Back to Reality

Ah, yes…back to harsh reality of eating right and exercising in the frigid cold of the Michigan winter. :p

I forgot to talk about my weight from last week, so let me catch up. The first week after my vacation, I settled back into a pretty decent routine, although we did have a Christmas celebration with my family, and that was a little challenging. So much good food!

However, I ran 4 miles before the dinner, and I tried to make good choices at the dinner table. My sister brought another tray of cookies, though, and that was impossible to resist.

The next morning, I got up and ran 6 miles. The weather was good, dry and not too cold, and I was pleased to find that I was able to maintain a sub-11 pace for 6 miles.

We had two hockey games the weekend of New Year’s, and Sunday morning’s game was an away game that turned out to be fruitless, because the team had rescheduled the game from a later time that day, but forgot to reschedule the refs. :/  I stuck with salad for lunch, and A homemade chicken salad for dinner. I know it’s silly, but I typically try to eat lighter on Sundays, because I know I have to weigh in on Monday morning. Fooling myself? Sure. But hey, sometimes it works!

I ended up losing 2 pounds after my really bad post-vacation weigh in. I’ll take it!

Last week I did pretty well staying on plan. I had a lunch date on Tuesday, and I got a rather fancy chicken salad.

It had Gorgonzola cheese, grilled chicken breast, candied pecans, and dried cherries, all topped with a light raspberry vinaigrette. It was a bit heavy on the sugar, but oh my goodness, it was delicious!

The rest of the week was busy with a lot of hockey, but I did OK. I can usually stay within my calories, but sugar still proves to be a challenge for me. One night, we had homemade sweet-and-sour chicken, and boy did that kill my sugar goal for the day. :p

I had a few good runs last week, including a solid 9:45 3-miler on Friday. I’ve been trying to maintain at least 2 to 3 days per week of sub-10 pace, and then usually Wednesday and Saturday are my “easy” days. This past Saturday, after reading Katie’s blog and her comments about easy runs, I decided not to push myself for a sub-11 pace for my six-miler. I work so hard during the week to put forth a real effort for speed, and when I’m doing it, all I can think of is how I will reward myself with an easy run at the end of the week. And then, I get out there on Saturdays and feel like I need to keep pushing myself. :-p But last Saturday, I said screw it, and I just went out and had a nice, easy run.

It felt good!

Sunday night, true to form, while the kids enjoyed chicken Alfredo, I had a chicken salad. Don’t get me wrong, I really do enjoy chicken salad, but I sometimes think I’m going a bit overboard with the “have to eat light on Sunday” mentality.  Monday morning, I saw the results:

It was only a .2 pound loss, unfortunately. Still, that puts me within 1 pound of my goal of 120, so hopefully I’ll get there eventually. It would be nice if it wasn’t 2/10 of a pound at a time, like it was for the entire month of December. 😉

In completely unrelated news, I have to tell you about the gift JJ got from my sister: she bought him a Lego at the local Meijer, one that she knew he wanted. He got it from her on January 1, but I told him to put it aside and play with his other ones first, and then he could pull that one out a little bit later. Well, he pulled it out on Saturday the 9th, and we were shocked when he opened it up.

What you see there are three Ziploc bags, containing random Lego pieces that did not match what was on the box at all, along with a random, beat up instruction manual, for a completely different Lego. And when we opened the bags, everything reeked of cigarette smoke. >:(

Needless to say, I was extremely angry over some idiot who figured out how to use the system to deprive my nine-year-old of a $20 Lego. My sister was equally upset. I was also frustrated that I would have to waste my time getting the gift receipt from my sister, and then going to Meijer to try to return it. What a waste of my time!

The next day, I stopped after hockey and got a gift receipt from her, then took it to Meijer and explained the situation. I was worried that they would give me a hard time, but I’m happy to say that Dorothy at the Meijer service desk was as affronted as we were over the incident. She addressed JJ directly, asking him his preference for making things right, either a credit or look for the same Lego. They didn’t have the same one, but he found another he liked, and she made sure to have him open the box in front of her to ensure all the contents were intact. After she did the exchange, she apologized for his Christmas being tainted, and said she hoped he’d have lots of fun with his new Lego.

So, the moral of the story is, while there are some real assholes out there, there are still good people in the world!

Thanks for reading!