Update

I seem to be experiencing a lack of motivation to blog these days, but luckily not a lack of motivation to keep fighting the fat. I know my last post on March 20th was about my desire to do 4 miles and I'm proud to say I've since frequented the 4 mile mark and am now up to 5 miles or 8 Kilometers for my long runs and 3 miles for my short fast runs during the week. I'm so glad I started all this training months in advance and gave myself a good 8 months to train for this because I'm finding my body very slow to adapt and still slow to run. However, I am feeling faster and better than ever. I can now 'easily' do my 3 miles at an 11 minute mile pace maintained the entire time and finish without collapsing on the carpet and waking up with major shin splints. I feel good when I'm done and even after 4 miles I'm able to keep going if I can fight through the fatigue and convince myself it will be worth it in the end. I was telling Greg that only a few short weeks ago I would convince myself to run to the next stop sign or to the end of the block and then take a walking break, and every step it took to get to the stop sign felt like agony and my legs were so heavy. Now I'm able to run a good 3/4 mile before feeling like I might need a little walking break. I am finally feeling encouraged and noticing real progess.

And of course the other half of this journey is the eating part, which I am finding much more complicated than deciding how far to run and doing it. As I mentioned earlier, Greg and I are using an app to calorie count. So every thing we put in our mouths we plug into our app or we look up the calorie content before we pop it in our mouths, but either way, we are sort of slaves to it. But despite what people have warned me about ( and there have been plenty of criticisms thinly veiled as 'warnings') it's working and I'm learning tons. I get a mere 1220 calories to spend in the day in order to lose between 1-2 pounds a week and just the act of looking them up has opened my eyes to healthy ways of consuming my calories. For example, we basically never eat out any more. We don't drink our calories (except in the form of a Starbucks), and we have to stop eating after dinner most days since our calories are spent. I know some people think this is so strict and whatever, but I'm looking for something I can really maintain for the rest of my life. I know I can't look up my foods on my iPhone for the rest of my life, but I can teach myself how many calories are in my foods, how small my portions should be, and how fatty eating out it.

So I have lost 15 pounds since February 28th and Greg has lost 10. We have finally found something we can follow and be in control of. There is no guilt in eating Pizza or Ice Cream...we're just aware that if we eat that, we'll have to eat really healthy for the rest of the day.

The only time the calorie counting doesn't work so well is when I am not in control of the food before me. I noticed there are two different kinds of self control. There is self control where I can control what is made for dinner or what kinds of snacks I make for movie night and that I think I'm getting the hang of. But the second and much harder type is self control when someone offers you food. We recently went to my Grandma's house for Easter and all the pies, fried foods and gravy floating in front of me was too hard to say no to. But hopefully soon I'll learn how to politely turn down food and treats. someday. maybe. or not.