Two Weeks Post-Thanksgiving

You guys. Seriously. I just can’t even with eating well right now.  I had these high aspirations that I was going to get right back on track last week and everything was going to be great and I was going to lose the weight I gained over Thanksgiving. 

Well, no. Losing 2/10 of a pound is pretty much staying the same, and that’s not at all what I was hoping for. I put on my jeans this morning and wanted to cry. They’re so tight! You wouldn’t think six extra pounds would do that, but I’m here to tell you that it does!  

I was faced with too many temptations last week. Besides being away from the house and having to eat on the go several times, we had JJ’s hockey team party yesterday, which included pizza.  I get that it’s cheap and easy when you’re trying to feed a couple dozen kids, but damn, I am sick and tired of going to events where the main course is pizza. :/ I had a salad, which is certainly good, but I knew it wasn’t going to fill me up, so I also took some macaroni and cheese and some cheesy dip. 

Not the greatest choices. And of course there were cookies, cake, and brownies, which somehow landed on my plate. Then, when I got home, because we’d eaten so early, I was starving by about 7:30. I made what had originally been on the menu plan as our dinner for the evening, a pretty easy recipe called easy honey mustard mozzarella chicken. It’s pretty much all protein (chicken breast and bacon) and a little bit of honey and mustard, which is fine, but because I was starving, I had 2 1/2 pieces. Oh, and some of the leftover macaroni and cheese from the party that was sent home with me. Argh. So, yeah, mt weight staying the same can’t really be any kind of surprise. I’m probably lucky it didn’t go up!

This week, we have two more meals out, including a steak dinner with the hockey team on Saturday. I’m going to dedicate myself to measuring and weighing my food this week–for real!–and I’ll just do the best I can on the nights we eat out. I’ve got to get a hold of my eating before I end up not being able to even zip up my jeans! 🙁 

While my eating has certainly not been going well, let’s talk about something that has been: my running! I’m still running five days a week, including a long run on Saturday. Even though I’m not currently training for anything, I’m still running 3 to 4 miles each morning during the week, and then 5 to 6 on Saturday. This past Saturday, I even got up and ran at 5:30 because I had so much going on that day that I had to get it out-of-the-way early.  It was a nice, peaceful run, although cold at 23°, with wins they were silently at the 10 mph range. But I know how to dress for the weather, and I did just fine. I also got to see some pretty Christmas lights.

It’s blurry because my hands were cold!

One thing that has been promising is that my “easy” pace seems to be improving.   I stopped doing the MAF training (which kept my heart rate at around 145 for an easy run) when I started training for my best 10K using Katie’s plan earlier this fall.  Her suggested easy pace for someone training for a sub-60 minute 10K was between 11:00 and 11:30 minutes per mile. My easy pace per the MAF training was more like 13-minute miles, but I decided to take it down to that 11:00 to 11:30 range for my training, because I felt like I wasn’t getting any faster with MAF. I actually felt pretty good running in that new easy range, and the fact that I was able to beat my sub-60 goal seems to suggest that it was the right fit for me. 

Since then, I’ve been mostly running by feel, and finding that my heart rate for an “easy” run in the 11-minute mile range is around 160. Yes, quite a bit higher than the MAF suggested heart rate, but I just think it works for me. And I have found that I can actually run a sub-11 at that heart rate and feel really good. 

Another positive going on right now is that I bought myself a new pair of shoes!

I took that picture at Kroger, when I realized I needed a picture of the shoes for this post, and I saw this blue Christmas poinsettia (blue? really?) and thought it would be humorous to take my picture with it, since it matched the shoes. But here’s a better pic, straight from the Brooks website.

I bought the shoes in a new running store down in Monroe, which was holding a fundraiser for Jamie’s hockey team. Lucky for me, just in time for me to buy new shoes! I showed the guy my flat feet, and he suggested the Brooks Dyad, which he said were specifically designed for people with low to no arch. And, as a bonus, because the ones he had in stock were last year’s model, they were only $60! That’s more than half off! I bought them and wore them out the door. I spent all day Saturday and Sunday in them (well, when I wasn’t in snowboots for the 10 inches of snow we got on Sunday), and they felt great! They felt springy and provided lots of support, so I actually called him back yesterday to see if he had another pair in my size. Unfortunately, he didn’t, so I went online and found one. Not for the same price, but still cheap compared to the current model. I’m not opposed to paying more for good shoes, but I can see that the current model is a bright pink color, of which I am not a fan.  I am so sick and tired of shoes that clash with everything I wear. :/ (Why do running shoe companies thank that every runner wants their shoes to scream their arrival a mile out?) 

I did run with the shoes yesterday morning, but it was a little different then I’ve been used to, thanks to the aforementioned 10 inches of snow. It was a little challenging, since my road doesn’t get plowed right away (ever?), but once I reminded myself how to run on snow, I did well and ended up with an 11:30 overall pace.  My heart rate was a little higher than normal, as you can imagine. It was a nice calorie burn, though! 

Today was another fun run–it was 13° when I went out! I decided that temperature warranted bringing out the heavy artillery. 

You know it’s winter when I bring out the facemask, ha ha! 😉

Thanks for reading!