Dieting

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3 days running and back on pace!

Getting my running legs under me again.  Yesterday was my third run since I took 2 weeks off and lost 20 lbs.  I felt really good running and felt my stride was longer and easier to maintain.  Ultimately I ran just over 9:00 pace on Monday and just over an 8:00 pace yesterday.  I did feel like I was pushing it a bit after the first mile, but I knew I was running well and wanted to see what I could do.

The good news is I am still not taking and anti inflammatory meds or fish oil.  I think that is my biggest success from my time off.  I used to be in a lot of pain with my hips and back that I had to be on meds everyday.  Now I really have almost no issues other than after my run yesterday my left hip hurt for a while, but the pain went away on its own.

I am trying to keep to my run plan.  Today and tomorrow I up my mileage to 4 miles each day and then Sunday I go up to 6.  I hope by next week to be in the 5 mile a day range again.  I just didn’t want to take things too fast.  Also, I didn’t have any muscles pulling as I ran yesterday so that was great.

Our next race is a 5k in May.  It was our first race we ever ran and it will be fun to compare our progress.  TJ has a training plan worked out for me when I get myself back to normal running.  My goal is to finish in the 20 minute range, which would be a miracle.  But in the past year I have seen a lot of miracles happen because of my running.  I wish more people could experience what I experience.

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Running again

Today is the day.  Diet: Over.  Running: Starting.  Me: excited.

Since I ran my half marathon, I have lost 18 lbs.  The biggest reason this was crucial is because my hips and back were giving me a lot of pain.  I could cover the pain with ibuprofen, but I didn’t want to be on that stuff long term.  Loosing that weight will take a lot of stress off of my back.

This morning, I weighed in at 178.4.  Exactly 100 lbs since my highest weight July 2011.  I am pumped and can’t wait to run this afternoon.  I’m going to take it easy for a couple of days and only run 3 -4 miles.

Can I say what has helped me more than anything else in running and dieting?  WATER.  I have been drinking almost 100 oz of water a day for 18 months.  I believe that is close to 3 liters.  This has been huge with my running and weight loss.  I am almost always hydrated, except sometimes in the middle of the night.  I can run 13 miles and not need a drink.  It keeps me full and makes me feel so much better than before I used to drink it.

So, going past water, today is the day for my first run in 2 weeks.  Of course the forecast is for storms this afternoon.  The only weather I won’t run in is storms, especially with lightening.  But, maybe I’ll hit is right and get in 25 minutes of running.

I love running.  I can’t wait.  By the way, congratulations to Emma for running her first half marathon and beating her target pace and raising money for her charity.  Very exciting.

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1 day to go

Today is the last day of my diet /  recovery.  I plan on running tomorrow for the first time in two weeks.  It has been hard not running, but I know I feel a lot better for taking some time off.  Also, I am down to 179 for the first time since I can ever remember.  For those who don’t know, at the height of my weight gain, I was 278 in July 2011, so I have lost 99 lbs so far.  Wow, a year and a half ago I would never have thought I’d loose so much and have run a half marathon!

I am a bit hesitant about running again since I have had almost no carbs of fat in 14 days.  I’ll take it slow to begin with and see how I feel.  I hope that loosing so much weight will make a big difference, especially in my aches and pains.

I can’t wait to love running again.

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Day 8, mile 8

Today is the mid point of my diet.  It is not easy for many reasons.  I am hungry, tired and can’t run because I decided to take time off to recover and to lose weight. It seems to be almost impossible for me to lose weight while running.  I can cut back on what I eat or eat better foods, but eventually someone shoves a pizza in my face and the carbs are more than I can handle.

Yesterday was the roughest.  I have been on a physician weight loss diet for a week now and we had a presentation in our conference room at work with 10 large pizzas!  Ugh.  I sat and eat my apple and 4 oz of chicken and tried to ignore the aroma of pizza and the happy faces of coworkers as they devoured them.

If you consider my diet to be like a half marathon (funny how I now see everything in that light), I am at mile 8.  At the half marathon we just ran, mile 8 was my slowest.  It was the end of a long set of hills and the beginning of the decline.  It was the hardest part and it was also the point at which I stopped feeling my legs running and had the sensation of almost floating.  It wasn’t a fun “floating” either.  I was tired and running slower than at any other point in the race.

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As I mentioned, I am at mile eight in my diet/running hiatus.  It is rough.  I want to eat and I want to run.  But, as in the race, I have to keep my perspective.  I need to use this time to the full potential of the reason I began it.  I wanted to let my body recover from the workouts and the race and I wanted to loose enough weight to be a more efficient runner.  It is hard to run and keep good times in races at 5’9″ 195 lbs.  All the charts say I should weigh about 165 to be in the “normal range”.  I’m not stuck on that figure, but I also realize this is the best chance to get to a more reasonable weight.

Life is a race, whether we are running, dieting or just living day by day.

Running has taught me more than I thought I could ever learn from an “activity”.  It is truly amazing.

I love running.

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Tempo runs and hunger pains

I had a strange sensation last night as I lay in bed with my stomach growling on my 3rd day of my diet (and 3rd day off from running).  The hunger in my stomach was familiar in some way.  Of course I have dieted before and my Lovely Wife and I had both lost 85 lbs.  However I gained 10 lbs back over the past year and so I am doing the diet again over the next few weeks to try to get down a bit for running.

I digress.

As I pondered the fact that the hunger pains were not only familiar, but I also didn’t seem to mind them, I tried to make sense of it all.  Then it hit me.  Of course this is just my aged mind thinking and pondering, but in running, I have had the same feeling.  No, not massive hunger, but forcing my body to do what it did not want to do.  As we trained for our first half marathon, TJ had me doing tempo runs, steady state runs, hill runs and so on.  In doing these (especially tempo runs) I would feel horrible and my body would want me to quit.  I wouldn’t go to the point of hurting myself, but I knew that if I didn’t push myself further than I wanted to go, I would give up almost immediately.  This developed discipline in me that I credit, almost more than the training itself, to my success in my half marathon.  I have written before that running has a lot to do with psychology and now I am adding that running creates discipline (something I have never had).

So last night, as I felt hunger sweep my body and smelled dinner (baked ziti) cooking downstairs, it wasn’t dread or anger I felt, it was almost like an old friend coming to visit.  I understand that this diet won’t last forever and I won’t push myself too far.  I also understand that the hunger is working to improve my running as does a good tempo run. It is all the same discipline working on my behalf.

This is all philosophical, but it really made sense to me last night.  Of course, it could just have been that the hunger made me a bit delirious 🙂

I hate dieting, but I love running.

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Running and dieting?

I don’t understand how to eat and run correctly.  I run, I eat more.  I eat more, I gain weight.  I gain weight, I have a harder time running.

Now that I have a half marathon under my belt and I have  two weeks off, I am going to take some time to diet.  This is a physician guided diet that we used to successfully loose 80 lbs in about a year. I’m only going to do it for the two weeks, but should be able  to loose these extra pounds that have crept up on me over the past months of training.

So, how do I keep running and keep my weight off?  I hope that eating better for the next two weeks will help keep me eating better overall.  I just can’t gorge on carbs a couple times a week.  Eating well is harder to me than running 40 miles a week.

Day 2 of my diet done. 12 more to go.  Then… Running.