s life, as far as I’m concerned, he gets, as long as it’s legal and moral.

The fact that I love peanut butter squares makes it a bonus and a temptation.

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I am struggling with including some treat-foods without overdoing it. I figure to maintain my weight in the long run it’s a skill I’ll have to learn, because I’m not eliminating dessert for the rest of my life. So far, it is not going well. I brought some to staff meeting to share with my co-workers (because I love them, and because even if I can’t lose the last 5 pounds, if I get everyone around me to gain 5, I look comparatively better). I don’t actually know how many of them I ate, although because I cut them small, it wasn’t as bad as it otherwise might have been.

Then later on I encountered STRESS and so I had yet more of them.

Today – I had a lunch with my extended family. I made some good decisions: majoring on vegetables, cutting that piece of lasagne in half. But my sister commented to me that I seem to be off-plan today (she knows the tools I’m using) and she was absolutely right. I have no idea how what I ate today fits on the Mayo Clinic Plan.

I am also up by 3 pounds. I seem to retain water around the same time each month, so this is no surprise. I certainly didn’t eat 3 pounds worth of peanut butter squares. Still don’t like to see that.

I already aluded to my helpful tool for today when I mentioned cutting the PB squares small: smaller pieces and serving sizes. I first realized the power of this tool when I was a youth-care worker in a group home where many girls were overweight and obese. Grilled cheese sandwiches were a common meal, and I got good at estimating how many we would need – it was always more than 1 sandwich per person. We would always cut the sandwiches in half and pile them on a big plate. One day I did one thing different. I cut the sandwiches into quarters instead of halves. There were leftovers that day – the group had eaten far fewer sandwiches.

There is something psychologically satisfying about having more pieces of something, or taking a second portion. If I have left 2 carb servings for supper and have rice, for example, it somehow feels better if I have one serving on my plate first, and then go back and take a second rather than putting the 2 servings on my plate at the same time. Same with small desserts. 2 small cookies feels more satisfying than one big one, even if they are the same amount in the end.

What I still find challenging fits in with my series on families and eating: Mom-guilt.

I find that Moms seem way more concerned about their children’s eating and lifestyles than dads. I think this is imposed on us by society at large. Who is giving the kids Wonderbread with extra fibre? A mom. Who is in the 3 Participaction ads deriding parents who think that occasional activity is enough for their kids? 3 moms, not a dad to be seen.

Men, meanwhile, are encouraged to do manly things like eat cheese-burger pizza.

I  can’t find much research on fathers, children and food. Just that fact that you can’t find much in a simple Google search would seem to indicate it is off the radar for most people.

My guess, though, is that for many mothers, myself included, we absorb these messages unconsciously and end up feeling responsible and guilty. I know I deal with guilt about nutrition and lifestyle practices for my kids on an almost daily basis. How do I find the time to increase their activity? How do I get them to eat nutritious food without damaging our relationship? How often should I let them have treats?

I wonder then, how the mom-guilt robs me of peace and joy and actually sabotages my own efforts. Because stress only seems to interact negatively with being able to make positive decisions in my own life. I don’t feel I have good answers here, yet. Sometimes I vary widely between extremes of trying to control how my kids eat and live and totally giving up because nothing I do seems to make much of a difference.

Family Matters

Yesterday was a new high for exercise. I jogged on the treadmill for 18/30 minutes, up 2 minutes from my last attempt. I warmed up to 6.5 km/hr over 2 minutes, and then for the duration jogged 8 km/hr for 2 minutes, walked 6.5 km/hr for 1, etc. My neck started to spasm after that but some hot water in the shower and a bit of self-massage and I was good.

Yesterday I was a bit over in the carbs – on a home visit I was offered a roti, and haven’t having had one for years I decided to go for it. It only put me over by about 1/2 a carb, though, because I skipped carbs totally for supper and just went for a chicken taco salad minus the taco.

Today, I’m fairly on track. Focusing on a whole protein at breakfast seems to help me not feel so hungry over the morning. This morning it was an egg and scrambled veggies with toast (below, top) which I found much more satisfying in the long run than the previous day’s breakfast of brown rice, yogurt and apple sauce (below, bottom). Today’s lunch was a leftover turkey pasta dish, carrots and celery and applesauce. 

I had to drive out of town for a home visit and really felt like stopping for something first. Something delectable, like frozen yogurt or a pastry. This was very shortly after lunch, btw. When I really thought it through, I realized I wasn’t hungry. I was bored, a little despondent. I told myself I could wait until supper and then did. Hubby made a great chicken and vegetable curry over rice, so the wait was totally worth it.

I know I’ve written other posts about going my own way as opposed to what the rest of my family is eating. Sometimes I need to do this, and sometimes I don’t. I found myself thinking about families and food today, and I think I may do a few posts on the subject. It’s a touchy one for me. In part, I’m choosing a healthy lifestyle for my kids. I didn’t have anyone to model healthy eating for me, nor did anyone try to structure my eating in a healthy way. I would come home from school, pretty much depressed most of the time, and eat. I remember boxes of Old Dutch Chips gone quickly. I remember making entire meals of pizza buns and soups, before comsuming another supper meal. I remember being able to scarf down half a pizza by myself. Easily. Food was comfort and entertainment.

I want better for my kids. On the plus side, they ended up with parents probably a tad more emotionally healthy and aware than I had. On the negative, they are bombarded all the more with non-food masquerading as food and coming at them with marketing techniques perfected by millions of research dollars put forth by Big Food. We are in a culture saturated with unhealthy, and our soaring obesity rates show this. I don’t want my kids in those statistics.

So I eat healthy for me, and I try to also encourage (nag? enforce?) it for them, too. Generally, this is unappreciated. “Mom is trying to make us eat ‘healthy’ again,” is often said in the tone that would normally be used if someone was trying to get you to buy Amway. Once in awhile, I’ll get a breakthrough, like my middle one telling me the other day, “Mommy, you were right, the mini-Blizzard was  the right size for me,” or when they admit that too much candy feels yucky (Yes, I do allow my kids treats). At their deeper moments, they can say that they do want what is healthy, but peer and popular pressures are a lot for developing minds. It feel like it’s up to me to stand in the gap and say to McDonald’s “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” (That was a Lord of the Rings reference, btw)

So in general, I still find it challenging to guide my children’s eating. I think eating healthier as a family helps me, too.

However, I’ve come up with helpful tools that seem to move us in the right direction:

1. Put out the healthiest food when they are the hungriest. Right after school is a great time for fruit and veggie plates.

2. Don’t worry about variety. We all descend from people groups with very limited diets – whatever was local. I believe it was through Michael Pollan’s writing that I became aware that people can live successfully on all kinds of diets, as long as it’s not the modern processed North American diet. That’s one’s deadly. Youngest child will pretty much eat 2 vegetables: raw carrots and cooked peas. Middle child loves caesar salad. Both eldest and middle like cucumbers and carrots with dip. So those few things get a lot of play in our meals and snacks. It does not bother me at all to serve carrots and cucumbers every day for a week.

3. Puree away. There is a soup I make with sweet potato, a few other vegetables and peanut butter that I know my kids would never touch with chunks. I puree it with a hand blender, call it peanut butter soup and the middle and youngest love it. They also go for smoothies (fruit, yogurt and often carrot and zucchini, too) almost every day (see #2), and popsicles made only of pureed fruit are very popular.

4. Some things are easy. Whole wheat pasta is a simple switch to make. So is dropping to the next lowest milk fat amount (3% to 2%, 1% to skim). I used to only drink 2% and slowly moved down. I learned to like skim. So did hubby, who once swore it tasted like water.

5. Recipes with all purpose flour can be substituted out 1/4 whole wheat with little change to the end result.

A half day off, getting up early and making substitutions.

This day did not go as I had planned. Middle child said soon after waking up that she didn’t feel well. It became apparent, after reviewing her symptoms, that she would require a trip to the doctor. Hubby is already at work by the time the kids get up, so that means me calling into work to say I won’t be there.

Is this a big deal as far as my work goes? Not at all. I’m in a very supportive work environment, almost all of us are moms with kids, and it’s taken for granted that these things happen. But there was a time, not too long ago, where I would stress every hour I had to take time off. I’d worry about how it was perceived, and I’d worry that if I took time off today, there might be a time, somewhere, down the road, where I’d need that time even more and then I wouldn’t have it and I’d regret taking the time today. I’m always thinking down the road. Rarely thinking about now.

This caused me stress.

And stress often leads to eating.

So cognitive therapy, the practice of thinking about what I’m thinking about and subjecting thoughts to logic, came in very handy today (it was a helpful tool).

Can I take time off? Yep – no pressing conferences or reviews coming up. I’ll have time the rest of the week to address assignments. One report I need to get done today can get done in the afternoon. All’s good.

Might I need this time in the future? Who knows? But my daughter needs me now, so I might as well just make the best of the morning. And I did. I brought my knitting, and a positive attitude, and we went and got the meds she needed and had lunch together. She went back to school, I got to work in time to finish the one task that had to be done today, and all is well.

My eating was ok. The last of the scotch oatmeal at breakfast, along with a mango-strawberry smoothie. Lunch was minestrone and a crouton-less spinach caesar. Supper was leftover baked pasta vegetable and turkey with another salad. I came in over by half a serving of fat. Eldest had her final choir concert tonight and hubby suggested we go out to DQ later. While I love Pecan Mudslides, they are huge, so I asked if I could get a small sundae with the same toppings. And I could. It pays to ask at restaurants if you can change something to a smaller or healthier version. The worst you can hear is “No” and then you know not to go back there. I would say 9 times out of 10 there are options that they don’t put on the menu.

Curious what others find for going out to eat. Are there restaurants you especially appreciate for healthy options?

Exercise also did not go as planned. I wanted to do a DVD yoga-pilates workout and then 15 minutes on the treadmill. However, what I still find challenging is getting out of bed at 6 a.m. and I slept in so that by the time I finished the DVD, I needed to start getting the kids up and get ready for my day.

Tonight, I plan to be in bed earlier. So I will stop writing, now.

The challenge of the hips

Meals today were fairly straightforward: more of the oatmeal from two days ago, with fruit and yogurt; lunch was freezer leftovers of a tofu vegetable noodle dish, and supper was a basic roast chicken dinner, but no stuffing. I had my treat of the day, more broken glass cake, after lunch, and thought I’d leave it. Then eldest got a piece for herself in the evening and of course left it out on the island. So what do I find myself doing? having a 2nd helping, of course. I reflected on my blogging about it being no big deal to say no to bacon, always. Yet if I say yes to something, I want to keep saying yes. This is something I’ll need to tackle to enable me to maintain in the long-term.

I went shopping for hopefully my last pairs of in-between pants. Who knows, maybe these will still fit when I’m at my goal weight, because I bought them a bit snug. I was very surprised to realize all the 9/10s were too big in the waist and went down to 7/8. Generally, they are way too tight in the hips, but I found a couple of pairs that work, assuming they will stretch out a bit with wear. Can’t find a gray pair to save my life, though 😡

Can I rant about clothing manufacturers for awhile? Of course I can, this is MY blog. As I go into stores and clerks ask me, “How is it going?” when I’m trying on clothes, and I say “These pants are too big in the waist” or “These pants are too tight in the hips” or “These pants are too big in the waist and too tight in the hips” clerks tell me that the 4 inch gap problem in the small of the back is a very common one for customers. So why aren’t the bloody clothing manufacturers actually seeing how different women are built, and designing clothes that fit different women? A basic pear-line and apple-line would be a great place to start. Lane Bryant used real computer imaging of real customer’s bodies to design their different lines of jeans, including a curvy fit that was perfect – when I was bigger. The lack of creative thinking by most manufacturers astounds me. They want to make money. Here’s the answer – make clothes that actually fit us!

Helpful tool – weighing myself every day. Research shows that this is something that helps most people to lose weight. I find that it’s just a daily task that reminds me, I’m on a journey, each day, every day, pay attention.

What remains challenging – moderation for treats.

Questions for readers

Anyone know of good fitting pants and jeans for curvy figures?

Anyone have any really good tofu recipes?