No more bathroom scales

Let's start off with a recap of the past ~2 months, shall we?

In late December, I resolved to start tightening up on my sugar and simple carb consumption.  I was uncomfortable with the amount of junk food I was eating and I could see that it was impacting both my ability to improve my running and increase strength.  I made a specific goal of limiting sugar/carbs to weekends only, in more reasonable quantities.

Long story short, I discovered that I'm really not into that level of specific-ness.  I did get my sugar/white carb intake down to more reasonable levels, but I'd say the experiment mostly made me realize (again) that I definitely have "food issues", that I'm prone to stress and emotional eating, and that I need to work on this stuff because I don't like the headspace I give it.

Which brings me to my current "diet project": giving up the scale for Lent.  I've weighed myself almost daily for I don't know how long, and it is absolutely a ritual that then triggers thoughts about food (and actual eating) for the rest of the day.  Get a "good" number?  Awesome!  Treat yourself to some ice cream!  A "bad" number?  Well, that means it's time for a new diet tomorrow, so go ahead and get all those junk food cravings out of your system today!

Believe it or not, but getting away from the scale is so far proving REALLY hard for me.  We've stuck it in the bathroom closet to break the automatic habit of stepping on, but some mornings I desperately want to take it out and see what I weigh.  I am absolutely an addict going through a withdrawal process.  That said, I am also absolutely seeing a difference in the time spent thinking about food and the feelings associated with those thoughts.  I'm not fighting urges to eat as much.  And when I do think about eating unhealthy foods, I'm able to think about them more in the context of whether or not I'm really wanting that food, or if I'm just wanting to relieve stress.  Is my diet suddenly "perfect"?  No.  Am I happier with it overall though?  Yes.

I'm only a couple weeks in right now, but I'm excited to see how I'm feeling come Easter (and how my jeans are fitting...I'm not actively trying to lose weight but I do want to "prove" to myself that I won't gain weight without the scale to "keep myself in check").  The main thing I'm hoping for is fewer food hang-ups and less emotional eating, which should free my mind and time up to focus on more meaningful things (like, for example, being a nicer and more Christian person...part of why I felt the scale was a really appropriate thing to "give up" for Lent).

So that's where I am right now.

In terms of fitness, I've been having a bit of a setback with running, thanks to an injury that struck in early February.  Good news is that I seem to have recovered and am getting back into the swing of things.  I did have to make some modifications to my circuit workouts also (more PT type exercises, fewer walking lunges or one-legged squats), but overall I'm pretty happy with how I was able to let myself back off and take some necessary rest while not letting things go completely.  I've mixed things up a bit with my circuit workouts and might try to do a post about those next.

Prioritizing

Wow, my foray into health/fitness/whatever blogging is really going well, huh?  Two posts and then radio silence.

The truth is, I've been having some indecision about what to actually WRITE about.  I thought about writing a post about my running goals, because of all the goals on my list I feel like that's the one I have the best handle on--in 2014 I have gone from struggling to run at a 10-min mile pace to regularly banging out 3-5 mile runs at a 9 min/mile pace or less. Not shabby, right?  But it turned into a big long ass post about how much I love Run Less, Run Faster and the Runkeeper app, mixed up with a load of recycled amateur running advice.  Who wants to read that?

So scrap running posts for the moment (maybe post #4...).  Today I'm going to talk a bit about prioritizing, specifically, prioritizing my goals.  At the moment, I've got five "big" health/fitness goals.  But, I've also got a job, a husband, a long commute, and a limited capacity for change.

This past summer, I really devoted myself to a single goal (half-marathon training), and the results were pretty awesome (see paragraph 2).  What was really cool though, was that I didn't just become a faster runner, I also built up some serious leg muscle and saw my waist shrink down by a solid half inch.  It reminded me that if I focus hard on one goal and making serious progress on it, there will be payoffs outside of that goal as well.

Fast forward to December and I somehow have five goals.  I've been bouncing them all around in my head and trying to figure out how to work on all of them at once.  Then I went for a run this weekend (oops, this is going to be a running post after all).  It was a lousy run.  I meant to go out for six miles and I had to stop around three because I felt like crap and my stomach was in rebellion.  And why, you might ask, is that?  Well, I had followed my perfectly healthy lunch with an afternoon snack of instant noodles and Toblerone (yeah, I can't believe it either, now that I've typed it out).

As I walked home, I realized that for the past few months, I have had many amazing runs, and a few spectacular fails.  Each of the fails has had a common factor: some kind of stupid diet decision in the preceding 24 hours.

It was suddenly clear to me that I've hit a point where the biggest immediately changeable thing holding my running speeds back is my diet.  Running 3x a week is now pretty automatic to me.  Running HARD 3x a week is even pretty automatic--I have gotten addicted to runner's high and I want to push myself.  But poor diet decisions limit how much I can push myself in any given run.

And as I thought about it some more, I realized that improved diet would probably have a cascade effect on all my goals.  No more sabotaged runs = faster speeds and an easier time building endurance.  Better diet and more intense running = fat loss, which means less weight to push up off the ground or pull up over a bar.  In other words, improved diet = progress on all five goals.

Clearly, THE goal I need to work on at the moment is diet.  So, from now until the end of January, that's going to be my "thing".  Specifically:

Limit sweets and "white carbs" (white bread, pastry, any kind of fried potato product) to weekends only.  ONE reasonable serving of each per weekend.

And now, I think I should wrap this thing up.  Time to go make some progress!

Goals

It's always good to have them, right?  Now that I have my obligatory awkward first post out of the way, here are a few of the things I'm working towards at the moment:

1. Run a half marathon in under 2 hours by June 30, 2015.  My current PR is 2:10, set in September 2014, on a fairly flat course.

2.  Complete a pull-up by March 31, 2015

3. Complete a full-body pushup with good form by January 31st, 2015

4. Get honest with myself about the current state of my diet through regular tracking, then make (and follow through on) the necessary goals to improve it.

5. Related to #4, but something I know is already an issue: eat less sugar.  I'd like to be happy eating a diet that complies with the WHO proposed recommendation of <5% of calories from added sugar.

Getting started

This was going to be a blog about me finally working up the drive and discipline to lose my "final" ten pounds.

Then I started thinking about how after I lost that ten pounds, maybe I could lose ten more.  And it hit me: no matter how much weight I lose, there will be some nagging voice in my head telling me to lose a little more.  If I listen to that voice, I'll never really be losing my final ten pounds, I'll just be working on the ten pounds needed to change the bar to a lower number.  I'll always be on the second-to-last (or penultimate) ten.
 
So instead, I decided to write a blog about shutting down the voice that keeps me focused on that "Penultimate Ten", and learning to stick with focusing on my health and fitness instead.  Is weight part of that equation?  Maybe.  But it's not the only metric, and I don't want to let it define me.

Figuring out health as more than just weight is something I've been working on, on and off, for a while.  I don't have all the answers, and I'm not even sure I'll ever really find "perfect" balance, but that doesn't mean I can't make progress.