Fake It..

.. till you make it.

Still generally bummed about how things wound up, nor do I have any real ideas about how I plan to proceed in the long term. I swore if I injured myself training for 2012 I’d defer to 2013, but lacking real info from NYRR plus my own current ambivalence I’m not committing to it or anything else yet. But I am going with the keep moving forward or die mentality and hopefully everything will sync up eventually.

So for now I’ve decided to go back to a mix of old and new routines. During the week, I aim to hit the gym 3 nights a week and am doing some indoor cardio, generally avoiding the treadmill, followed by some weights. On Sunday mornings I planning to do a ‘long’ run, of about an hour or so for a more cardio based work-out (and also I am addicted to the calorie burn of running these days if anything).

I’m also doing a bit more ‘running’ on off days. The dog needs some exercise and I’m trying her on C25K. We’ll see how far we get before she bites me ;). I don’t think she was particularly pleased with her first session on Saturday. We’ll see how tonight goes (I’m writing this Tuesday mid-day).  Unfortunately, the weather is getting cold now, but if the opportunity for something fun comes up, I’m also not going to worry about the marathon right now.

I also updated my targets and goals in the weight loss front.  I finally settled on a final phase end goal weight of 160 lbs.  I had gotten close to this number over the summer, and it felt like a good end point.  It puts me firmly inside the BMI range, even if I bounce up a little.  It felt achievable at the time (before the super-long distance running/eating and San Fran trip kicked in).  I also put the goal back to 1 pound a week (I had reduced it given the realities of long runs).

I started this on the Saturday after the cancellation.  It’s my plan for the rest of the year and to survive the holidays.  Honestly, I could probably use a routine shake-up anyway after all that running (173 hours worth, or yes, I spent entire 7 days of the last 52 weeks running).  I probably won’t make the weight goal by year end, but should be a lot closer.  I hope to have the answers for the long term by New Year and then can decide how to proceed.  And the new fitness regime should be able to pivot to whatever that winds up being.

Advertisement

Hurricane Madness

So that was some storm.  Everyone is safe and sound and we escaped with (what looks like) minor damage.  Many trees (including my neighbor’s) are down and clearly people are way worse off.  So like most Long Islanders, we are without power or internet (I’m at my folks right now for the day squatting) but otherwise alright.

So far the NY Marathon is still on for sunday.  How I will pick up my kit and stuff – who knows?  How will I get there – who knows?  How will the family get there – ditto.

I went for my run this morning and feel pretty determined.  Also – I need to burn off all this excess ‘hurricane’ food I’m eating.  Being bored in the house with lots of food that will spoil is not a good combo.  Having to eat out at meals – not a good combo.

I did not post my weekly weigh-in this week – combination of things (mom’s birthday, storm concern, needing to get out early for run) meant I forgot to weigh in at normal time.  I posted a mid-day weigh in to Lose It (as you can see, and it weren’t pretty).  Which is a shame too cause up to Saturday was finally dropping the conference weight.

Also – happy halloween!

I can resist everything

.. except temptation.

For those of you who think  I am a relentless machine, I do mess up on occasion.  Like last night.  As per recent posts, work has been very busy, and has involved a lot of Friday night releases (I work in IT) that start around dinner and run til quite late (1AM usually).  It’s a long day, since I tend to be a worker kind of guy who starts at my usual time of 7:30AM regardless.  The good news is I work from home on those days, so at least there’s no transit involved too.

Last night and next, the wife and kid have plans, and so I was on my own for dinner.  I decided to get pizza delivered.  I figured with them out, I could get an order of stuff I don’t get to have very often since the wife is vegetarian and the kid is typical picky kid.  I figured I would use the leftovers for another night/lunches.  It arrived just as things got going, and I rushed upstairs with my initial allocation.  I was still a bit hungry so I grabbed one more slice and went back to work.

That’s when I should have wrapped up the leftovers.  Because then they sat there.  And every time I got a few minutes to grab a drink or go to the bathroom or check on the dog, I passed by.  And yep, grabbed a slice.  By 1AM, the work was done and so was the pizza.

It wasn’t a one-shot binge, but spread over 6 hours, so I didn’t feel too bad, just like the boiled frog.  But I definitely felt the consequences on the scale this morning.  I know it will pass over the next few days, as a lot of it is saltiness from toppings as well.  Sadly, tonight will be a bit over too, as tonight is a bit of planned night out with a good friend.  But we’ll be alright again by next Thursday or so.

But let it be a lesson – don’t leave temptation lying out in front of you.

Certainly, I know what’s happening next week. Either I’m not ordering pizza again, or it’s getting wrapped up as soon as I take my two slices out.

 

Me vs. Buffet

Have been on vacation last few days, with all the challenges that brings to the weight loss and training programs.  Glad to be back this evening in many ways.

Where we went had a lot (LOT!) of junk food available – Ice Cream, Pizza Hut, non-PH pizza (yes two pizzerias), Starbucks, etc.  It also had some in-house restaurants that basically offered all-you-can eat buffets for breakfast and dinner and lots of fried junk (burgers, fries, etc).  Overall, I felt the trip went well.  I went over on most days, but in a controlled, semi-intentional way.  If you can’t indulge in a bonus ice cream or pretzel when on vacation when can you?  And I hit the gym most days to help limit the damage.  That said, estimation was a problem so I can’t say I feel super confident about the numbers either.  We’ll see what the scale says tomorrow (after it says ouch!).

On the breakfast front, I felt I did pretty well.  Most mornings I had my normal breakfast of toast + yogurt + a little – the little was mostly in the shape of fruit, a little granola and a little something (a mini-mini-muffin or a piece of sausage).  Pretty controlled, about 150 calories over normal, but mostly in ways I was happy with.  Especially since they had lots of yummy looking things on offer – breakfast pizza, breakfast stromboli, omelettes, danishes galore, plus the usual breakfast treats, etc.  Except for this morning, where I specifically planned to allow myself to gobble up whatever I wanted in lieu of lunch and as a way of making sure I knew I’d get to try some of those one day to help keep things in control the other days.  It was a pretty hefty breakfast but overall I’m not badly over for the day and we go back to normal soon.  3 stars out of 4 for me on breakfast.

Lunches were generally pretty good – with a slight overage hanging over my head from breakfast and dinner still to come I kept it pretty clean.  Fruit cups and yogurt parfaits supplemented something healthy-ish.  Afternoon snacks were mixed (one bad afternoon involved visiting a chocolate factory and a pretzel factory – samples were had), but still pretty controlled for vacation.  For dinners we generally ate away from where we were staying and were mixed.  Had too much weak Italian food one night, had a little too much tasty Japanese another, and had a a reasonable looking salad on another.

The big disaster came in between the Japanese and salad.  Pressed for options, we decided to try the buffet.  Wow, big mistake.  They made hard-to-resist breakfasts … dinner was astounding.  So many things to try (some truly delicious mini-meatball parm sliders and some fantastic other items plus some really weak items) and I did my best to try them all.  Then the desserts.  O…M…G…  I tried to be reasonable.. for about a nano-second.  Negative stars for me here.  I should have just skipped to dessert and enjoyed it more and did less damage overall.

Roughly a 2k calorie dinner – and only because I couldn’t fit anymore in.  The bad news is, yep, them’s eyes are still bigger than the stomach.  The good news, I’m pretty sure I could have mopped up everything I tried to eat and gone back for thirds 2 years ago without much of a pause.  This time, I thought I was going to explode and stopped eating.  I salvaged part of the meal with a 2 hour / 6 mile walk (it was either go for a walk or curl up in the room in the fetal position).

All in all, I’m over about 1500 calories (assuming my estimates are vaguely correct) for the time five days.  I’m sure the scale will be way up tomorrow.  But except for that one meal, relatively OK with how the rest of it went (again, if a vacation can’t involve a guilt-free ice cream/frozen yogurt with the kid then it ain’t a vacation).  Tomorrow night have something going on that won’t help either (going to do my best, but beers are tough to budget for under the best of circumstances), but then should get back on track on Friday.