While my results didn’t show it, I had a very bad week. For most of the week, I was knocked down by sickness and exhaustion. I wasn’t sleeping enough at night and when I’m sick, I really need to get 8-9 hours of good, soundless sleep to feel normal. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen for me. I averaged 5-6 hours every night, which just left me so tired during the day that I had to come home and take a nap.
Because of this, I only ended up exercising twice this week. On my Saturday run, I was scheduled to run 2.25 miles but it was pretty terrible. It was the second time I didn’t manage to run the entire time and it seriously discouraged me. My breathing was off the entire time, making me feel like I had sprinted for 15 minutes after running for just a minute. Luckily, my Sunday run (also 2.25 miles) went amazing. I ran it with my mom, which pushes me to keep on truckin’ when I just want to quit, and finished it! My pace was slow (13:24) but I’m not running for speed – I’m just running to finish!
Those runs were it for exercise this week, other than a walk to the store on Wednesday, so that’s an area I need to amp up in. While ideally, I’d like to exercise 5-6 times a week, I’m bringing it down to 4 times because I know myself and I know that’s the most I’ll be able to do when school starts. My plan is to run Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays. Tuesdays, I want to do some other type of exercise – elliptical training, biking, strength training, and/or yoga. (I also want to add in strength training on Saturdays after my run, since it’s something that will be on my schedule every Saturday once I start the half-marathon part of my training.)
I tracked my food up until Tuesday. I was doing good with that, even if I did use up all my 35 extra points by Monday. And then my mom mentioned the word “cookies.” One of the tips I learned from Weight Watchers is that there are just certain foods you can’t keep in your house. All it’s going to do is derail your journey of health. (But let me be clear – you can eat anything on Weight Watchers, just in moderation. Nothing is off limits.) One of those foods is cookies. We can’t keep cookies in our house. They derail us. And they definitely derailed us this week.
While I made a goal to drink 48oz of water this week, that most definitely did not happen. At all. I did drink more this week than I have in about a month, but closer to 24oz than 48. I think giving myself such a high standard was bad news bears. It’s like going from being totally sedentary to exercising 5 days a week for an hour. That’s just not going to happen. So instead of giving myself specific ounces to drink, I want to focus on specific situations. This week, I want to focus on drinking water at work. Lately, I’ve been buying sodas more often at work, even though I have water to get me through the day. I want to stop that and at the very least, drink my entire 24oz of water at work. I’ve done that before, and it usually works out just fine. I want to slowly incorporate water more and more into my life until it becomes something my body craves. I will get there.
Onto my results!
Weight
Starting Weight (as of February 21, 2010): 151.2 lbs
Current Weight (as of August 12, 2010): 146 lbs
Weight Lost This Week: – 1.8 lbs
Total Weight Lost: -5.2 lbs
OMGah, I would LOVE to get 5-6 hours of sleep, haha. I average about 3-4 at a time, usually 3 in the morning after work and 3 in the evening before work. I was also sick this week.
Congrats on losing the weight, BUT its good to set small goals. Then, when you exceed them (because I know you will) you feel that extra OOMPAHHHH!!!
Go Steph!!
Nice runs girlie! Next week's a new week so stick with it.
Yah, 5-6 hours of sleep is not enough for mei either!! That is what I have been getting lately and it is making me feel downright snarky… Not good!
Good job on the weight lost this week, though!! Woot woot!
For me it's sort of a mental thing. I don't drink pop on the days when I work out because it seems counter-productive to put the sugar in my body when I've just worked it off! I also have a problem with drinking water from bottles that measure it. It just depresses me that I've only gotten one ounce down, and still have 23 to go. So every morning at work, I fill up a glass with lots of ice, then water, and drink it throughout the day. It took a little while to get used to avoiding the DP but some days I surprise myself by how often I have to refill my water.
When I talk about pace on my blog I'm comparing myself to MYSELF! So don't let it bother you that I'm complaining about a 9:30 pace. It's all relative and I was a lot slower when I first started running!
Good job trucking through your 2.25 miles 🙂
Awesome – that's great!! I cannot have cookies in the house either or any other kind of junk food or else the monster (me) will get to it. I'm not mentally there yet to be able to moderate myself with my favorite bad junk food so gotta stay away from those for a while.
It looks like you're doing a great job – keep it up!
You're doing great! Remember not to obsess about every detail. Us girls tend to do that. Relax a little and let your body tell you how much you should be working out.
I try hard to get 8 hours of sleep… any less and I am not the world's nicest person, lol.
chin up on the running…there will be bad days!
At least one of the runs was good 🙂 You put in a good effort and thats what counts. Its hard to stay healthy when you are sick and I am the same way without sleep- it's not good! Do you ever take walking breaks when you are running? that may help you be able to go for longer.
Hey, sometimes maybe it's the destination that matters, not the journey. If the results look good, who cares if you indulged a little?! Good job girl!
I can't wait to get back into running again, I love reading about other runners. I've been running since 2001 and I was never ever a runner before then. I took it slow at first to get myself going but since then I have run lots of 5ks and even the Chicago Marathon. I just had my second kiddo so I haven't ran since before I was pregnant. I'm anxious to get out there and run a race. My goal is to do a 5k sometime this fall and then try and do a half-marathon sometime next year.
I agree that if you are working out you can indulge now and then. If you denied yourself everything I don't think you would last very long…but that's my opinion. How do you track your food? I just found a great website that I'm using and it calculates all the nutritional data (which I'm loving because I recently became a vegetarian). Keep up your hard work!!!