Welcome Back Old “Friend”

I’ve been thinking about sustainability and longevity in my weight loss journey.  I know I have weight to lose.  It’s no secret. And I desperately want to lose it.....but I’m starting to have some views that are divergent from where they have been for years.

Let me start by saying that I KNOW that I have to restrict and manage my food intake.  That is NOT in debate.

But....I’m thinking that I need to focus more on a healthy lifestyle.  A healthy lifestyle includes eating nutritious meals.  It includes not eating three pieces of cake.  It includes the food portion of what is considered the diet portion of weight loss.   But I am shifting.  I’m shifting to thinking that my focus really needs to be more on the physical aspect of this lifestyle.   Moving!!!  Making my body stronger.   Being active.

Once again...weight is lost in the kitchen not the gym.  I know that.  But let’s also say that deprivation doesn’t work for me...at all!   So let’s look at this realistically....  weight loss really is as simple as calories in versus calories out.  It’s having a good exercise budget.    So, one piece of chocolate cake and chocolate icing according to MyFitnessPal is around 235 calories.   22 minutes of running (12 minutes mile) is guess what?  235 calories (at whatever weight I currently have listed on myfitnesspal...).  I like cake....22 minutes seems a decent trade off to me.   

And yes yesterday I did run ..I did eat cake...and I DID have a nutritious dinner with lots of healthy foods to fuel my body!

I am trying to remember to track all of my food on my fitness pal. So I’m not totally walking away from the “diet“ mentality. I know that that is still important for me. 

I just realize that as I get older I need to be working on making my body strong in a time where my body naturally is going to weaken much more week.

So as my last post on Saturday indicated… I went for a run. The run portion was 1 mile. That is 1 mile of running with no stops or walking… Consistent movement at the same speed. I felt pretty good actually, slow but good.

On Sunday morning I repeated the run.

 A walking warm up and cool down and 1 mile of running with no stops or walks. I was one minute faster. And boy oh boy this one made me more sore and achy. Sunday afternoon we spent a lot of time outside walking and moving ...downtown Frederick and In and old graveyard....just about 6 or 7 miles. 

By the time we got home in the early evening hours, my body ache so bad. I could feel my muscles aching and I was just whipped.

Even exhausted and tired and achy I managed to pull off my first night of push-ups and planks. In a conversation earlier in the week we were discussing upper body strength versus lower body strength. My lower body has typically always been very strong and my upper body typically week.   So we challenged ourselves to push-ups daily. I threw in planks because core strength is important with riding a bike with my back issues… OK and with so much more. I’m not proud of how many push-ups I could do… Or rather couldn’t do. They were not pretty by any means. But consistency will clean them up and add to how many I can do. We have to start somewhere, and I have my start.

So kicking it back into these healthier actions such as running, 6 miles of walking in the afternoon, push-ups and planks has made me welcome my old friend continual achiness. I know it will get easier… And when the pain goes away that means I need to step it up and run faster walk further add more push-ups…

Yeah, I kind a like the achiness.

The core and arm strength will help quite a bit on my road bike… Which honestly hurts so bad right now that I am not riding with my Road bike on the trainertrainer that much once again 10 minutes and I’m done. But I will grow that number. And it’s set up..so no excuses!!

I seriously need to get into good biking shape… We are hoping to have me on a good mountain bike by the end of summer. We love Jason’s Santa Cruz bike. But I doubt I will be able to spend that much money on a bike at this point. We will be scanning craigslist and crossing our fingers and hoping for a good deal on a used size medium bike. (A small could possibly work…) I have a few things that I want on a bike… I want full suspension and I want a dropper post for my seat… Because it’s just really cool. Yeah I’m not sure I’ll be riding such rough trails that I will need my seat up-and-down that much, but it’s cool! Jason has a few more things that he wants on my bike. And we are both insistent that it be a bike that is upgradable in case I out grow in skill the bike I buy.

Meanwhile Jason’s Santa Cruz is feeling a bit sick.

 He needs his rear shock rebuild… We dropped it off yesterday at the bicycle hospital a.k.a. the bike shop.

So the next few weeks will be spending hiking/walking and dreaming about our next bike ride together!

I’ve got this!  I can do it!!  Healthy is the new mission!!!!