This is a Marathon not a Sprint. . .

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

If it were all based on EFFORT. . .

After a 2 hour marathon cardio session at the gym last night, I was wiped out! My original plans were to do a quick 15 min. warm up; 45-60 min. worth of upper body weight work, 30 minutes of C25K running (week4 day1) running, and a nice long interval bike ride to get the miles up for my previously mentioned Ironman Triathalon Challenge………………so much for plans.

Carpooled to campus again with DH. Off to class he goes, off to the gym I go. We're there by 6 (his class is 7pm, remember?) and he's not scheduled to get out til 9:40pm. Let's face it though, even the professors try to get those late classes out as early as possible. So he's actually usually done by 9pm. So I know I got at least 3 hours time.

Got to thinking…..DH says he's gonna commit to being more active and going to the gym with me. We'll PLAN on that being the case. In order for us both to be on upper body workout today, I couldn't do it last night. And if I gave him an excuse to NOT workout, doing separate workouts would be right at the top of his excuses. So I decided to nix the weights in favor of adding in more cardio………………..I guess I just didn't figure in the time factor though….

So I started with a nice 30 minutes 10K on the CrossTrainer. Actually finished warm-up, 10k, and cool down in 28 minutes but tacked on an additional 2 min. to round it out. Hmmmm….debated here. Should I run or should I bike or maybe row or stairstepper. Decided (why?) on the bike for the hour. And I pushed it. It was a great ride…..had it on random intervals, level 10. At the end of the hour, I thought, maybe that wasn't such a good idea….I got a 30 min. walk/run session coming up………. so I hopped off the bike, refilled the old water bottle…and on to the treadmill. Day1 Week4 C25K—DONE! I won't lie to you, it was HARD. The 3 minute runs were fine. But the two 5 minute runs were KILLER! Sunday evening I had worked hard on the lower body. Only to be followed by marathon cardio last night AND THEN with the run on the end…..AM I CRAZY?---Don't answer that.

As I finished wiping off the treadmill and stepped down……..I realized…………I'm tired! I looked left ---there were plenty of empty stair machines and elliptical and crosstrainers. I looked right----empty bikes and rowers. Hmmm…decisions. So you know what I did? I headed to the water fountain, again refilled the bottle, and got my stuff out the locker and headed up to the student commons (.25 miles away). I was done. Should have I pushed it more? Should I have eeked out another 20 or 30 minutes? Why do I feel like I "cheated" on my time when I totally rocked it for 2 HOURS?????

So walk up to the commons, find a seat, open up my water and ½ of a protein bar…..by the way………Cookie Dough Protein Bars ---can't remember who makes them but it's a red package…..TOTALLY ROCK! I mean, they actually (well, ¾ of the way) taste like the sweet stuff! So much so, I only could eat ½. I only had to wait about 30 minutes for DH and we walked back to the car and headed home together.

Told him on the way home, for some reason, I was craving a piece of veggie pizza BADLY! ---could have been something to do with the fact that there is a pizza place in the student commons???!!!--- But also that I felt like if I ate that pizza I'd be again "cheating". Explained to him that in experimenting with managing my caloric intake to my BMR I should be eating around 1500 calories in order to just live….and that I had plenty for one piece of veggie pizza from our grocery store chain (they list their nutritional info and they use 2% cheese)—is how I know I could have it. But no matter how much I KNEW I could have it, I just couldn't convince myself I really could have it. We had a really good discussion about it. Sometimes it really helps to bounce things off of someone……Have I said lately how much I adore my husband? He's my best friend and he's absolutely WONDERFUL! I know we all get hung up about how we look when dealing with weight issues…..and he needs to lose about 25 more pounds….but I think he is the most handsome, sexy, attractive man I've ever known. I could care less about his dropping 25 pounds for looks…………..high blood pressure and high cholesterol run in his family. His dad had them and all his brothers have them too. All of them are on medication for it. I want my DH around for a LONG LONG LONG time. That's why I want him healthy….whether it means dropping weight or not.

Anyways…I digress….by the time we got to our exit….I had decided in order to have a more healthy relationship with food, I needed to stop feeling restricted from anything and learn to live with it. I mean, seriously, have you ever seen a skinny person turn down food? Most of my "skinny" friends LOVE food. They just love a lot LESS of it than I used to. They take a bite, enjoy it, and leave the rest. Or they make choices. I made a choice…..because I needed to maintain my calorie load for the day and I was way under (even after ½ a protein bar!!!???) I was going to get the pizza.

Long story short…..no veggie pizza at the kitchen. They had cheese but that's not what I wanted. What I really wanted was the cooked onions, green peppers, and mushrooms. So I didn't get the pizza. I did pick up a piece of grilled chicken and rice pilaf. We get home and sit down to eat (LATE!!!—10pm) and we're talking about effort.

In my eyes, I feel like I'm giving 123% effort towards being more healthy and losing weight. How come the scale doesn't reflect that? I sweat A LOT at the gym. I'm not on level 1 on anything. I push hard on the rower, crosstrainer, elliptical, treadmill…everything! If this journey was based on effort, I'd be Heidi Frickin Klum by now. ARRRRGHHHHH… I can control everything else BUT this!!!! It's maddening. Then I realized. I am controlling this. The scale is headed down. My clothes are getting looser. People are noticing. I can now RUN 6mph (even if only for 1-3minutes) but I can run 4.5mph for 5 minutes. But most of all… I can FEEL it. I don't get out of breath climbing 10 flights of steps. I want to be outside playing and running with my kids. I sleep better. I wake up easier. I am not as tired as I used to be. And………….ladies, who are on this journey also, let me know if you've experienced this………………..but my sex drive has kicked into Super Hypersonic Overdrive. I think my DH actually faked sleeping last night J so he could get some sleep. Maybe that's the REAL reason I want him to workout more??????


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