2 for 2

.from here.

Well, my life seems to be back on track.  I've (mostly) reined in my impulsive eating and got in three workouts.  I'm more on a regular sleeping schedule (it took almost a week to get adjusted to day light savings!) and feeling a lot more like myself.  And no, that is not a picture of me, but it kind of describes how I feel as comparative to six days ago.

This week I went jogging twice.  3.6 miles both times.  I finished both in 51.24!  Both!  How is that?  I'm thinking that tomorrow is the day that I try to get a bit faster again.  Right now I run everything in ten minute blocks and try to be speedy on minutes 3, 7, and 9.  Tomorrow I will try to be speedy on 3, 5, 8, and 9.  What I am trying to do (and probably will not be able to do before the race on April 2, two weeks away) is get to a 13 minute mile.  Right now I run at about a 14 minute mile.  Those thirty seconds can make a big difference in my overall time. 

Example: 3.6 miles at a 14 minute mile is 51.4 minutes.

3.6 miles at a 13 minute mile is a bit under 47 minutes.  That's more than 4 minutes saved!

Last year I completed the Springtime 10K in 78 minutes.  That's a bit over 12.5 minutes per mile (my PR).  I estimate that this year I'll finish in between 85 and 90 minutes.  I'm not in as good of shape as I was last year so it would be silly to expect me to meet or beat my time of last year. 

Life is good.  I can't wait to see how I'll run tomorrow.

Abandon Ship

.from here.

This week I took a break from running.  I had some other school stuff that needed to get finished (I'd just be greatful if I could just start some of these things!) and just wasn't feeling it.  I even went out to jog on Sunday and felt so disconnected from the run that I left after one measly lap.  I do that sometimes at Zumba classes too.  I like to exercise, it supposed to be fun and relaxing.  I don't get paid to work out so sometimes when it feels like troublesome, unfun work I abandon ship early.

This, friends, is not quitting.  It is, instead, knowing myself rather well.

You see, I don't ever want to stay on the track, in a yoga class, or at a Zumba workout resenting it for 50 minutes and spending the whole time wishing that I was somewhere else.  I've learned that, for me, it makes me reluctant to come back to working out later if I leave the exercise with a bitter taste in my mouth.  Meaning that if I push myself through a Zumba class on a Monday and hate it for the duration of the class then I am very likely to skip Wednesday and Friday's workout.  I like hard workouts- challenging workouts- but that is not the same as thinking to myself through a series of sun salutations that I'd throw a rock at the instructor if it only meant that the class was over that much sooner.

Yes, I know there is such a thing as attitude.  I also know that there are lots of things in life that I cannot just walk away from but a 50 minute workout session?  Yes, in fact I can walk away from it. 

Do you ever do this or do you make youself finish the workout?

I'm a terrible 'health nut'

.from here.

I would not normally call myself a 'health nut' but Annie Sue at .turning pages. likes to call me one. 

However, I'm not a very good health nut, in fact I may be a terrible one.

Here are a list of foods- incredibly healthy, life-sustaining, nutrition powerhouses- that I just will not eat:

1. Nuts, unless mixed into brownies or something with cream cheese frosting.  I will, however, eat nut butters.
2. Nut butters that are not peanut (yes, I know technically peanut is not a nut, it's a legume).
3. Kale.  It's awful, no matter how you prepare it.
4. Raspberries, they're just too tart unless pureed and on top of a cheesecake.
5. Sardines.  Every health blog advises eating them because of their healthy fats, nutritious protein, and low mercury levels (comparative to fish like tuna and salmon). Michael Pollan thinks they're awesome.  Real Simple Magazine featured them as one of the top 30 health foods.  They're gross and I don't want to touch them- this also goes for anchovies.
6. Sweet potatoes.  They taste just fine covered in butter, cinnamon, and sugar but when plain I find them to be.... how do I put this delicately?  Not good.  I see people all the time eat them plain or with just the smallest smidge of butter and declare that they're delicious.  They're not.  Those bloggers are either lying or being paid by the Sweet Potato Farmers of America.
7. Dark chocolate.  It is fine but I'd rather eat milk any time of day.
8. Edamame- just not my thing.
9. Juice.  I have a thing about juice and many people know this.  I think apple juice tastes like children (I used to say that if I bit into a preschooler they'd taste just like apple juice).  Grape juice tastes like communion.  Orange juice tastes like sickness.  I do like cranberry juice when mixed with club soda but I do not like it plain.  Go figure.
10. Greek yogurt.  The stuff is okay, loaded with protein, probiotics, and calcium.  People seem to really like it but I'd rather eat a Yoplait Thick and Creamy.

So when I look at this list I just think that maybe I'm not so healthy after all.

Never fear, I've returned!

I'm sure that all of my faithful readers have been missing my snarkastic blog posts (snarkastic = snark + fantastic).  I decided to take a break for a few days.  It is spring break here in Tally-town and I went home where, while I do have access to the internet, it is really relaxing to let it go- to not update facebook, to let my FSU email account go unchecked, and let my favorite blog fall by the wayside.  And I needed this.  It was getting a bit out of control, checking some blogs and facebook several times a day.  I know everyone says these things are timesucks but for me it really was getting ridiculous. 

I let some other stuff go to these past week.  I didn't track my calories, which wasn't an epic fail. I exercised but didn't update my exercise journal.  I just kind of went with the flow.  It was nice.

On Monday I went to Magic Kingdom, yesterday I went to Islands of Adventure to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  If you haven't been yet, go, it's an incredibly fun, well-conceived portion of the park.  In fact, I wish the entire park was Harry Potter World.  They repurposed two existing roller casters and built a new ride inside a built-to-scale Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  You can drink butterbeer and pumpkind juice.  Eat lunch at the Three Broomsticks Inn.  Buy a wand at Olivander's.  You get the idea.  The people at Universal Studios have built an entire movie set.  They have buildings and store fronts that go nowhere.  As it gets dark the windows in buildings will light up and 'smoke' will come out of the chimneys.  It is a fascinating place and like I said, I (and thousands of others it looks like) wish the place was its own theme park instead of just a portion of another.

Springtime Tallahassee 2010

Proof!  Last year I ran the Springtime Tallahassee 10K and am currently training to run this year's race.  I found this picture on accident and am thrilled to have it.  That was a incredibly fun race and I am genuinely looking forward to running it again this year. 

My spring training is going very well.  This afternoon I start my 1x9 series (walk 1 minute, jog 9 minutes).  I've had some great runs this week, a bit faster, felt a bit lighter on my feet.  The only thing that might be considered a negative is that sometime between minutes 20 and 50 I am experiencing very significant thirst, a gummy dry mouth, and feeling very flushed.  I don't think that I am hydrating properly so today I've decided to work on drinking more of my water before my run instead of balancing the water between before and after the workout.  Starting next week I am going to try and get a longer run in at least once a week- 60 minutes or so.  Additionally, starting next week I will also add some interval training to my workouts.  What this means is that for certain minutes I will try to go faster so that I can build my pace.  I want to get as close to a 12 minute jog before April 2 as I can.  That will be difficult but I can at least make the effort to try. 

Also, more good news.  The other day, Thursday I believe, I totally got the Runners' Seal of Approval.  As I was jogging around the 'lake' (it's really more a pond) a runner passed me and gave me a thumbs up.  I really appreciated this encouragement.  Usually I can be overly sensitive about people noticing me and praising me as I workout.  Generally I wish I was invisble as I jog, I don't like people to notice me.  However, when this runner acknowledged my hard work I felt truly appreciative, like a rite of passage.

Well, I look forward to continued training and will post soon.

'Diet Rhetoric' and how to move on

I want this blog to be a positive space, but I also want this blog to be a honest space.  With that in mind I want to address this issue of foods, some being bad, others being good. 

How many times have you heard someone say "I'm having cake, I'm being bad today."

Or how about this: "I've really been focused on my diet, nothing but good foods."

Or maybe "I can't have that, I'm trying to be good."

I am very tired of this kind of rhetoric.  I am tired of some foods being categorized as good , angelic foods and others as evil, terrible foods that bring out the worst in us.  I am also entirely over this idea as 'good' foods as tasting like paper and 'bad' foods being everything that we actually like to eat. 

By demonizing certain foods and beatifying others, we, meaning many women and maybe some men too, we extend those ideas to our own behaviors.  Meaning, if I eat a 'bad' food then I am a bad person undeserving of love, deserving of fatness and poor health.  However, if I eat 'good' foods then I am somehow also a good person and by extension worthy of both self-love and love of others, happiness, a great job and all other awesome kinds of things.

What absolute nonsense.

This idea that someone can somehow earn worth by eating only 'good' foods and avoiding 'bad' foods is incredibly detrimental to the self-worth of women.  These people can either falsely build esteem on their ability to highly control their diets or struggle to love themselves based on this ridiculous notion that by eating certain foods they are bad, wrong, or unlovable.


If you can, let it go. 

Since January I've really been examining how I approach food.  I've had a lot of help with this.  I have a nutritionist, as I've commonly mentioned on this blog, but I also have other mental health professionals who help me examine how I tie my self-worth, esteem, and self-love to what I eat and how I feel about food.  Also, by labeling some foods as bad and the action of eating them as bad, you are also arguing that these actions are somehow sinful, wrong, or evil.  Not so.  Not even a little bit.

I just want to let that all go.

Instead of categorizing foods as either good or bad, I want to encourage any potential readers to think of food in a different way: as everyday foods or as sometimes foods.  An example: I think of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and dairy as 'everyday foods.'  Foods I can and should eat everyday in order to keep me healthy, happy, and strong fall into this category.  'Sometimes foods' are foods like cake, soft pretzels, Barnaby's pizza and wings, beer, real Coke, peanut butter M&Ms, etc.  These foods have a place in my diet, most often in situations that are celebratory like birthday parties, holidays, or restaurant get togethers.  These foods are not bad.  They give me quick energy and more often then not are part of a lot of fun times that I am not willing to give up.  Nor should I have to.

By giving up this idea of 'bad' and 'good' foods I can let all of this rhetoric go and instead move my life forward.  By maintaining this idea that there are foods that are 'sometimes' foods and not 'everyday' foods I can let myself enjoy them while still understanding my relationship with them.  I do not have to think of any food as somehow detrimental to either my self-worth nor my future health of ability to lose weight. 

 Be well.

Awesome!

Great party tonight.  Annie Sue turned 25 this month and she threw a great party to celebrate.  This girl has class!