fit and 50lbs less

New Philosophy

2008-10-09T17:35:00.001-07:00

I have had some nice comments and emails about my post yesterday and me trying to figure things out. It seems like a lot of other people are going through similar situations and are trying to make positive changes in their own lives.

Emily sent me a link to the blog Roni's Weigh about a woman who has lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers. She sent me three different posts about Roni's 3 Steps to a Healthier YOU! saying that they had reasonated with her. After reading them, I completely agree and thought I would share them with you since I couldn't have summed up my new outlook on life any better:
Step 1. Self Acceptance
Step 2. Stateless Dieting
Step 3. Move More

Figuring things out

2008-10-08T16:52:00.000-07:00

The last few months have been a roller coaster ride of stress and binge eating. I feel like I have had very little control over my life and it isn't a very good feeling. The result of all of this is that I weighed in at 181.8 lbs last week, the highest weight I have been in two and half years. To say it was a bit depressing is an understatement. I don't want to be one of those people that lose weight only to gain it all back and then some.

I restarted Weight Watchers online last week to try and get back on track, but for some reason, I don't feel like Weight Watchers is working for me this time. Calculating all of the points felt like a punishment rather than it did a reward for being healthy. I would end up going over my points for the day only to beat myself up about it and then go on to consume even more extra points. All I could think about was what I couldn't eat rather than focusing on what I could eat.

Over the weekend, I came to the realization that beating myself up about not being perfect whether it comes to my food consumption or my exercise routine only makes things worse and negates any positive results of me eating and being healthy. I'm trying to figure things out and instead of restricting what I can eat, I'm trying to be mindful about my choices and to make wise ones, choices that will satisfy me and won't make me go off the rails.

'm trying to eat in moderation. I love food and wine and to deny myself from trying new restaurants and new wines only makes me unhappy which leads me back to the dark path of overeating. Learning how to eat in moderation is hard, but one that I'm hoping will get easier as I learn to love myself better and not beat myself up when I don't follow a prescribed plan.

I've been following this plan for the last few days and managed to lose 0.8 lbs this past week. It isn't the largest 1-week weight loss I've accomplished, but it is a start and definitely better than the scales continuing to only go up.

Cheesy as it may be, I've also been reading The Secret and am trying to include positive affirmations and visualizations in my life. I definitely know that I'm much more likely to live a clean and healthy lifestyle when I'm happy, so I'm trying to focus on finding more joy in my life and all of the things that I do to take care of myself. Training your mind to think about all of things you have rather than all of the things you don't is definitely not as easy as you would think, but I'm going to get the hang of it soon.

My philosophy on eating has also changed the way that I'm approaching exercise. Running or any other kind of exercise became one more thing that I had to do each busy and stressful day and it has stopped being fun for the past few months. My training suffered because I couldn't bear to get out of bed in the mornings and into my running shoes. Instead of forcing myself to run so many miles per week, I'm trying to have fun with exercise and learn how to enjoy it once again. For the past week or so, this has meant going on walks and enjoying the beautiful Vegas fall weather and all of the wonderful animals that inhabit the trail by our house, including chipmunks, rabbits, hummingbirds, and even a huge desert tarantula on Sunday. These workouts make me feel energized and good about myself, the way exercise should make you feel. Granted, I've found that it is very hard for me to only walk on these excursions, and I usually find a way to sneak in some running intervals (usually when a song comes on my shuffle that makes me want to run), but I'm running because I want to and not because I have to run.

I'm trying to figure things out and realize that this will take time and that I need to care for myself and allow for mistakes and setbacks without it completely derailing my efforts to get more healthy and fit.

What I inspire to be one day....

2008-10-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

I know that I need to post about the fat fighting adventures, which have actually started for real this week, but I wanted to post about this inspiring woman. I want to be her when I'm older.

WWGD

2008-09-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

I promise this is my last celeb post, but I got the first email newsletter from Gwynnie's new website Goop. In it, she offers up too of her favourite recipes: Turkey Ragu and Banana Nut Muffins (the Ragu actually sounds good and I think I will make it next week). Interestingly, she starts off the newsletter addressing her reputation of being a horrible eater:

Cooking and food have become my main ancillary passion in life. This may strike some of you as odd, as my friend Mark Bittman of the New York Times once told me, “you have a terrible food reputation, everyone thinks you eat some dry seaweed and a little brown rice.” How did this come to be? I suppose it was my rather strict four-year foray into macrobiotics. I am no longer so restrictive with my diet, far from it. But some of the tenets of macrobiotics have stayed with me and they always will. I try to eat locally, seasonally and always organically. I don’t eat processed foods or red meat and I try to stay away from sugar and dairy but I have a major cheese weakness and, well, you only live once.

More celeb workout routines

2008-09-22T15:04:00.001-07:00

Many people were right to point out that god knows whether Gwyneth really eats all the "fried dough" she says she craves or not. However, this new article about Posh just might be the most ridiculous thing I've read a celeb say about dieting (or at least recently).

Granted, I don't run 4 miles 7 days a week, but I have a feeling that if I did I would have to eat very very little in order to look like Posh. Running burns on average 100 calories per mile, which is only 400 calories that Posh burns per day. She must significantly watch what she eats to remain that thin, I'm sure of it.

Maybe I need to do a Posh running experiment and see what happens ;P Even though I would much prefer her "old" cardio routine of just shopping.

How to look like Gwyneth

2008-09-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

I have always had a thing of Gwyneth Paltrow. Something about Sliding Doors made me love her, even if subsequently she seems a bit cold and aloof as a person. She has always looked good, but over the summer when she started rocking those short dresses and crazy high heels, she looked incredible! Perfect from head to flawlessly shoed toe.

She was on Oprah yesterday talking about how she manages to look so good. Although I didn't watch the episode, it was refreshing to read and see on YouTube that she realizes that she is horrible at restricting her eating and going on a diet, so she exercises like crazy instead to make up for what she wants to eat. While who knows what Gwyneth "really" eats--she was macrobiotic for a while after all--anyone that works out for 2 hours a day six days a week deserves to look fab. In a time when most Hollywood starlets claim they don't work out because they have great genes or that their only work out is going on a walk with their pooch, it was nice to see a sweaty Gwyneth showing the nation her work out routine.

When I first read that she works out that much, I thought, "Oh mustn't that be nice to have the time to work out for 2 hours a day. I could do that too if I had maids, personal chefs, and someone devoted to loading and unloading my dishwasher." But then I started to realize that if I really wanted to work out, I have more than enough time to work out for up to 2 hours a day. I just need to make sure I get out of bed early enough and not sit on my butt and watch tv as soon as I get home from work.

So Gwyneth has got me riled up and ready to lose some weight and look great. I had already decided that I'm rejoining Weight Watchers on Monday to help get control of my weight--seriously, a 10 lb weight gain this year is not a good thing and I don't want it to continue. In addition to being more mindful of my eating, especially portion-wise, I'm going to try and aim for at least 1 hour of exercise a day six times a week. If Gwynnie can workout two hours a day, I can definitely do at least one. Not only will this make me look better, but it will also make me feel better and more balanced in my life. This change is long overdue.

Change of Plans

2008-09-16T17:24:00.001-07:00

So I haven't posted in a while despite my promises to enthrall whatever readers I may have these days with training stories galore about me prepping for the Nike Women's Marathon in October. Well things didn't work out as I had planned.

I started running again after being off for 3 weeks due to the wedding and being sick, but kept on having major issues on my runs. Ever since moving to Vegas, I've been having problems when I run due to what has been diagnosed as asthma due to severe allergies. I had gotten a couple of new inhalers a few months ago that made me stop sounding like Darth Vader during my runs. They worked great until I ran out of the good inhaler right before the wedding. Instead of wasting 2 hours or so waiting at the doctors for him to see me and refill my prescription, I tried calling for a refill. I seriously called every day for 5 days and left messages or spoke to the front desk about getting a refill. No luck. During this inhaler-free time, I was unable to run 3 miles let alone the 10 miles that I needed to run over Labor Day weekend to get me semi-back on track with my marathon training. It was really frustrating.

After 5 days of being without my inhaler, I ended up calling the front desk of the doctors office and freaking out and telling them that I needed this inhaler because I was training for a marathon and I couldn't run without. They said my doctor was out that day, so I asked if I could get a sample and pick it up. They begrudgingly said that would be okay.

With the new inhaler, I was able to run again without being winded or sounding like I was drowning, but my runs never felt that great, or at least not great enough for me to feel confident in suddenly increasing my mileage significantly in order to cover the distance needed to feel somewhat prepared for the marathon. After being so sick for over a week and gaining some weight since the wedding week, I feel like I've really lost quite a bit of fitness and motivation. Work has been very stressful these past few weeks (thankfully things are looking up right now) and I had been relieving my stress by eating crap and drinking wine a bit too often. Running which normally makes me really happy began to feel like a burden, one that I didn't want to wake up early and do (which is really the only option in Vegas since it gets so hot).

A couple of weeks ago, I was supposed to run 12-13 miles on Sunday which would "ease" me into increasing my long runs each week by 2 miles before I reached the final 20 mile run two weeks before the marathon. I was pretty nervous about whether I could run this far, but kept on trying to talk myself into it. My confidence level got substantially lower when the latest issue of Runner's World arrived in the mail the Friday before the 12 mile run. This issue was pretty much dedicated to training for marathons and had all of these different training schedules and people discussing how they best train for marathons. The one common thread was mileage, mileage, mileage. Even if you take the low mileage training options that Runner's World offered, the miles that I had covered were significantly less and I hadn't given myself enough time physically or mentally with everything that had happened since the SF half marathon to build up to running a marathon.

Reading the magazine freaked me out, but I kept on thinking if I can run 12 miles this weekend and it goes okay, I can push myself to train for and run the marathon. Fast forward to me waking up from a nap on Saturday by jolting out of bed with a horrible dream about me crashing and burning during the marathon. Having this dream made me remember how hard and difficult my first marathon was and how I was so much more prepared for that marathon than I was for this one. It felt like this nightmare was an omen of what would happen to me in October.

I set my alarm for 5 am on Sunday morning with the plan of doing the long run with Carlo. I ended up waking up around 2 am in a panic attack thinking that there is no way in hell that I can run this marathon without doing harm to myself, physically and emotionally. I laid awake for the next couple of hours thinking about how I felt and whether I could keep on training with the marathon as my goal and succeed, or at least achieve a good race regardless of when I crossed the finish line. My honest conclusion was that I wasn't prepared to run a marathon and 6 weeks of intense training wasn't going to change that.

Carlo of course got woken up at 4 am by me sobbing and not knowing what to do. Even though I knew I was making the right decision to not run the marathon, I still felt like a failure for not being able to train like I had wanted or not following through with my goals. All I could think about was my 7 mile meltdown during my last marathon and how I didn't want that to happen for all 26.2 miles, because I knew I would never finish. Despite being half asleep, Carlo managed to calm me down and told me that I was making a smart decision. He is right, not running this marathon is probably the smartest decision I have made in a while, even though it was hard and it still makes me feel a bit like a failure.

Despite my choice to not run the marathon, I will still be going to San Francisco in October and running the half marathon instead. You aren't technically allowed to switch distances and I haven't found anyone who I could trade my marathon bib with for a half bib. However, I emailed a woman on Craigslist who has run the Nike Womens Half for the last 2 years and she says that once the race gets started, they don't care if you cross the half marathon finish line despite wearing a full marathon bib. We will see how it goes. I just want to be a part of this race and run with 20,000 other women that day even if I only do the half. I think it is going to be an incredible experience and I know I can be prepared for 13.1 miles and run a good race.

So I've learned a few lessons from all this, I have decided that I will not consider running a marathon again until:
- I move to a more runner friendly environment, both climate-wise and support/training group wise.
- I am consistently running 20+ miles a week.
- I have hit my goal weight, or have lost more weight.
- I give myself the time to properly train and succeed at achieving my marathon goals.
- I run a really fast half marathon of around 2:15.

Until then I will keep on running and trying to get better at the half marathon distance.

Alex vs. Her Belly

2008-08-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

Despite me wanting to lose weight for the wedding, I ended up gaining a few pounds before we even left for California. Being on vacation for a week before the wedding and eating and drinking with complete reckless abandon didn't help me lose any weight. In fact looking at some of the wedding photos, it looks like I'm 6 months pregnant from the booze bloat. Seeing me this way makes me cringe and feel really unhappy, especially since the wedding was probably one of the happiest days of my life so far and I hate it that I all see is fat when I look at any photos that show me from the boobs down :(

Anyway, after seeing some particularly horrific photos of my belly from the wedding that my godmother Ann sent yesterday, I have declared war on my belly and I'm out to defeat it for good!

The battle plan includes cutting back on my drinking and no longer drinking during the work week, cutting out crap food, and trying to exercise more. The drinking part of this battle plan will most likely be the hardest tactic to execute considering that I have been drinking and more importantly enjoying quite a bit of wine the last few months. The thought of no post-work glass (or two or three) of wine is quite depressing. I stopped drinking Diet Coke and all fake sugar drinks about 1.5 years ago, so my beverage intake is confined to tea, water, sparkling water, and booze. Take away the booze and my fluids get really boring pretty fast, which of course makes alcohol even more attractive.

I've been fighting the war for the last two days and aside from a chocolate chip cookie sneak attack yesterday from my opposition, I've been doing okay (minus the horrible cookie guilt, of course). In fact, it feels and looks like my stomach has shrunk. I'm not sure if this a real or imagined victory, but I will use it as motivation to keep on moving forward with this war.

Yesterday also marked my return to running after a 3 week hiatus due to the wedding, being sick, and having a crazy work schedule. We ended up only running/walking 2.6 miles but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I was supposed to run this morning, but ended up sleeping in due to exhaustion from the belly war and waking up at 6 am on Monday morning. We will go running for sure tomorrow and increase our mileage because I'm supposed to run 10 miles over the weekend to get back on track with the marathon training.

Running Solo in San Francisco

2008-08-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

Carlo and I kind of planned our wedding around the San Francisco Half Marathon and we had wanted it to be the official kick off to wedding week. Unfortunately, Carlo got really sick the Thursday before the half and we decided it would be best if he didn't run and instead got better for the wedding.

I was a little hesitant running the half by myself because I haven't run that long of a distance by myself ever, but I approached the run as a mental training run for the Nike marathon that I will be running by myself in October, all 26.2 miles solo.

One of my strategies to keep occupied was to dedicate each mile to a different person or thing that I'm thankful for in my life. I read about this idea in an article Kristin Armstrong wrote for Runner's World last year, and thought I would give it a try. There were a few cases of serendipity when my ipod and mile recipients matched up, including when a song by The Cardigans came on during Andrew's mile and A Town Called Malice played during Alison's mile. These moments definitely made me smile and put an extra spring in my step. The only "hard" miles were the last couple which I devoted to Carlo and our pending wedding. I was supposed to think about what I wanted to include in my vows, but I started crying just at the thought of the vows which wasn't really good when I was going down a huge 1 mile hill. Crying and trying to take deep breaths don't really go together and I felt like I was about to hyperventilate! The mile markers not only helped me pass the time, but also reminded me of all of the important people in my life who have supported me over the years and have helped me become a runner. I will definitely be creating a list for the marathon in October, and will be taking special requests to fill all 26 slots.

The run itself went great. I went out feeling really strong, and pretty much stayed on course with my nutrition every 3 miles and maintained this great feeling throughout the run. I think it helped that we had run the course last year and I knew where the big hills were and how to deal with them. It also helps to have an incredible course to run, which is beautiful and takes you over the Golden Gate Bridge. I got lucky this year because there was no fog on the bridge, so I could actually see off the bridge rather than us running through what felt like a cloud when we did it last year.

A view of the Golden Gate Bridge from around mile 5

I tried to enjoy the run as much as possible and all I can remember is feeling really lucky that I'm able to run, be fit, and was about to marry my soulmate in only a few days. I just felt blessed throughout the half and it was a really great feeling.

Part of me having fun was trying to take some photos during the run, and of course, taking photos of other runners who asked. Here is one of me after I have just crossed the Golden Gate Bridge before having to run back over it.

The last couple of miles were the hardest because in mile 10 you come down this incredibly steep hill which is around 1 mile long and then the rest of the course is undulating hills until you enter Golden Gate Park. The downhill trashes your quads and then your legs just become jelly in the final push. I took the downhill a lot slower than we did it last year because I remember having major problems in the final 2 miles, so I wanted to save my legs a bit. The slower speed on the downhill helped somewhat but I was still pretty spent at the end.

The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I knew Carlo would be waiting for me at the finish line and I couldn't wait to see him. When I entered Golden Gate Park and looked at my watch, I knew I was going to beat last year's time and really tried to speed things up. I started going really strong when I saw Carlo at mile 13 and pushed it for the last .1 mile to the finish line, where I passed quite a few people :)

So fast, I'm blurry...

I crossed the finish line at 2:43:12 hours, which was a 3:29 minute improvement over last year's time! I was very happy, but knew that I could have easily come in under 2:40 if I had pushed it a bit harder in the last 2 miles and hadn't stopped for so many photos. Oh well, next year we will both make it under 2:40 for sure!

RELAUNCH

2008-08-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

In case anyone still checks this blog, you might notice that I've changed things up and plan on starting to blog again in preparation of running my 2nd marathon in San Francisco on October 19, 2008. Hopefully I will begin tomorrow by posting images from the San Francisco Half Marathon that I ran at the beginning of August.

Stay tuned for more running, exercise, and diet adventures....

does this wedding dress make carlo look like a dwarf?

2008-07-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

I am SO glad that the wedding dress that I ended up buying neither makes the room look too small, Carlo like a dwarf, or my ass too big. In fact, I think it might just have the perfect downtown edgy vibe for Napa garden wedding. Sometimes articles in the New York Times Wedding section make me want to barf.

Even though barfing might be a good thing right now since stress has caused me to consume everything in sight for the last few weeks. My friend Erin was right in warning me that she gained weight in the lead up to her weddings. I'm hoping that my dress doesn't make it look like we are having a shotgun wedding :)

perspective

2008-06-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

I was going to write a post today about how I came home from work last night, laid on the couch, and inhaled an obscene amount of garlic knots and pizza for dinner, and how I suck at trying to lose weight.

But I woke up to find that our friend Jen Sarver's mum had been killed in a car accident this morning. Jen and her mum truly were each other's best friend and had one of the best mother and daughter relationships that I had ever experienced. So in light of this tragedy and this irreparable hole in Jen's life, I think things are going really great right now. My thoughts are with Jen, her dad, and brothers x o x

stupid taffy

2008-06-11T15:04:00.001-07:00

Each taffy is 1 point bringing my useless consumed point total for the day to 6 points!

There has to be a positive somewhere...

2008-06-11T14:44:00.001-07:00

When I weighed in on Monday, the scale read 174.4 lbs. Today it read 172.4 lbs :)

This is good news and hopefully I will see some more results at my next weigh in to prove that this weight loss wasn't some fluke poo weight.

Torture

2008-06-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

With the wedding fast approaching in 2 months and gaining quite a few pounds from out of control eating and not exercising, I decided to get it together for real this time by rejoining Weight Watchers on Monday.

Ever since I have joined, all I can think about is food. I'm sooo hungry because my body is used to consuming so much food :( I did well the first day and only went over by 2 points, which equaled an extra glass of wine in the evening. Yesterday, I was on track to go over by only 1 point when I had to go to lunch with my boss and the restaurant we went to was devoid of any healthy options. I took a defeatist mentality that night by putting as much reduced fat cheese on my baked potato as possible and then finished off the bottle of wine that I had been so carefully measuring out into perfect 4 oz glasses the night before. I didn't count any points of yesterday, but I know that I went over quite a bit.

Today I've done better, but I'm just craving food and am so hungry. When I was out running an errand at lunch today, I had the windows down and PF Chang's was just taunting me with delicious smells permeating the Fort Apache and Charleston intersection. I would be totally on track today if I hadn't of eaten 6 or so pieces of taffy that someone left on the table in front of my office. I don't really like taffy, but I have picked up a piece every single time that I have walked by. God knows how many points sugar and salt water equal once I tally them.

It doesn't make matters better by the fact that I can barely walk today. I decided to do some lunges and squats yesterday morning with some upper body weight training because I putzed around in the morning and didn't have enough time to go and run. My quads and butt hurt so bad, so bad that I couldn't get out of bed and run this morning which kind of defeats the whole purpose of exercising if you are too sore to continue exercising.

Things must get easier or I think I will die.

Lots of Heart

2008-05-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

While we have been moving house, traveling, preparing for a new exhibition at work, and hosting guests, I have had a very hard time trying to exercise and eat healthy. I'm trying to get back into a routine and it has been hard. I don't have very many excuses left, so I need to get my act together.

On a more positive note, I received good news about my heart. It turns out that I have a trivial amount of aortic valve regurgitation which is causing my heart murmur. My doctor seemed unconcerned about it right now, which is great news! In order to help prevent this from getting worse, the Mayo Clinic suggests the following prevention tips:

Control high blood pressure. Lowering blood pressure reduces the strain on your aortic valve.
Consume less salt. Cutting back on salt in your diet helps you maintain your blood pressure within a normal range, which is important if you have aortic valve regurgitation.
Maintain a healthy weight. Keep your weight within a range recommended by your doctor. Extra weight makes extra work for your heart.
Exercise. Follow an exercise program within guidelines recommended by your doctor. Exercise itself does not fix aortic valve regurgitation, but it can help to lower your blood pressure. Exercise also helps maintain your general fitness, which will help with your recovery if you need heart surgery.

So now I have no excuses about not eating healthy and exercise because some day my heart just may thank me :)

i <3 my heart and i want it to be healthy

2008-05-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

It has been crazy busy lately between moving house and work. Any efforts at eating well or exercising have totally failed. Instead of devouring chocolate chip cookies, I've been craving carbs. Bread, pizza or beer will do I'm not picky at all. Falling off the wagon and being left 3 miles behind are totally showing. My jeans are tight and my belly jiggles as I go up the stairs of our new two storey house. It is gross. Today is the 3 month countdown date to our wedding. I'm still fat. I'm not sure much will change. Thank god that I've found a potential dress that plays up those curves and makes it look good rather than looking like someone who should have cut back on the carbs!

Last week I went for my echocardiogram and even though I wanted immediate results about the status of my heart and heart murmur, there was only a technician doing the test. I laid on a doctors bed for half an hour as she took multiple ultrasounds of different parts of my heart and the way that it sounded. I have no idea how a normal heart is supposed to look or sound, so I was just in awe and kind of freaked out about seeing my heart and my heart valves beat on screen. I especially liked how my huge boobs got in the way of the bottom of the heart shot, so I had to lift my boob up to get a proper image of my heart. The technician was SO happy when I volunteered to do this since she couldn't get an image whatsoever of my heart with the boob in the way. Awesome! I love being reminded about how huge my boobs are. Once I get to my goal weight and maintain it for a while, they are SO gone!

As I was changing into my clothes, the technician was recording all of my ultrasounds and making notes and asked if I was an athlete. I reluctantly said yes thinking that she was going to tell me that I needed to stop all activity because my heart was about to implode. She said that she could tell from looking at my heart. I was totally shocked and didn't know what to say, but told her that I run a bit. I have no idea what this statement means in terms of my heart murmur or the condition of heart, but it does reiterate the point that exercise is good for you. I may still have jelly belly and a body that I think needs to lose 25lbs, but the inside of my body shows that I'm an athlete (even though right now I'm only competing in the carb triathlon).

The point is that exercise is NECESSARY to being healthy and you don't need to be Heidi Klum on the outside to be healthy on the inside. Ultimately, being healthy on the inside is MUCH more important than fitting into that size 8. This may be hard to remember and believe me I struggle with this all the time, but I would much rather be healthy on the inside and have an "athlete's heart" even if I don't necessarily look like an athlete from the outside.

Anyway, I go for a heart follow up tomorrow morning and fingers crossed that the technician's comments mean that I'm in the clear!

Chocolate Bacon

2008-04-29T15:58:00.001-07:00

Someone at work sent me this photo today. He thinks this looks delicious. I'm not so sure.

A couple of months ago, Carlo and I were at an event in Vegas and there was a Vosges Haut-Chocolate stand that was handing out a strip of bacon on a skewer with a caramel chocolate on the bottom. I had to try one because the combo was so bizarre. The taste was okay, but I prefer my bacon and chocolate on separate plates :)

If you want to try this combo, Vosges just came out with a new chocolate bar featuring this "flavor profile": Mo's Bacon Bar. While I can't vouch for it tasting good or not, I do know that Vosges makes some other killer chocolate bars.

Stress Eating

2008-04-28T16:36:00.000-07:00

I've been stressing about a few things over the past couple of weeks whether it is about us finding a new house, work, or the news about my heart murmur. In typical fashion, I have turned to food as a way to cope with this stress.

In addition to lots of wine, chocolate chip cookies have become my new craving. Whenever I'm stressed, I crave a chocolate chip cookie. Over the past couple of weeks I have even driven to multiple Starbucks or Coffee Beans in search of a cookie. Unfortunately, I discovered that even if Coffee Bean doesn't have any chocolate chip cookies out on the counter they usually have some hidden. This isn't a good discovery and I took advantage of this new knowledge again this afternoon. The road to weight loss success is definitely not paved with chocolate chip cookies, so I need to figure out another way to deal with stress aside from eating (and yes, I'm fully aware that working out relieves stress which is why when I don't work out this is cause for further stress and more cookies!).

After bitching to a co-worker last week about how I can seem to shift my weight and play the constant yo yo game of 3 lbs, she commented that maybe my body is at a weight that it likes. This comment got me thinking and I have maintained this weight for almost 2 years, much of it without really trying. Perhaps this is my body's comfort weight and I just need to like myself at this weight. Maybe instead of trying to lose weight, I just need to make a concerted effort to strength train and become stronger at this weight. We will see. I'm still coming to terms with this idea. I just need to try and make peace with my flabby belly.

Because I'm a HUGE dork

2008-04-25T17:25:00.000-07:00

The squeals of laughter I heard from my co-worker Melissa's office when I sent this to her were awesome. Seriously, I'm so going to look like this on my wedding day :)

Too Good to be True

2008-04-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

So it is true, Pinkberry isn't the natural deliciousness that the company claimed it was. This is a shame since I was looking forward to a summer filled with lots of fro yo from Tart, a Vegas Pinkberry knockoff. But I'm in a war against sugar in my diet and three different types of sugar in my fro yo doesn't sound so hot to me.

More on my sugar wars in a later post...

See Saw

2008-04-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of months, I have been repeating the cycle of losing 2 lbs one week and then gaining it back the next week, only to lose the 2 lbs again a couple of weeks later then gaining it back and so forth. It is very annoying, especially since I am doing a Weightloss War with people from work and in the weeks that I gain the weight back, I drop to 8th and last place. I refuse to come in last place in this Biggest Loser-style weight loss competition, especially since I helped initiate the idea to prepare for the upcoming wedding. One part of the competition ends on May 19 and the second part ends on September 19, so hopefully, I will be able to move up the rankings some.

To help these efforts, Carlo and I woke up this morning and worked out to a Kathy Smith DVD. We were supposed to go for a run but there have been really strong winds for the past few days and it was howling outside this morning. I think Carlo thought the video was going to be totally lame, but pretty soon he was cursing the TV screen when he was doing a squat for the millionth time. Despite him thinking the video was a bit cheesy, he has agreed to do it with me again, so perhaps a little Lift Weights to Lose Weight will be incorporated into our workout schedule a few times a week. As Jillian from the Biggest Loser says, it is best to do 4 hours of strength training a week and any cardio on top of that is gravy in redefining your body. I normally do cardio with no strength training, so I'm going to try and switch it up for the next couple of weeks and see if that helps me get off this weight see saw.

Speaking of the Biggest Loser, the finale last week was AWESOME. Ali looked incredible and her transformation was nothing short of remarkable, especially since she did the majority of the work by herself at home after getting voted off campus in the first few weeks. If my arms even look a quarter as good as hers do for the wedding, I will be stoked.

Murmur

2008-04-23T17:34:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday, I went to the doctor's office to follow up on some blood work that I had done for an annual physical. My blood and urine all came back fine with no major worries, which was a relief because I had noticed some floaty bits in my urine when I handed over my sample. The doctor had no idea what they could be, but he didn't seem concerned about them.

I then preceded to tell my doctor that I'm training for a marathon in October and I've noticed that when I run for a long time, I get really wheezy afterwards and sound like Darth Vader. My doctor said I might have asthma, so he spent a long time listening to my lungs.

While he was listening to my lungs, he noticed that I have a heart murmur. This kind of freaked me out because I have never heard anything or worried about my heart not being in great shape. Most heart murmurs are innocent, but then I'm a borderline hypochondriac so of course I started to worry.

The only good thing that came out of this doctor's appointment is that he said since I am an athlete, he wanted to do a series of tests that will investigate what could be the matter with my heart. My doctor said he used to be the doctor to all of the sports teams at the University of Connecticut, so he is used to working with athletes and running these types of tests all the time. Despite feeling very alarmed by the prospect of more tests and possibly something horrible being wrong with me, I loved the athlete compliment. I just didn't tell him that I'm only a really really slow athlete :)

In addition to doing a breath test that did determine I have asthma, I also had an ECG which proved that my heart is working well electrically-wise. This is good news. I go next Tuesday to have a echocardiogram done, which will determine whether there is any valve damage or anything else wrong with my heart causing the murmur. Fingers crossed this will come back clear and there is nothing wrong with me and I can resume training for the marathon again without worrying whether me having a hard time running is because of a heart about to implode or me just being a fat ass.

Why processed food is gross

2008-04-15T15:22:00.000-07:00

This is a hilarious German web project that records different processed and packaged foods and compares how the food is depicted on the packaging and what the food looks like in reality. As you can imagine, reality never seems to live up to the advertising.

Run like a Girl

2008-04-13T21:12:00.000-07:00

I'm in! I found out a couple of weeks ago that my name was drawn in the Nike Women's Marathon lottery and I'm in. Game on, so I will be running 26.2 miles again in San Francisco on October 19.

When I found out the news, I was both excited and wanted to vomit at the same time. The thought of running a marathon kind of frightens me a bit, especially because I now know what to expect after running my first marathon last February. This time though I want to run a better and faster marathon and I will run a 5:30 marathon or less. (I want to beat Katie Holmes' NY time from last year for sure!)

I started training this past week and Carlo joined me for my first "long" run of my training program this afternoon. I have not done very well training for our last two half marathons in February and March, so I definitely have to commit myself to succeeding and putting in the miles and hours. I'm looking forward to a great run in October and having this training hopefully make me have a smoking time for the San Francisco half in August and then perhaps a smoking (or at least better) body for our wedding 5 days later.

To help me get in the mood for marathon training today in addition to reading all about the London Marathon this morning, Carlo and I went to see Run Fat Boy Run. It was a fun movie and had a great message that running a marathon--as well as much of life--requires determination, passion, and a refusal to give up. I thought I did an okay job at hiding my tears at the end, but Carlo totally called me on it. Hopefully I can recall some of the funny moments in the movie on race day in October to help me along.

Alex 1 - Snooze Button 27

2008-03-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

The last couple of days didn't go too well. Tuesday night was the Wolfgang Puck restaurant opening where I consumed vast quantities of delicious Cotes du Rhone wine and more steak tartare than is probably good for me. Wednesday was Carlo's birthday and dinner at Lotus of Siam. Yesterday I did okay. Today we are eating lots of carbs for the half marathon that Carlo and I are running tomorrow to celebrate his 30th birthday and entering into the 30-34 age group.

I have been really bad about exercising this week and the snooze button has continued to win. I meant to get up this morning and run to prepare, or at least pretend to prepare, for the race tomorrow. I hope I don't die tomorrow. I told Carlo that we need to figure out where we are going to eat after the race, since that seemed to work so well last month in Austin :)

I'm looking forward to doing this half marathon tomorrow and then begin training properly for the San Francisco half marathon in August before the wedding. I also signed up for the lottery for the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco in October. I should find out by the end of the month if I get in. Fingers crossed, it would be great to train for a full marathon this year and run a faster time than my first marathon in Austin last year.

so far so good

2008-03-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning we did our usual hit the snooze button so many times until it was too late to go running. However, we made up for that by going for a 45-minute walk after I got off work last night. It was the perfect night to go walking with amazing weather and all of the trees and bushes in bloom around the neighborhood. I felt very zen-like once we got back to the house. I know walking doesn't burn very many calories (only 245 calories last night), but it is very relaxing and I always feel good afterwards which I sometimes don't when I have a hard run. Despite it not looking possible this week with after-work commitments, I would like to try and go for a walk every night after work with Carlo in addition to a more vigorous morning workout.

I signed up for a 3-month swim pass yesterday at lunch with the best intentions to hit the pool this morning. However, the snooze button won yet again and by the time I got out of bed at 7:10 am it was too late to drive to the pool, swim, drive back, and get ready for work. Instead of just staying in bed which is what I really wanted to do, I woke up and popped in a Kathy Smith fitness DVD. I had bought these and the whole Jillian from the Biggest Loser boxset last month but I hadn't used them yet. I ended up doing the 5-minute warmup and then the 20-minute lower body workout. Even though it was only 20 minutes, it was still hard! God knows how many squats and lunges I did. I'm surprised that I can walk this afternoon because my legs and butt were burning. Thank god Carlo had stayed in bed and wasn't privy to my uncoordinated moves around the living room! I would like to try and do these videos more often because I easily have 25 minutes a day to make my butt shrink.

Off to the opening reception for Wolfgang Puck's new steakhouse Cut at the Palazzo. Fingers crossed I won't go too off the wagon tonight, I've got a weigh in tomorrow morning.

For real this time

2008-03-10T17:16:00.001-07:00

I'm back, two and half months later than I had planned.

2008 started off with a bang and some new shiny diamonds on my finger, but all my good intentions were lost with heavy work commitments, loving food and wine too much, lots of travel, and planning a wedding. (On the plus side, I have run 1 half marathon in 2008 already and will run a second one on Saturday). But, I have basically gone to bed each Sunday night of 2008 thinking that tomorrow IS going to be the day I finally get my eating and working out back on track. Each Monday normally then rolls around with me hitting the snooze button and staying in bed to only "make up" for it by being a fat ass for the rest of the week. All this so called-effort has just resulted in me losing and then gaining the same 3 or so pounds over and over again for the past couple of months.

Well, I'm sick of doing this and more importantly, I'm sick of looking the way I do. Even though I'm technically (code word for was before I went to Laguna Beach over the weekend) only a couple pounds heavier than my lowest adult weight of 167, I feel like a whale and feel as though I'm just as fat as when I started this adventure minus the size 12 jeans or medium sized dresses/tops. Carlo calls this phenomenon moving goal posts, but I just call it damn frustrating.

I don't want to be a fat bride when I get married in August. Carlo has already lost a lot of weight so far this year and looks great! The ever-shrinking Carlo has shrunk so much that he is only 40 lbs heavier than me right now. While I'm so proud and impressed with his accomplishments, I want to begin our marriage looking just as good as him, and more importantly be healthy so our married bliss can last for many decades.

So this a call to arms:
I am getting back on the wagon.
If I fall off the wagon, I will get back on it immediately and not wait until next Monday.
I will make healthy food choices.
I will exercise for at least 30 minutes day 5 days a week.
I will try to blog daily to be held accountable for my actions.
I will hit my goal weight of 145 lbs in 2008.
I will be in my 150s when we get married in August.
I will look smoking hot in my wedding dress.

Fat, watch out I'm coming after you....

Be back in 2008

2007-12-23T07:12:00.001-08:00

I'm taking time off from thinking about food and writing this blog. I did make it back down to my pre-Thanksgiving weight of 167 on Wednesday, and will weigh in again in the new year.

I AM going to hit my goal weight of 145 in 2008, hopefully the first half of the year.

I promise lots more fat fighting adventures in 2008. Right now I'm going to enjoy the holiday with my family and go crazy at the Bellagio Buffet this afternoon :)

Thanksgiving Bloat

2007-12-02T20:59:00.001-08:00

My plan to watch what I ate while I was in Texas failed miserably.

I ended up weighing in a pound heavier the Wednesday that we left for Arlington and my gluttonous ways continued through our 5 days away. Since we were back in Texas, of course we had to eat Tex-Mex and BBQ, as well as gorge on Thanksgiving dinner and pretty much everything else that was in my parents' house! I also consumed an obscene amount of wine during the course of the holiday, but it was all very fun and festive.

I paid the price for my bad ways by gaining 2.6 lbs when I weighed in last Wednesday. What is annoying is that I weighed myself on Tuesday morning and I had only gained 1.2 lbs, so somehow I managed to gain 1.4 lbs overnight before my weigh in. It makes no sense at all and this increase in weight just made me feel even more bloated and gross.

Despite eating veggie soup and fruit for the first two days that I returned to Vegas, I've gone back to pigging out. After a booze and food binge, I always find it hard to get back on the healthy wagon. I'm not sure if my body craves sugar and fat even more because it got used to having that on a daily basis, or whether my stomach grew. Either way, it makes being healthy even harder than it normally is.

I want to eat better because I've felt blah and yucky all week. I feel doughy and like my boobs and arms have grown huge. I only exercised once all week and my butt was a jiggly - in a major way.

Even if it kills me, tomorrow HAS to be a fresh start.

What I ate last week

2007-11-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

Here is what I ate last week. Not super bad, but not super pretty either. There was a lot of crap that I really didn't need to eat or drink, which I have highlighted in red. I also need to start eating something else than salads, but I think this week may have been salad heavy because I ate out for the majority of the week.

Breakfast

2 cups Kashi Go Lean

2 cups frozen raspberries

2 cups fat free Greek yoghurt

Vanilla fat free yoghurt with peaches, raspberries, and granola

1 ½ eggs

½ cups egg whites

4 tbsp corn salsa

Tiny bit of grated cheese
1 veggie breakfast sausage patty

Salads

3 BBQ chicken salads with dressing on the side

Chinese chicken salad with dressing on the side

Dinner salad with vinaigrette on the side

3 side salads with vinaigrette on the side

Feta side salad with vinaigrette on the side

Arugula salad

Other Meals

2 smoked turkey and avocado sandwiches on wheat

6 oz London broil

Grilled veggies

½ lb plain hamburger
¾ Vietnamese spring roll with shrimp

Rice vermicelli salad with 3 oz pork loin, 3 mini egg rolls, and 4 shrimp

Baked potato with a tiny bit of sour cream and cheese on the side
2 oz BBQ chicken breast
2 chicken fajitas on whole wheat tortillas with grilled red peppers, mushrooms, and onions

Seared foie gras on brioche

4 scallops with mashed potatoes, fried parsnips, and beurre blanc

Falafel pita

4 oz whole wheat pasta with spicy tomato sauce

Snacks

2 Kashi Trail Mix bars

2 rye crisp crackers with cheese

Tortilla chips with hot sauce and guacamole

Handful of almonds

Things I really didn’t need to eat in retrospect

2 rolls

Piece of corn bread

2 pieces of garlic cheese toast

Apple tart with caramel ice cream

3 bite sized coconut macaroons

A couple of bites of salami

Drinks

1 bottle white wine

1 ½ bottles red wine

1 ½ pints of Shiner Bock

5 beers

Grande wet cappuccino with nonfat milk

Grande hot chocolate with nonfat milk

Lots of water

Lots of mint green tea

Lots of iced tea

You are what you eat, or in my case drink...

2007-11-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

So I kept a list of all of the food that I ate this week, as well as everything that I had to drink. I have yet to go through it closely, but I'm a bit shocked at how much I drank this past week. I had been doing really good in not drinking at all during the week, but ever since we went to California for my birthday and bought all that delicious wine, I've been reaching for the wine glass a bit too often. If I am what I eat, I think I would have been a BBQ chicken salad mixed with a bottle of red wine this week!

I will post the list of food tonight, but the experiment did prove that yes, I'm not as bad as the people on You Are What You Eat. However, there is room for great improvement in my diet!

I'm sure my food list is skewed a bit since I ate out almost every meal aside from breakfast this past week due to Carlo being in Utah for a few days and then with his family in town. I'd be interested to do this again when I have a more "normal" eating schedule.

------

The whole family is doing the Fort Worth Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. While everyone else will be running or walking the 5k, Carlo, Craig, and I will be doing the 10k. I haven't been doing too much running since the Northern Exposure 10k a few weeks ago, and Carlo hasn't really run more than 2 miles since July, so we went out for a good run this morning.

We ended up going all the way around the block by our house for a total of 3.5 miles. We really pushed ourselves and were running pretty fast, although I think the faster pace caught up to us when we were running up Hualapi which is basically a mile-long hill! I think if we can get up tomorrow morning and run the same route although in reverse, we should be in an okay position for Thursday. Carlo's shin was hurting a little bit, but I think if he properly stretches out his calves both before and after running, he should feel better. At least the Turkey Trot route should be flat!

Fried food is yuck

2007-11-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

After weighing in so low yesterday, it made me not only get my butt in gear and work out before work, but it also made me want to continue making healthy choices so I could keep on losing. I did well at lunch eating a leftover bbq chicken salad, but dinner posed another challenge.

Carlo's parents wanted to eat at Chicago Brewing Company by our house, so we met them there after work. I had never been there before, and Carlo had only drunk a beer and played video poker there in the bar, so I didn't know what to expect. When I looked up the menu online, it turned out to be fried food city :( After much debate and time spent weighing all of my options, I decided that a plain hamburger was probably one of the "best" things on the menu. They had a couple of salads that could have been okay, but I had eaten salads for the last 3 meals and wanted something a bit more substantial. Plus most had blue cheese or bacon on them, and I wasn't going to tempt fate by getting a seared ahi tuna salad in a place like this. So I got my burger with no cheese, and swapped out a side salad with dressing on the side instead of fries. Carlo also had similar problems finding a healthy option and went the burger route as well. Even though it may not have been the best tasting or healthiest meal, I'm proud that we both made considerate choices and didn't admit defeat and gorge on fried fatty food.

Tonight I'm faced with another similar challenge. Carlo's brother Les wants to go to Salt Lick and bbq is really unhealthy for you (or at least the bbq I like of brisket, ribs, and sausage). I think Carlo may disown me but I'm going to have to get a salad because we are going to Rosemary's on Saturday night and I would much rather be bad there.

Give Me a 1! Give Me a 6! Give Me a 7! What does that spell?

2007-11-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

Yes, I lost 1.4 lbs this week and am now weighing in at an ever increasing healthy weight of 167. I'm not sure exactly what my lowest weight was last year when I was on WW, but I think it was around 165.

So I'm on the brink of being at my lowest weight again in years, and I do mean years. Until I started WW last year, I hadn't stepped on the scales or kept track of my weight for a long time. For some reason, the only number I have in my head that I can remember is being in either the 140s or 150s in 1996. At that point in my life, I thought I was a whale and stopped wearing shorts after seeing my ass on video, but it wasn't until 1997-1998 that I really started putting on more weight that went into high gear when I began dating Carlo in 2000. I got up to a size 18/20 at the height of my fatness and was only able to shop at Lane Bryant because nothing else fit me. Now I fit easily into a size 12 at any store and it feels great!

I feel like I'm finally getting my eating under control and know that if I'm good during the week, I can splurge a bit on the weekends without too many repercussions. However, Thanksgiving is in a week and I can easily get sidetracked, especially since we will be in Texas with all of my family. I just need to make sure that I bring exercise clothes and do something everyday while I'm in Arlington to help mitigate all the food and booze I'm sure I will partaking in. I would like to be hovering around the 160-mark or into the 150s as 2008 begins.

Edit: So I looked at my WW weigh in books last night and my lowest weight was 165.4 lbs on October 14, 2006. I hit that weight and then gained 4 lbs the following week to only ever get back down to 167 or so before I quit WW. Only 1.4 lbs to go ;)

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-11-13T21:55:00.001-08:00

Yes Amy, karma is a bitch! You suck and deserve to be at home. I haven't even see how much weight you lose at home, but I bet it isn't much. Way to go B, I think you rock :)

Edit: So I take back my snarky comments, Amy lost 45 lbs post-ranch. That is impressive and she looks good. I'm glad that she got it together because her kids are cute, and no little kid deserves an obese parent that isn't going to be around for them in the future.

I heart the Biggest Loser

2007-11-13T21:05:00.000-08:00

I'm a Biggest Loser addict. I love that show and can't wait for each season. The people on the show are just phenomenal and really give it their all. I look forward to Tuesday night each week, and I always end up crying somehow during the show for which Carlo LOVES making fun of me!

That said, I HATE Amy. She sucks so bad and I have thought that for weeks. She never gives it her all and is always looking for an easy way out. She never wants to put in the hard work and is always making excuses. Plus what she did to Kim and the Red Team was really crappy. I haven't finished watching tonight's episode since we are on the West coast, but I hope she goes home. Trying to give Kim back the red shirt was shitty and her all crying about not getting to go home is just pathetic. I hope she gets voted off tonight.

I hope Kae wins it all!

You Are What You Eat

2007-11-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

For the past week I have been obsessed with watching You Are What You Eat on BBC America. It is a great tv show to watch. My mum had told me about after she was in the UK sometime this year, but I had never watched the show until I accidentally caught the last half of an episode last week.

All I can say is that it is AWESOME and helps fill my Biggest Loser-void since it is on twice a day every week day. I have set the DVR to tape it, so every night I have 45 minutes of pure joy watching other people who had horrendous, and I do mean horrendous eating habits turn into healthy eaters and be a shadow of their former selves.

The show functions on two levels: the first realization is that I'm not really as big of a pig as I sometimes think that I am and I lead a much healthier lifestyle than many people. The second realization is that if these people who eat half a tub of butter a day, or seven Indian take out dishes for just one dinner can lose weight and get healthier then I certainly can do it too!

One of my favourite parts of You Are What You Eat is when Gillian, the crazy Scottish nutritionist, puts all of the food that the subject had eaten in the last week on a table. The amount of food is usually horrific, but what is even grosser is that the majority of food is white and fried and includes no colour. There is no colour (aside from beer or wine) in all this food because it seems like no one ever eats any fruit or veggies. Every time Carlo and I see another gross spread, we always say to each other that our food spread would be so much better and have much more colour to it.

Instead of being a couch commentator, I have decided to keep track of all the food that I eat in one week and will post that list on Sunday. I just hope that it is as healthy a diet in reality as I think it is in my head :)

Last week's weigh in and race

2007-11-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

Continuing with my typical timely posts about my weigh ins, I weighed in last Wednesday at 168.4 lbs with a weight loss of 0.8 lbs. This small decrease in fat molecules brings my total weight loss to 6.6 lbs over the past 4 weeks. Not too shabby, and I'm hoping the fact that the weight is coming off slow and steady that means that it will stay off forever!

In exercise news, I ran my first real race in Las Vegas last Saturday. Since I've been having problems getting up in the morning to exercise, I decided to change things up and sign up for a 10k a couple of days before the actual race. The 8th Annual Northern Exposure was fairly small with only 185 people signed up for the 10k.

I didn't know what to expect since I have only been running again for the last 3 weeks, and my efforts have been pretty sporadic at best. It went better than I thought and I felt pretty strong throughout the race despite having serious allergies and spitting out nasty stuff every 5 minutes. A good portion of the race was uphill with a serious headwind, but I managed to run a respectable 1:10:39, which averaged to a 11:24 minute per mile pace.

I was very happy with this result considering my lack of training and the fact that this was only my 2nd official 10k race. At the LiveStrong Challenge last year with considerably more training under my belt and a slightly easier course, I ran 1:10:48 so it turns out that I actually ran a personal record last weekend, even if I ran only 9 seconds faster :)

I thought that perhaps with my time and small field of entrants that I might have actually placed in my age group since they were giving out medals to the first 3 finishers in each group. I learned that I may be getting a bit faster, but I'm still a far far far way from placing unless there are only 3 people in my age group! I placed 20th out of 24 women aged 30-34, so I'm still firmly at the back of the pack.

Speaking of age groups, when I registered for the race, it was the first time that I have had to publicly acknowledge that I'm 30. It was fairly strange and made me feel old. It also made me a bit sad because in the running and triathlon world the 30-34 women's age group is supposedly the toughest and most competitive age group. I better start getting even faster so I won't have to worry about coming in last.

Back to work in the morning

2007-11-11T21:27:00.000-08:00

Despite having finished off the better half of a delicious bottle of white Burgundy and snacking on leftover brie and baguette from last night, I'm ready to get off the frontage road and head straight onto the highway of fitness in the morning.

Stay tuned....

Just Say No to Candy

2007-11-01T19:43:00.000-07:00

Carlo and I got no trick or treaters last night, despite having bought 2 bags of Reese's Peanut Buttercups and a bag of Kit Kats.

First thing this morning, I put all of them in my bag and took them to work where I placed them on the conference table in the main office. Half an hour later the Director comes in and places a few more bags of candy on the table saying that she had no trick or treaters either. Another half hour later the Education Assistant comes in with a bag of candy saying the same thing. I guess all the news's scare tactics about child molesters worked and the kids stayed home!

I'm proud to say that even though I had to walk by thousands of calories of candy many times today, I didn't touch one candy bar! I was very proud of myself and to be honest feeling quite snug because I was kind of grossed out by the amount of candy some office mates ate since I had a birds eye view of who picked candy up whenever they went by the pile. Every time I even thought about picking up a Snickers bar (which didn't happen as often as I thought it would), I just thought about the big glass of wine that I would have with dinner tonight that would be SO much more worth the points.

-----

Carlo is running again! After over 2 months of not being able to work out due to hurting his ankle, we went running together this morning. Actually I thought he was going to just walk, so I went left around the block while he went right. We met in the middle and he was running, so we ran home together. He wasn't able to make it up the huge hill by our house, but he ran for over 20 minutes in total! I was very proud and happy to have my running partner back.

Reese's Peanut Buttercups don't taste that good when....

2007-10-31T22:11:00.000-07:00

You know that they are 3 points! I had one tonight because Carlo bought some candy for trick or treaters that never materialized. I ate one after figuring out how many points it would be. Normally, I love Reese's and could eat tons, but tonight it didn't taste so good. I wish that I had spent the 3 points on a big glass of red wine instead.

On the plus side, despite me only getting 22 points per day now that I have slipped under the 170 lb mark, I stayed within my points and had 1.5 points leftover for the day plus 3 activity points that I didn't use from this morning.

Gotta stay good all week so I can eat whatever when Carlo's friend Joe is in town this weekend and we go to a steakhouse and my favourite, Lotus of Siam!!

Hello 160s.....

2007-10-31T14:17:00.000-07:00

I didn't think it would happen this week, but it did...

I weighed in this morning at 169.2 lbs - the first time I have been in the 160s in just over a year! I'm super excited, especially considering the fact that I literally ate my weight in tortilla chips on Friday and Saturday! It all started last Wednesday when I read the New York Times article about the hunt for the perfect Tex-Mex food. I miss Tex-Mex like you would not believe, so all I could think about was delicious chips and salsa, enchiladas, and margaritas. On Friday night, I had to fill my craving so we went to this Mexican place Frank & Fino's Cucina by our house and Carlo and I were like two fat pigs who hadn't seen food in days. It was fairly gross, but god, those chips and salsa were SO good.

Our Mexican food gorge continued purely by accident the following day. Mike came over to watch the UT game and we started talking about all of the yummy restaurants in Austin and what we wished we could eat right then. Well before you know it, we were sitting at Agave at half time devouring more chips!

I tried to count how many points all the chips equaled and it was something like 70 points for both meals! 3 points for 12 chips is pretty bad trade off and seriously, who can stop at just 12 chips?

So I'm pretty ecstatic that I lost any weight this week, let alone 1.4 lbs to bring my 3 week WW total to 5.8 lbs! This good result has definitely motivated me to keep on counting points and being accountable for everything I put in my mouth, even if sometimes I'm embarrassed by how many points I can consume in one sitting!

My only concern is whether this good run with the weight loss is actually just muscle turning into fat :(

Last week's WW

2007-10-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

I never got round to posting about my weigh in, but I lost 0.8 lbs last week. Hardly anything to celebrate, but considering I murdered the hell out of some chicken fried steak on Sunday brunch, I can't really complain that my weight loss wasn't higher.

I was in fact doing awesome while Carlo was in London, but upon his return, we started eating out a lot and we do have all of that wine that we got on our trip to Russian River Valley just begging to be drunk!

I find it fairly easy to stay on target during the week, but come the weekend and my eating schedule becomes erratic, I just tend to pig out. Does anyone have any suggestions of how they keep their diet in check during the weekend while still going out and maintaining somewhat of a social life?

I don't want to not be able to go out to eat on the weekends, but then again, I don't want to stay fat either. It always seems like eating out is my Achilles heel and I can never say no to just one more tortilla chip or slice of bread.

Exercise Revelation

2007-10-22T20:48:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I spent a lot of time thinking about exercise and why I go all out for a few weeks and then stop doing any exercise for a few weeks, only to restart and repeat the cycle. This has been even more apparent over the past few months with boot camp. As much as I enjoyed boot camp and saw results, getting up at 5 am made exercising a chore that made me have to change many aspects of my life to fit it in. No wonder why I was burning out! So I decided to reclaim exercising as something that I enjoy doing and something that makes me feel better.

Instead of forcing myself to get up at the crack of dawn for boot camp, I have been sleeping in and getting up at 7 am so I can go running or walking before work. It feels great to exercise on my schedule and I have enjoyed running again in this incredible fall weather we are having in Vegas.

After not really running since the San Francisco half marathon at the end of July, I am remembering how much I love running. In fact, the past couple of weeks of running have made me commit to running the Austin Marathon on February 17. I had planned on running the 3M Half Marathon at the end of January, but we have an exhibition opening that following weekend and it wouldn't be a good time to take off work then. More importantly, I want to challenge myself and run the marathon stronger and hopefully faster than I did this past year. I only have 18 weeks to train which is a lot shorter time frame than my training schedule for my first marathon, but I'm convinced that with some hard work I can easily get ready for 26.2 miles.

I officially did my first long run on Saturday and ran 5 miles in just over 1 hour, which was pretty fast considering I had to stop at lots of traffic lights and I hadn't run that long in 3 months. This weekend is 7 miles and I think I will be ready if I follow my training schedule and fit in three 3-mile runs during the work week. Bring on the miles....

1st week back on Weight Watchers

2007-10-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

I didn't have a chance to blog that after my first week on WW, I lost 3.6 lbs! I was super excited with my results, especially after my off night last Saturday.

To make matters even better, I went shopping at Anthropologie this week and got a really cute dress at Anthropologie with the gift card that Andrew got me for my birthday. I automatically grabbed a size large, but it was too big on me so I ended up buying the dress in a medium. I can't remember the last time I was a medium.

I also had a similar experience at Target too. I had bought a dress there to add to my huge wrap dress collection before we went to California. I didn't try the dress on but just bought a large because I have other dresses in that style and size. When I finally tried on the dress last weekend, it was a bit big so after I went to Anthropologie, I hit Target and tried on the medium in that dress and it looked much better. Granted both of these dresses are made out a stretchy material, but I'm still a medium :)

On another note while the majority of my body is slowly getting smaller, my boobs are resistant to any reduction in size. Instead of getting smaller, they somehow seem to be getting larger. I have no idea how this is possible, but my boobs now officially feel and look huge! I have even had comments by people that I work with asking how I'm managing to shrink everywhere else but the boobs! It is quite disconcerting. Before anyone asks, no it is not because I'm pregnant! I'm hoping that they start shrinking soon.

Alex 0; Larger Ass 1

2007-10-13T22:53:00.000-07:00

Since I started Weight Watchers on Wednesday, I have been doing a really great job with my eating and staying within my points, although that all changed this evening!

I had to attend this arts fundraiser tonight and knew that I would be faced with a lot of bad choices in regards to food and wine. On the entire way over to the MGM, I tried to think out a food/booze game plan which consisted of eating as little as possible because I had eaten a large lunch as a step to prevent overeating at the dinner. My game plan failed horribly. Despite it being a sit down dinner for over 100 guests, the food was surprisingly delicious. In fact, too delicious for me to say no to especially the really good mini baguette rolls, of which I had three smothered in butter. I also drank a couple of huge glasses of wine because the event was really boring and lame, plus the wine was also from Alexander Valley so I pretended like I was still on holiday!

So I have gone over my weekly allotment of 35 anytime points for the week, probably by quite a few more points. Thank god I worked out this evening, even if it was just a 50 minute walk that burned only 331 calories.

I must get up in the morning and go running because I don't want to end up gaining weight in my first week back on WW!

Back in the saddle again

2007-10-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

After an amazing 5-days of eating and drinking ourselves up and down the Russian River Valley and Northern California coast for my birthday, I am officially back on the health wagon! AND very excited about it.

Despite a few almost 3,000 calories burned-weeks in September, I've pretty much been on a downward slide since my 30th birthday with too many celebrations, art openings, and great food temptations. I'm ready to regain some eating balance and moderation in my life while making healthy eating and exercise a daily habit, not just something that I do for 2 weeks and then don't do for 3 weeks!

That said, I joined Weight Watchers online this morning. As tedious as point counting can get, WW works and helps me exercise portion control and discipline with my diet. I weighed in at 175 lbs (a nice 3 lb gain from the holiday) this morning. This is 10 lbs higher than my lowest weight last year after doing WW for 9 months, but still 20 lbs lower than my starting weight of 195.2 lbs in January 2006. I really want to reach my goal weight of 145 lbs and I have missed my goal of doing it by my 30th birthday, but I know I can do it by my 31st birthday!

So I'm back. Expect more posts on this blog because it helps me keep accountable and stick to my goals. Expect I'm sure some bitching along the way, but I'm ready to recommit to my health goals and make them become a reality. Plus Andrew and Alison have also just joined WW so we can share our frustrations together!

I do have good news to report on my first day on WW. I was worried about being hungry all day, but I ended up coming in at 19.5 points for the day out of my 23 point allowance AND I'm feeling pretty full after my post-dinner fat free hot chocolate.

So here's to getting back in the saddle once again and really sticking to it....

Seriously, where did I come from?

2007-09-27T15:40:00.001-07:00

On the occasion of my 30th birthday and the fact that Alison posted this photo on her blog yesterday, I've got to re-visit the question of whether I was switched at birth. Mum, I know that you hate it when I say stuff like this, but I'm like the Danny DeVito to Alison's Arnold in Twins in this photo.

How come Mum and Dad gave birth to two blonde haired and blue eyed kids and then managed to give birth to this grubby and dark little child? :) No wonder why they asked the doctor if they had accidentally been given an Indian couple's baby when they first met me!

Hopefully, I look a bit more like Mum and Dad now (even though I just asked Katie, my office mate, whether I looked like my parents and she emphatically said no!, so who knows?).

This is so gross, but so cool

2007-09-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

I have done various colon cleanses before and was just thinking that I needed to do one when I saw a link to this Colon Cleansing Kit by Blessed Herbs in the side bar of my gmail. Damn, the results of this cleanse are amazing! Amazingly gross, but at the same time, amazingly wonderful to get all of the crap (and I mean that literally) out of your body. I love it that customers send in their own photos of their crazy looking poo!

I'd be curious to do this cleanse, but don't see anytime soon when I would be able to go on a 5-day juice only cleanse.

When Botox goes wrong...

2007-09-07T12:45:00.000-07:00

With my 30th birthday fast approaching and me noticing many new wrinkles on what seems like a daily basis, I half joke with Carlo about wanting Botox for my birthday.

However, after seeing this new photo of Celine Dion, I think I may pass on the Botox until I can't look in the mirror anymore. She looks like a plastic Barbie doll with no expression at all. It is frightening.

Fat people and salad buffets

2007-08-12T20:33:00.000-07:00

Carlo and I were out running errands yesterday and needed a healthy bite to eat so we wouldn't binge when we went out to eat with friends for dinner. We ended up going to Sweet Tomatoes, which is like Fresh Plus or Souper Salad.

The food was very average and the salad bar didn't have that much good stuff, although it was a lot better than eating lunch at In-N-Out which sounded a lot more tempting at the time.

But there was something else going on aside from mediocre food that was just kind of gross and that was the obscene amount of fat people at Sweet Tomatoes. It would seem ironic that fat people were hanging out at a salad buffet, but when I walked by people's tables and saw what they were eating, no wonder why they were so big.

Instead of a salad consisting of veggies, their salads had a tiny amount of iceberg lettuce which was covered with shredded cheese, croutons, and drowning in ranch dressing--not exactly a picture of nutrition! Do these people think that they are being healthy because they are eating a salad? It was just kind of gross, and not to get all preachy, but come on, quit being delusional!

Friday: More legs

2007-08-12T20:13:00.001-07:00

If I thought Tuesday's leg workout was hard, Friday's workout proved to be just as hard although in a different way. I was convinced that I was going to have to wear the weighted vest, but got lucky and didn't have my name drawn from the hat!

The majority of the workout included sprints, and one-legged squats and step ups with weights on a park bench. I personally hate step ups! I really suck at them and always have to put my hands on my knees to help get me up to the top--although this is hard to do when you are carrying 8-lb weights in each hand!

I would have much rather run up 100 hills than do any more step ups or squats by the end of the workout because my butt hurt really really bad! I just kept on thinking that I was going to get an ass of steel as a result of my efforts.

No ass of steel as of yet, but my butt was sore for the entire weekend and I had problems getting up and down!

Workout stats:
Length: 1:03 hrs
602 calories burned
Average heart rate: 76%
Maximum heart rate: 91%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 45%

Tuesday: Running up hills with a log

2007-08-12T19:42:00.000-07:00

Since I was going to LA on Wednesday and Thursday, Carlo and I had to go to boot camp on Tuesday where he got to experience the pain that is legs day!

I was asked to pick out the name of the person who would get to wear the weighted vest and I ended picking out Carlo's name from the hat! I felt awful, especially when I heard what workout would be.

Basically, we ran up and down hills with a partner while carrying a log that weighed 27 lbs. Thankfully, Carlo and I and our partners got the lighter logs because the other two pairs had a log that weighed 50 lbs! After running up and down hills with the log, we then did a ton of lunges and squats while still carrying the log.

Carlo looked like he was going to die, especially since he had the added agony of the vest too. I didn't have it that bad because it was my partner's first day at boot camp and she had to keep on taking breaks. I got to relax for a few of the breaks, but then Ashley would become my partner and push me even harder than my partner did!

At the end of the session, we ended up doing ab and core work, which was very hard since my legs felt like lead and they kept on shaking. I think Tuesday's workout was one of the hardest ones I had done during my time at boot camp.

Workout stats:
Length: 0:53:49 hrs
560 calories burned
Average heart rate: 80%
Maximum heart rate: 92%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 35%

Monday: Upper body circuit training

2007-08-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

Monday's boot camp workout was different from any previous workout that I had done at boot camp. Ashley, the leader, created a series of circuit stations in the park's playground where we did each station for 2 minutes. Among the stations were pull ups on the monkey bars, bench pressing the 50lb bar, bicep curls with 20lb weights, push ups on a medicine ball, tricep dips on a park bench, and a resistance band workout for your obliques.

We did each circuit 3 times and it was really hard! Trying to bench press 50lbs is hard enough, but it is a thousand times harder after your arms are quivering from working so hard at all of the other stations. My bench presses were pretty crap and not very low, but it definitely was a workout for my puny arms! Carlo looked very strong on the bench presses after his workouts in the gym.

We both sucked on the monkey bars though. I could never do the monkey bars when I was a little, let alone now when I'm 30 lbs over weight!

After the circuit training, we continued working out our arms with more curls, shoulder presses and tricep reps but now with 8 lb weights. By this point in the workout, Carlo looked like he was in pain. He later told me that he thought he was going to puke. Thankfully, I didn't want to puke even though by the end of the workout my arms were screaming for me to stop!

Workout stats:
Length: 0:58:38 hrs
466 calories burned
Average heart rate: 69%
Maximum heart rate: 91%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 50%

The beginnings of an incredibly shrinking Alex

2007-08-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

After taking 1 full week off after the half marathon and doing absolutely nothing aside from still eating like I was about to run a half marathon, I signed up for another brutal month-long session at boot camp on Monday. I had been telling Carlo that he should join too and on Sunday, he finally gave in and agreed to join with me!

Carlo had to get to boot camp early on Monday to weigh in and be measured, so I went with him to get fresh measurements for my new session and to see whether I had lost anything after my first session at boot camp.

Here are my stats when I first joined on July 4:

Weight (with workout clothes): 180 lbs
% of Fat: 37.2%
Lbs of fat (% x Wt): 66.96 lbs
Lbs of Muscle Mass (Wt - lbs of fat): 113.04 lbs
Desired Fat %: 18.9%
Desired Weight: 147.06 lbs

Arm: 12 inches
Neck: 12.75 inches
Chest: 41.75 inches
Waist: 37.75 inches
Hips: 45.5 inches
Legs: 24.75 inches

Here are my stats on August 6 after only 7 boot camp workouts (out of 12 possible workouts during the 4-week session) and of course, a half marathon plus 1 week of recovering from and celebrating the half marathon:
Weight (with workout clothes): 177.2 lbs
% of Fat: 38.2%
Lbs of fat (% x Wt): 67.7 lbs
Lbs of Muscle Mass (Wt - lbs of fat): 109.5 lbs

Arm: 11.25 inches
Neck: 12.75 inches
Chest: 41 inches
Waist: 36 inches
Hips: 45 inches
Legs: 22.5 inches

Even though I had lost 2.8 lbs in between weigh ins, the body fat measuring device recorded that I had increased my body fat by 1% and decreased my muscle mass by 3.54lbs! These stats aren't good at all, but then again I'm not putting too much value on them right now since body fat measuring devices aren't 100% accurate and can change depending on how hydrated you are etc. I just hope that next month I finally gain some muscle and my huge body fat percentage goes down, not up!

However, I did see great results in my body measurements. I lost:
Arm: 0.75 inches
Neck: 0 inches
Chest: 0.75 inches
Waist: 1.75 inches!!!!!!
Hips: 0.5 inches
Legs: 2.25 inches!!!!!!
Total Inches Lost: 6 inches

6 inches is a great amount of inches to lose in only 7 workouts! With better eating and more workouts over this next month, I want to see more drastic results and lose even more inches!

13.1 miles in San Francisco

2007-08-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

Sunday was the day we for which we had been training for 18 weeks and it certainly didn't disappoint. Even though this was my 4th half marathon to run, it was the most fun and certainly the most scenic.

We ran the half with a whole Vegas crew, including Mike, his brother Danny, his mum and step-dad Pat and Drew, Noel, and Gabi (who was joined by the non-running Zoli). Aside from Pat and Drew who are marathon veterans and me, it was the longest that everyone had run so the nerves and excitement were high!

The course started down at the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. It was the same start line as the full marathon and we were in the second to last wave of the day. The weather was perfect and in the 60s with a cool breeze coming across the bay. Even though daylight was just breaking when we started running at 6:10 am, it was an amazing view across the bay with the Bay Bridge and Alcatraz as a back drop.

Carlo and I decided to keep with our training plan and run for 4 minute intervals and then walk for 1 minute. Pretty soon everyone else in our group was ahead of us, but we didn't mind at all. After running in 100+ degree heat in Vegas and at about 3,000 feet altitude, it felt awesome to be running in such cool weather and at sea level. From the get go, both Carlo and I felt great and even though we were running 10:30 minute miles (not including the walking intervals), it felt fairly easy and as though we could run at that pace forever.

The first 5 miles were pretty uneventful because the course was very flat and wove around the bay passing Fisherman's Wharf, sourdough factories baking bread, and Ghirardelli Square. After a brief stop at the mile 5 port-o-potties, the course started to get hard. We hit our first major hill which was almost half a mile long and super brutal since it increased in over 250 feet in elevation. That may not sound bad, but believe me, it was! We decided to walk up it because to be honest, our "running" up this hill wasn't much faster and we were at least saving our legs a bit by walking.

Once we made it to the top of the hill, we had the Golden Gate Bridge ahead of us. Unfortunately, it was really foggy and we couldn't see outside of the bridge or more than 30 feet in front of us. With all the fog and the wind on the bridge, the run become much more difficult and Carlo kept on joking that he needed wind shield wipers for his glasses! Even though the bridge feels flat when you drive over it, half of the bridge is up hill until the middle of the bridge and then it goes downhill to the other side, so it is was a lot tougher than we thought it was going to be. In addition to the gradual uphill for about a mile, there were these periodic metal grates on the bridge that were incredibly slippy. I'm surprised that I didn't seen anyone bite it on the bridge, but it could have happened very easily.

As we were reaching the other side of the bridge, we started seeing our friends heading back to San Francisco. Drew was first with Pat close behind him, then came Mike and Danny running together, followed by Noel and then Gabi. It was great seeing them and getting to cheer them on with their run.

After a quick loop on the other side of the bay, Carlo and I headed back across the Golden Gate to finish up the run. I felt pretty strong until we got off the bridge and had another horrendous hill to climb at mile 9.5. This half mile incline was even worse than the one right before the bridge and we ended up walking up it again. At the top, my calves and hamstrings were screaming in pain. All I kept on thinking was that the elevation chart that I looked at of the course did NOT prepare me for hills like this. Here I am thinking that Vegas has "hills"--maybe in comparison to Austin, but I failed to remember that San Francisco is famed for their hills.

Thankfully, this up hill was followed by a steep downhill that curved around Baker Beach where you could see the waves of the Pacific crashing against the shore. Carlo and I decided to just run the whole way down, which was around 1.5 miles, in order to make up some time. In retrospect, I'm not sure if running 8:30 minute miles downhill was probably a good idea in the last few miles of a half marathon. If my calves and hamstrings were burning on the ascent, I trashed my quads on the way down!

By the time we got to mile 11 and started going through this endlessly hilly neighborhood towards the finish line in Golden Gate Park, I was just pooped. After the uphills and then the downhills, my lower body was just spent and my legs were fatigued. Mile 11 seemed endless and I thought we would never make it to mile 12. Carlo was great in encouraging me on and I feel like I slowed him down in the last couple of miles. We ended up waking up each hill and running down them, but it always seemed like there more hills to climb than hills to run down!

Finally, we made it into Golden Gate Park and near the finish line. All I kept on thinking about was thank god, I'm not running the full marathon! We turned around this corner and Carlo darted ahead thinking that we were in the final stretch of the half, only for the finish line to be further ahead than he thought. At last we could see the finish line and Pat was standing on the sidelines cheering us on and ended up running the last stretch with us. We picked up our pace and passed a few runners right at the end and we both crossed the finish line together.

My official finish time:

Place Overall:	4240	out of 4931
Women:	2283	out of 2770
F 20-29:	867	out of 981

AgeGrade:

39.22%

Place: 4292

FINISH:

2:46:41

pace: 12:43

7.4 Miles:

1:35:14

pace: 12:53

Chip Time:

2:46:41

I was super happy with my results considering that the run was harder than I imagined and the hills really did me in towards the end. I can't believe that we ended up running a negative split race and finishing the second half faster than the first half! Plus we finished in under 3 hours which was the official deadline for the race and for your run to be official! While this half marathon wasn't a PR for me, I got to run what will be hopefully the first of many half marathons with Carlo which meant more to me than the time on a clock.

Here is the two of us on the bus back to the start line and unfortunately, the only photo we took of ourselves during the race. As you can see, I was pretty happy to show off that medal!

Last week's workout stats

2007-08-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

Last week was a bust when it came to workouts, aside from the half marathon. I ended up feeling like crap all week, so I didn't go to boot camp once. I decided it was best to just chill and recover in time for Sunday's run. I'm not sure if I had a virus or something, or whether I was just burnt out from 4 hard workouts in a row. Regardless, it felt pretty great to sleep in each day during the week and have super fresh legs for San Francisco.

1 workout last week - San Francisco Half Marathon
Total length: 2:46 hrs
1828 calories burned
Average heart rate: 83%
Maximum heart rate: 94%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 35%

San Francisco here we come

2007-07-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

Carlo and I are rushing around the house trying to get everything together before we leave for San Francisco in the morning. We carbed up tonight with Carlo making homemade turkey meatballs for dinner. Aside from that, we have done no other preparation all week. I haven't run all week or gone to boot camp either. Instead, I have felt exhausted and worn out from work and I think perhaps being burned out from working out. I'm hoping that this rest will help me out on Sunday and I can power through the 13.1 miles. I'm also hoping that are spur of the moment drinking session to 2 am on Wednesday night won't affect our performance too much either!

Regardless of how I finish, I will be crossing the finish line with Carlo and that will be priceless.

Last week's workout stats

2007-07-23T21:34:00.000-07:00

4 workouts last week
Total length: 4:47 hrs
2790 calories burned

Only 1 workout away from my goal! Almost there--next week I will hit 5 workouts.

7 miles down to SF

2007-07-23T21:19:00.000-07:00

Carlo and I woke up early on Saturday to do our last weekend run before San Francisco. We only had to do 7 miles, so we ended up leaving the house around 6:30 and thankfully it was a bit cooler than our 12-mile run a few weeks ago!

I started off the run a bit sore from boot camp, but soon got into my groove. In fact, I would say more than a groove - it was the easiest run that I had done in a while. We ran the Lakes loop, but went in the opposite direction to which we normally run. I remembered why we go the other way because this one is a slow steady uphill climb pretty much the entire loop, or at least that is what it felt like. All that running and leg workouts in boot camp must be paying off and making me a stronger runner!

While I was powering up the hills and only feeling stronger, Carlo started to get tired and needed to take more walk breaks. Normally, it is the other way around on our runs with him leaving me behind. Hopefully, he was just having a bad day and he feels better next Sunday! Regardless, I'm really proud of Carlo and how far he has come with his running. I know he is going to kick ass in San Francisco and can't wait to run with him for his first half marathon.

Workout stats:
Length: 1:37 hrs
989 calories burned
Average heart rate: 79%
Maximum heart rate: 90%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 30%

Friday: Legs

2007-07-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

I woke up on Friday feeling pretty good despite wearing the weighted vest the day before. Only my shoulders really hurt, but aside from that I was feeling pretty good going into the lower body workout.

We started out doing a ton of running drills like high knees, sprints, skips, and grapevines. Drills always seem to kick my ass. My heart was racing from skipping! I don't remember feeling like that when I was younger and skipped everywhere.

After the drills, we got to play some games. While I was doing squats, kicks, or lunges, I got to tell my partner what kind of workout he should do. My partner was Paul who is pretty gung ho about boot camp and comes 5 days a week. I put him to work and I mean work. I made him do lengths of lunges with his knee touching the ground and I made him run across the park and run through the sprinklers! I was tough and he was wearing the weighted vest too! He loved the workout though and when it came his turn to tell me what to do, he made me work really hard too.

Even though I worked my butt off (or hopefully some of its lard), I was actually laughing and enjoying myself throughout all the lunges and squats. Who knew exercise could be this fun?

Workout stats:
Length: 1:05 hrs
681 calories burned
Average heart rate: 77%
Maximum heart rate: 90%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 40%

Thursday: 15 lbs heavier!

2007-07-22T20:50:00.001-07:00

Thursday wasn't my lucky day since my name got pulled out of the hat and I got to wear the weighted vest!

Today was an upper body session and the bulk of workout was circuit training alternating between push ups, planks, and punching a weighted bag. Trying to do all of this with 20 extra lbs was incredibly tough. I could barely do a push up and my arms kept on collapsing. John, the boot camp leader, ended up taking out 5 lbs from the vest which helped a lot! I could finally do the workout although it was still a lot harder than without the vest.

It is amazing how heavy 15 lbs can feel and how the added weight can impair your performance. Each time I did a push up, the extra weight reminded me of how far I have come on this diet journey because a year ago, that extra 15 or 20 lbs wasn't in a vest, but on my body! I'm hoping that by the end of a year, the weighted vest will act as a reminder of my weight right now.

Workout stats:
Length: 1:00 hr
463 calories burned
Average heart rate: 72%
Maximum heart rate: 88%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 45%

Wednesday: Boot Camp Cardio

2007-07-22T20:40:00.000-07:00

Wednesday's boot camp included running, lots of running--running around the park and over tables, and running up hills backwards. They introduced a new form of torture today. The boot camp leaders put everyone's name into a hat and pulled a name out. Whoever was the lucky "winner" got to wear a 20-lb weighted vest for the workout! Thank god, my name wasn't pulled out today because I don't know whether I could have run that much with 20 extra pounds on me.

Workout stats:
Length: 58:24 mins
657 calories burned
Average heart rate: 84%
Maximum heart rate: 92%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 30%

Last week's workout stats

2007-07-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

So much for my goal of 5 workouts a week! Even though we were supposed to run 3 miles last weekend, we drank a bit too much when we went to dinner in LA and decided to sleep in instead.

2 workouts last week
Total length: 2:01 hrs
1169 calories burned

Thursday: Bench Press Queen

2007-07-13T22:45:00.000-07:00

I ended up not going to boot camp on Wednesday because the planned workout involved lots of running and my quad was hurting from all of the step ups the day before. Plus, we had been out late for Mike's birthday and I needed the extra sleep.

I arrived at boot camp in a much better mood and determined to have a good work out. Thursday was my first upper body workout and like the lower body workout on Tuesday, a lot of the workout was circuit training and going from picnic table to picnic table again. This time we held a 12-lb medicine ball over our heads as we ran from each table and then we did push ups and tricep dips while we took turns doing bench presses on top of the table. We were bench pressing a 50-lb metal rod, which was really heavy. The first time I benched press, I was only able to do 15 before my arms couldn't do one more. The second time after many more push ups and dips, I ended up doing 30 bench presses! Granted, the last 5 or so weren't the best, but 30 bench presses of a 50-lb weight! That is a lot of weight and I can only get better and stronger going forward.

Workout stats:
Length: 1:00 hr
522 calories burned
Average heart rate: 72%
Maximum heart rate: 88%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 45%

Tuesday's boot camp from hell!

2007-07-13T22:07:00.000-07:00

I woke up on Tuesday morning at 5 am not really looking forward to going to boot camp. Not only was I tired, but I was also worried about my quad and hurting it more.

I quickly went from a grumpy mood to a full blow bad attitude when we started our workout. It was incredibly hard. The majority of the workout was spent doing circuits around the park, running backwards with a 12-lb weight in each hand from one picnic table to another. Once we got to each table, we proceeded to do step ups with the weights in our hands and then we did a bunch of squats. Step ups are hard enough when you are trying to step on at least a 2-foot bench, but with 24 lbs in your hands? It was near impossible to get up onto the table. I decided to put my weights done for the step ups, but I still had to run backwards with them across the park. Each time I got to a new picnic table, I threw down my weights on the ground and grumpily started my step ups. I was furious and each minute of boot camp seemed more painful than the last. To make matters worse, my quad was killing me too and I just wanted to quit. I was the last person to get to the tables each time and everyone was waiting for me. Everyone could see that I was struggling, but the two guys who had 10-lb weights didn't even offer to trade weights with me since 12-lb weights were the least amount left when I got my weights.

Despite my awful attitude, I finished the workout and felt like I had accomplished something at the end of the hour. Being in a bad mood only makes boot camp harder, so I need to make sure that I focus on the positive for my next work out.

Workout stats:
Length: 1:01 hrs
647 calories burned
Average heart rate: 81%
Maximum heart rate: 91%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 35%

Yummy summer recipe

2007-07-09T21:14:00.001-07:00

Carlo made a delicious recipe from this month's Men's Health. It was the perfect summer dinner and pretty healthy.

Grilled Spicy Fish Tacos

1 cup finely shredded red cabbage
12oz mahi mahi
2 limes
1/2 medium red onion, diced
4 corn tortillas
canola oil
1 mango, peeled, pitted, and cubed
1 avocado, peeled, pitted, and cubed
1 handful cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper
1/2 tbsp blackening spice

1. Clean and oil a grill or grill pan. Preheat to medium-high.

2. Make the mango salsa by combining the mango, avocado, red onion, cilantro, and the juice of one lime. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Drizzle a light coating of oil over the fish, and rub on the blackening space. Place the fish on the grill and cook, undisturbed, for 4 minutes. Carefully flip with a spatula and cook for another 4 minutes. Remove. Warm the tortillas on the grill.

4. Divide the fish evenly among the tortillas, add a bit of cabbage, and spoon the salsa on top. Serve each taco with a wedge of lime and 1/2 cup of black beans spiked with cumin.

Makes 2 servings

Per Serving - 2 fish tacos and 1/2 cup of black beans
610 calories, 45 g protein, 75 g carbohydrates, 18 g fat (3 g saturated), 20 g fiber

Last week workout stats

2007-07-09T20:15:00.000-07:00

My heart rate monitor lets me know each Monday all of my workout stats for the previous week and I have decided to record these each weeks to help me keep on track with my exercise.

Here are my stats for this week:
3 workouts last week
Total length: 3:41 hrs
2036 calories burned

My goals are at least 5 workouts per week for a total of at least 5 hours in total. I'm 0-1 as of today, but I've got 6 more days of the week to workout and hit my goals.

Last long run before San Francisco

2007-07-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

For the last 15 weeks, Carlo and I have been training for the San Francisco Half Marathon that we will be running on July 29. This is Carlo's first half marathon and the longest that he will ever have run since a 10k was his longest previous race.

Our training was going really well until last month when it literally got too damn hot to run in Vegas. Despite getting super-sized running hydration vests that hold 64 ozs of water for our long runs and getting up early, we just found it harder and harder to get out of bed during the week and do our mid-week runs. Our efforts weren't helped by the fact that I got sunstroke from going on a 50 minute walk with no water at 7:00 am one morning! Despite not making it out as much as we should during the week, we have been good about always doing our long runs.

Sunday was our last long run before the half marathon and we were supposed to run 12 miles. We both got up at 4:20 am (yes, you read it right!) because 4 am is supposed to be the coolest time of the day. Unfortunately, the "cool" temperature on Sunday was 86 degrees and it felt pretty warm by the time we hit the streets by 5 am even though the sun hadn't risen yet.

Despite running 11 miles two weeks previously, Sunday's run was a lot harder due to the fact that my legs felt like they were made out of solid lead from my Friday boot camp workout. I never felt like I got into my running groove even though we were going really slow to compensate for my stiff legs. It sucked because cardio and breathing-wise I felt fine and like I could run forever. It was that my legs didn't want to cooperate.

After finishing a six-mile loop in the neighborhood next to us, I decided to head home because by now my knees were starting to get sore and I was worried that I would hurt myself if I kept on going. Carlo decided to run on, so I headed home and ending up running 6.25 miles in all. Not the 12 miles that I was supposed to do, but I think that I made the right decision in not pushing myself too hard and getting injured even though I felt like a loser for quitting mid-run.

We are only supposed to run 3 miles this weekend and then 7 the following in the taper for SF, but I have changed my boot camp schedule to Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday. Tuesday will be the lower body workout day and I'm hoping that will give my legs enough time to heal before we run on Saturday or Sunday.

Workout stats:
Length: 1:33 hrs
839 calories burned
Average heart rate: 73%
Maximum heart rate: 86%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 45%

1 year smoke free

2007-07-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

Since I haven't been updating my blog in a while, I forgot to post that on July 2 it was 1 year since I last smoked a cigarette at Alison's wedding. I can't believe that I have made it so long, even though there were a few times at the beginning when I begged friends to buy my cigarettes after a few too many drinks. Now I have no desire to smoke and the smell of smoke repulses me. I can't believe that I ever smoked for as long as I did.

Out of all of the healthy changes that I have made in the last year and a half, the best thing I ever did for myself was to quit smoking and I'm really proud of myself that I can now officially call myself a non-smoker.

Here's to many more smoke free years!

Boot Camp Tough: The First 2 Sessions

2007-07-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

I'm back and ready to exercise and move this lard!

Ever since starting the 30 for 30 Challenge and moving to Las Vegas, I have lost and regained the same 3-4 lbs over and over again. I'm sick of it and I'm ready to do something about it so I won't be a fat ass when I turn 30.

Last month I found out about Boot Camp Las Vegas, which operates a boot camp in different parks around the valley. On the website they announced that they were opening one in a park right by our house. I checked the website daily for over 3 weeks to see when they were opening the new boot camp and I finally got an email from them 10 days ago. I immediately signed up and I started last Wednesday, the 4th of July--or my independence day from being fat. I signed up to attend 3 boot camp sessions a week starting at 6 am!

I had no idea what to expect when I showed up last Wednesday, but damn, it was tough. It turns out that Wednesdays are cardio days, so we played lots of games like partnering up with two team mates with one person throwing a ball as far as they could and then the two remaining team mates running as fast as they could to beat each other to the ball. All of the different games were fun and helped past the time, but damn they were hard. I have never sprinted so much in my life! No one exercise lasted more than 5-7 minutes, so I never got bored and each exercise worked different muscles which made it easier to work hard all the time. I even probably did over 100 push ups and I hate push ups.

At the end of the hour, I was surprised and pleased by the stats on my heart rate monitor:
602 calories burned
Average heart rate: 75%
Maximum heart rate: 90%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 45%

I was not surprised or pleased by the measurements that Ashley, my boot camp leader, took of my body at the end of the session.

Weight (with workout clothes): 180 lbs
% of Fat: 37.2% (my god this is an awful number)
Lbs of fat (% x Wt): 66.96 lbs
Lbs of MM (Wt - lbs of fat): 113.04 lbs
Desired Fat %: 18.9% (damn, 18.3% fat to lose!)
Desired Weight: 147.06 lbs

Arm: 12 inches
Neck: 12.75 inches
Chest: 41.75 inches
Waist: 37.75 inches
Hips: 45.5 inches
Legs: 24.75 inches

We are supposed to get weighed and measured weekly, but I think that I'm going to weight 2 weeks until I get measured again in hope that I really see some results!

Thankfully, I had the day off after boot camp since it was July 4th and I was able to nap and recover from my first boot camp. By the end of the day, I was a bit sore and stiff, but not anything too bad.

Fast forward to Friday morning and my body was hurting. Friday's session was lower body and we really worked our legs and core. I have never done so many squats. Squats with weights, squats on a picnic bench, squat jumps - you name it we squatted it! We also did lots of lunges, including one-legged lunges that made my thighs scream. Our agony was only made worse when the group of elderly Asians who do Tai Chi in the park came by and started watching us and counting how many lunges we were doing.

I thought since it was a lower body session that I wouldn't burn that many calories, but because we were constantly moving and kept our heart rates up, I burned almost the same amount as the Wednesday cardio session:
595 calories burned
Average heart rate: 76%
Maximum heart rate: 91%
Percentage of fat calories burned: 40%

All that hard work pretty much crippled me. I have been so sore ever since and can barely move! My quads hurt, my butt hurts, my stomach hurts, and pretty much every other lower body part is sore. This better mean that boot camp is working!

I'm looking forward to going on Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday of this week.

Hello again

2007-04-24T19:39:00.000-07:00

It has been a few weeks since my last post. I started off the month with grand plans for my 30 for 30 challenge, only to gain 3 lbs the first week after Andrew's visit to Vegas. The following week I lost some weight and kept it off, so I think I'm now 0.5 lb less than when I first weighed in on April 2. Awesome, I know!!!

I'm finding it very hard to get back into the swing of healthy living. I have been doing pretty well during the week by bringing lots of salad to work for lunch and cooking healthy dinners. But come the weekend, all healthy habits are off when Carlo and I start trying out all of the different Vegas restaurants. This past weekend was one huge binge fest with far too many meals eaten out. Even though I greatly enjoyed all of the thousands of calories that I consumed, I didn't enjoy the feelings of guilt and the jiggle of my butt come Monday morning.

So this week, I'm trying harder to make better decisions and not go off the rails when we eat out. I have even cut out booze during the week so I can make better food choices and not add any unneeded calories to my diet.

Carlo and I have also recommitted to running. We had signed up for the San Francisco Half Marathon at the end of July, but only ran once last week. We started off the week on a positive note since we did our 5-mile long run on Sunday and did 3 miles this morning. Our training schedule calls for 2 more 45-minute runs during the work week and then a 6-mile run on Saturday. I'm hoping we can one up that by going to Red Rock Canyon on Sunday for a hike.

It is time to recommit and make 30 for 30 a reality and not just a birthday wish.

Mr. Boo's Awfully Big Adventure

2007-04-05T08:22:00.000-07:00

Today is an exciting day because Andrew and Boo arrive from Austin! Andrew only gets to spend the weekend with us :(, but he is bringing Mr. Boo to his new home.

I can't tell you how much I have missed the kitty. Andrew has looked after him for 2 weeks now since we moved out of our house in Austin and moved to Vegas. I'm really worried about Boo being a good cat on the plane since he takes after his dad and doesn't really like change. Hopefully, he will be so scared that he will hide under the blanket in his handsome kitty carrier. Or at least that is what he did when I took him to the vet a couple of weeks ago.

30 for 30 challenge

2007-04-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

Since I've been officially off the healthy eating wagon for 4 months, I've been thinking about setting new goals in order to help getting back on the wagon easier. I had decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to get down to my goal weight of 150 by my 30th birthday on September 27. I mentioned this to Carlo and nicknamed it my 30 for 30 challenge.

After a few drinks got in me at our going away party, 30 for 30 somehow became a biggest loser style contest with lots of people getting excited and wanting to take part in the challenge. I couldn't go back on my drunken words, so 30 for 30 was born for real.

This weight loss challenge started on Monday and will run until my birthday September 27. Basically, each participant puts $50 in the kitty and then whoever loses the largest percent of body weight wins. 8 people signed up including me, Carlo, Dad, Mum, Andrew, Denise, Becca and Emily, so whoever loses the most will win $400 - extra motivation!

Despite this friendly competition, I'm having a really hard time curbing my enormous and bad eating habits! Since I went healthy yesterday, I have thought about food non-stop and my body is in shock with bloating and massive farts from eating too many veggies! I'm hoping it will get easier and I don't blow my diet too much when Andrew comes into town this weekend.

Even if I don't win the 30 for 30 contest, I want to lose this weight for me and be in the healthiest and fittest shape when I turn the big 3-0! That will be the best birthday present I can give myself.

Hello Hello

2007-03-31T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'm back...

It has been a crazy month to say the least, but Carlo and I arrived in Las Vegas on Wednesday night ready to begin our new life here. The last month in Austin was bitter sweet with lots of good times spent with our friends eating and drinking, but also the realization that we were going to miss all of our amazing friends as well as a town that both Carlo and I love.

Even though I didn't have time to post, I was taking lots of photos of our garage sale, going out with friends, etc. But I lost the camera at our going away party last Friday night, so all of the shots I had planned on sharing were gone :( Despite the downer of losing Carlo's brand new camera, our going away party was a blast with lots of beer at Sholz's Bier Garten followed by some bad covers at Austin Karaoke. Thanks to everyone for coming out and making it such a special night!

On Sunday as one last farewell to Austin, Carlo and I walked/ran the Capital 1000. It was a great 10K course that took us up Congress past the Capitol, down Enfield, and then along Town Lake to Auditorium Shores. We walked the first 4 miles with Emily and Becca taking in the crazy costumes and the on course entertainment. Carlo and I then ran the last 2 miles and did it really fast with 8:49 min/mile as our fastest pace! Here is a photo of a sweaty Carlo and me at the end of the race with the Austin skyline in the background.

Last Marathon Post

2007-02-26T09:39:00.000-08:00

All my grand plans for a writing a marathon expose haven't materialized and won't with the impending move, so here are the highlights and the lowlights of my first marathon.

Lowlights:
-- Peeing in the bushes by the golf course on Lake Austin Boulevard and getting stuck behind all these poky bushes and not being able to get out! So much for trying to save time by not waiting in line for the port-o-potties!

-- The hills of Exposition, miles 9-11. It was up one painful hill, then down, and then up again over and over again.
-- The old, and I do mean old, man wearing khaki pants who was chatting on his phone the whole time while walking as fast as we were running! Talk about demoralizing!

-- Seeing Carlo and Andrew just after mile 14 (Carlo blogged a photo of me running up to him) and having a breakdown, because I was tired and my body was starting to hurt. For the previous 2 miles while my fellow runners Karen and Dana were commenting how fast the marathon was flying by, I kept on thinking that this was the never-ending marathon and I hadn't even gotten to the half-way point yet. I ran up to Carlo thinking I would just give him a hug, but I just collapsed in his arms and started crying. He and Andrew went into awesome mode, sat me on the curb, and put new socks and shoes on me from my emergency bag that Carlo was carrying. I stopped crying, but found it hard to get running again.

-- Miles 14-21 were really hard. My feet were starting to blister even though I had changed shoes and my hip was acting up. There was a lot of walking at this point, most notably walking the entire time from mile 17 to 18. Not only was my body crapping out, but also my mind was out of the game making my pain only more intense.

-- Around mile 19, I was a 5-minute walk away from our house. I really wanted to quit and walk to the house and just lie down and sleep.

-- The blister on my right foot bursting at mile 22. (These photos are post-bursting and aren't as gruesome as they became after the marathon, but they both covered the balls of my feet and hurt a lot).

-- The blister on my left foot bursting at mile 26.1.

Highlights:
-- Carlo, Andrew and later Ashley G for being super supporters and surprising me at least every 4 miles on the course and cheering me on. There is NO way I would have been able to carry on and keep on running without this support. Thank you sooooo much!

-- Knowing that Mum, Dad, and Alison were “watching” my marathon progress on my blog and through tons of texts to Carlo.

-- The actual marathon course was amazing with great scenery and many people to cheer on the runners.

-- My Austin Fit training group who helped me through my first marathon and helped make endurance running actually fun.

-- Seeing this 8-year old Shawn from Austin Fit (he is the son of one of the marathon coaches) who was running his first half-marathon. He was amazing and totally kicked ass with a finish time of 2:47! He was having a great time and high fiving everyone.

-- Maybe not a highlight, but certainly strange - being blessed in Tarrytown by a minister who was standing on top of a ladder and sprinkling holy water onto the passing runners. I'm not so sure this blessing worked since my marathon started to go pear shaped soon after the so-called blessing.

-- Realizing at mile 21 that there were only 5 miles left to go!

-- The spectators around mile 21.5 who had a poster in their yard that said, "Masturbation is better than running!" It made me laugh, and they gave me some Advil and water that helped immensely!

-- Becoming delusional around mile 22 (maybe that Advil was spiked?) and finally being able to run again. I just cranked my ipod and started singing aloud and doing some real crap dance moves to Robbie Williams' Rock DJ. I probably looked like a mental American Idol reject, but it made me feel good.

-- Catching up to Karen and Dana at mile 25. I had lost them after my meltdown and had been running for 11 miles by myself.

-- Running through the Capitol and arriving on Congress for a short downhill run to the finish line. What an amazing place to finish this journey!

-- Seeing Carlo and Andrew yelling at me from the finish line.

-- Crossing the finish line and realizing that I had just finished my first marathon.

-- The true highlight of the day, aside from finishing was running, or should I say hobbling, up to Carlo after I finished and giving him a huge hug from across the fence. I was crying, he was crying, and it was just generally the best feeling in the world that makes me still tear up when I think about it. Carlo truly is a superstar who puts up with all my crazy decisions to do things like run a marathon and always supports me 110%.

-- The final highlight of the marathon was finding out that once I crossed the finish line, I quickly forgot about all the low points and only the highlights became important.

the slow steps back to recovery

2007-02-25T09:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my first attempt to run since the marathon last Sunday. I met up with my training group with the goal to run a short 3 miles. We started off walking and catching up about everyone's marathon experiences. After 10 minutes or so, we started to run and damn, it was hard! I thought my body was feeling better and had recovered from the marathon, but obviously not! My legs hurt and my feet felt like it is was mile 20 of the marathon. The majority of the group walked at least 90% of the time, because it seemed like everyone still hurt in some way. Afterwards, we all went to eat breakfast and had a fun (although very geeky) 2-hour breakfast talking about running and future marathon strategies. It was a great time and I'm going to miss training with this group next year, but hopefully, I will find some new running buddies in Vegas.

This morning, Carlo and I met Ted at Town Lake for a run. Or I should say, they ran while I walked 3 miles. I didn't even attempt to run today and my body hurt much more than it did yesterday after the walk/run. I think my right hip is out of whack and affecting my back and leg. My plan is to keep up the walking this week, as well as swim and get on my back for the first time since August! Hopefully, all that cross training will get my body back to normal because I realized this morning that I have raced almost 60 miles in the last 7 weeks--that is just races and doesn't include many more miles in training runs and weekly runs--so I think my body deserves a rest!

A big change ahead!

2007-02-23T16:58:00.000-08:00

This sign says it all:

I went to Las Vegas on Wednesday for a job interview at the Las Vegas Art Museum for a curatorial assistant position. The interview went really well and the job is just what I'm looking for with lots of potential for growth and learning. I've been on pins and needles since I got back yesterday waiting to hear from them and trying to not get too excited about the job in case I didn't get it. Turns out I didn't have to wait too long because I was offered the job this afternoon and accepted it. If everything goes according to plan, my start date at LVAM will be Monday, April 2. That is in a crazy fast time and it is going to be a hectic few weeks, but I think this move will be worth it!

95% ahead or 0.001% ahead

2007-02-23T08:42:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, Andrew came over to pick something up and asked why I had put a link on my blog to my marathon placings since they were so bad. I agreed that they were pretty dismal with 95% of runners finishing ahead of me. But that said, almost 6,000 people signed up for the full marathon and only 4,561 people actually made it to the finish line, including me even if I was slow.

I was curious to see how many Americans ran marathons and found that in 2005, 382,000 people ran a marathon in the US. This number, which I'm sure includes runners who ran multiple marathons, accounts for 0.0012% of the population of the US--a pretty significant number even if 95% of them run faster than me.

I promise more photos and info about the marathon today....

Did it!!!

2007-02-19T16:18:00.000-08:00

I am totally exhausted and still a bit emotional about finishing my first marathon yesterday. I will write a longer post tomorrow with more details, but my official chip time was 5h:59m:48s with an average pace of 13:44 minute miles! My goal was to try and make it under 6 hours and I did just that, although there were 7 miles of personal hell along the course that I didn't necessarily account for in determining this goal. That said, I finished and around mile 14, I didn't think that I had it in me to run 12 more miles.

Here are my official times for different miles in the race:
Mile 2: 25:55 mins
Mile 10: 2:07:37
Mile 17: 3:48:09
Mile 21: 4:49:53
Mile 26.2: 5:59:48

As you can see from those times, the race started off well and then combusted around mile 14 and continued until mile 21. After that, I became delusional and just started running and ran the last 5.2 miles in less than 70 minutes!

For all the geeky facts about my race and where I placed (dismally), check out this link.

Here is a photo of me about to cross the finish line after a long hard and painful journey.

Despite my screams to Carlo, Andrew and Ashley yesterday that I would never train or run another fucking marathon in my life, I've already decided I'm going to train harder and stronger this year to run another marathon and shave hopefully 30 minutes off of this time! Call me crazy, but crossing that finish line did seem to cause erase all the pain of the previous 6 hours, although my body is still reminding me of it today!

finish!

2007-02-18T12:11:00.000-08:00

Just under 6 hours!

waiting at the finish...

2007-02-18T11:04:00.001-08:00

Getting tense!

21 miles

2007-02-18T10:01:00.001-08:00

First signs of dissent... 'Never let me train for another fucking marathon in my fucking life.' But she was still running...

19 miles, 4 hours 25 mins

2007-02-18T09:37:00.001-08:00

14.5 miles, 3 hours 5 mins

2007-02-18T08:48:00.001-08:00

10.5 miles, 2 hours 10 mins

2007-02-18T07:24:00.001-08:00

Top of a brutal hill

7.5 miles 1 hour 35 mins

2007-02-18T06:51:00.001-08:00

Still looking good...

4.5 miles about 55 mins

2007-02-18T06:09:00.001-08:00

caw caw

2007-02-18T05:23:00.001-08:00

There's a grackle in Whole Foods. Guess it has fancy tastes.

7 am

2007-02-18T05:01:00.001-08:00

Sunrise... Time to get started.

2007-02-18T04:36:00.001-08:00

Bright start

Carlo will be posting marathon updates live!!!!!

2007-02-18T03:22:00.000-08:00

Carlo is going to try and update my blog with his cellphone, so those far away can keep track of my marathon. He is planning on seeing me around each 5 miles of the course, so he should be able to track my progress and give people a more accurate time of when I will be crossing the finish line.

If it doesn't work, you can always text him for a more specific finish line crossing time!

The Big Day

2007-02-18T03:17:00.000-08:00

In less than 2 hours, I'll be crossing the start line in my first ever marathon. I'm nervous and it shows. I maybe got 3 hours of sleep at most last night because I was thinking about this morning and how my back hurts.

Regardless of whether it will be a pretty finish or not, I will be crossing the finish line and celebrating with my training group afterwards. I've worked too hard not to do this for myself. I've got a hot tub, cold pool, massage therapist, and cold beer waiting for me at my coach's house so that should be motivation enough. Plus I'm craving Mexican food which I will get for dinner.

Remember, myfoxaustin.com will be streaming live from the finish line and I should hopefully be crossing the line between 12 and 1 pm. You can catch me there!

Wish my luck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Marathon Nightmares

2007-02-17T07:32:00.000-08:00

Oh my god, I had the most terrifying nightmares about the marathon last night. I dreamt that within the first mile, there was this huge hill, a hill that would easily seem at home in San Francisco, but taller. I tried to run up it, but the hill was too steep. Everyone else around me was passing me and I kept on sliding down the hill. I ended up crawling up it, using the cracks in the asphalt to dig in my fingernails and keep me hanging on to the hill. I finally got up it and found out I had lost all of my friends and everyone was already miles ahead.

Shit like this better not happen tomorrow!

Thank god there are no super killer hills on the actual marathon course, just some minor nasty ones in comparison. If anyone is interested in the actual course, some very dedicated runners have made a slideshow (with commentary) with a runner's view of the 26.2 mile course.

26.2 minus 3 days

2007-02-15T16:18:00.000-08:00

The countdown to my first marathon is officially on. I have been trying not to think about it for the past few weeks because to be honest, I'm scared shitless and I've been battling some kind of horrible back problem and haven't been running. Instead of tapering slowly before the big day, I haven't run at all in almost 2 weeks.

To make sure I still could run, I went out this morning at Town Lake. I had planned to do only 2 miles, but ended up running 4 miles. The actual run itself was fine and it was easier than I thought it would be after a long break. It was after the run that became a problem because I don't think my body liked being active again, my whole body ached, and both of my knees were sore. I'm hoping that this is just the usual aches and pains associated with getting back in the running saddle. I plan on going for a slow 3 miles tomorrow to double check.

Even though I have been resting up, I did drive the marathon course with Carlo two Sundays ago. Everything you read always tells you to know the course because it helps psychologically, but I'm not sure it did that for me. Instead of being relieved at how "short" 26.2 miles could be, I was horribly shocked by just how long it took us to drive the length of the course (minus 1 or 2 miles). I took us at least 50 minutes in the car and I got sick as we went up each hill (especially the many hills on Exposition) and the huge uphill climb at mile 24! Carlo kept on saying, "God, are we almost at the end?" but I would just say, "Uhm, no this is just mile 15!" It was scary and I can honestly say 26.2 miles really feels like 100 miles. That was in a car, god knows what it will feel like when my feet pound the pavement for that distance!

The one positive thing about preparing for a marathon is the much-loved carb loading. I officially started hard-core today, although I've eaten quite a lot of carbs this week already. Yesterday RunTex published an article on what to eat in preparation for the marathon and said that a 2-3 lb weight gain this week is a great sign that you body is properly fueled up before the race. I can do that :)!

If anyone is interested in coming out and supporting me on Sunday, one of the members of my training group has made this personalized course map with a few viewing spots marked and the projected time we should be running by! Any support would be greatly appreciated.

For those that can't be there, myfoxaustin.com will be at the finish line streaming live online from 11 am to 2 pm. Although I am not setting any time goals because my goal is to just finish, I should hopefully be crossing the finish line sometime between 12 and 1 pm (fingers crossed!).

Off to eat some carbs…

Purge Crazy

2007-02-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

Carlo and I are in the middle of trying to purge our lives and house of all the crap that we have been collecting over the years in preparation for a potential move. Carlo is selling a bunch of his DVDs online and is the process of selling his CD collection. He has it all digitized and backed up, so it is pointless to have them lying around. So far he has made $300 and he thinks he should make almost $1000 when all of his CD collection is gone.

Since I (stupidly) put all my CDs into a binder and no longer have the cases, I can't sell any of my CDs, but I can sell my huge book collection. I used to buy books like books were going to be banned 1984-style and have carted many around from house to house over the years. I haven't opened the majority in years, so I'm going through and sorting out the ones that I want to sell online at Amazon. I've been maniacally going through all of my books and typing in the ISBN numbers to see how much they are going for online. It is strange because some of the books that I think would go for a bit are only selling for $2 or $3. On the other hand, some strange books are really really expensive. I have posted a few $50 art books, but the biggest surprise is when I saw how much Peepholism: Into the Art of Morrissey was going for. Turns out it is a super rare book and is being sold for $300!!! Incredible. I can't decide to put it up there because it is a beautiful book and one day I do want to write an article about the Warhol images that The Smiths used on their early singles (I'm a geek I know!). I think I'm going to keep this one for now, although I'm sure it will only grow in value!

Look at the prices that Robert Rauscheberg's 1997 Retrospective catalogue is going for--I have that book too, but I'm definitely not selling that.

Granted, I haven't sold any of my books yet, but hopefully they will go soon and I can put the cash into our moving fund!

Gross!!!!

2007-02-02T07:54:00.001-08:00

I weighed myself this morning and I'm still at 172.4 lbs, the same as I was last week. In the past month, I have gained 2.4 lbs and am now 7 lbs heavier than my lowest weight before Thanksgiving. Things have to change and I have to start watching what I eat and trying to exercise more. I have become a human garbage disposal system and the quantities of food that I have been eating are horrific. I've known for a while that I need to start working hard on the diet front again, but these photos of me from the 3M half marathon last week sealed the deal.

I look like Ms. Blobby running with my stomach and thighs flapping in my wind! It is so gross and I can't believe that I have gained back 7 lbs! My thighs are huge in my 2nd photo with dad too! I do realize that I had just run a half marathon, which is great, but I don't like my body this way at all.

The scales WILL start going down next week!! I don't want to run the marathon carrying even more weight!

stay at home girlfriend

2007-01-31T16:48:00.000-08:00

I have been a cooking machine this week. I went from never cooking because Carlo always did it to cooking every night this week. So far, I made a Thai Shrimp and Cellophane noodle salad on Monday. Last night was delicious lasagna made with the spicy venison sausage from the deer that Ted shot last year and tonight I'm cooking Moroccan braised chicken with dried apricots, green olives, and couscous. Tomorrow night I'm whipping up some chicken and tamarind coconut curry. So far, all of the food has been great and the braised chicken smells quite delicious in the oven.

I got a massage today at the gym and I’m feeling a lot better. My back still aches, but my legs don’t hurt too bad and it even feels like my ankle is doing better! I plan on running in the morning, so I’m hoping, nothing starts to hurt again. One of Carlo’s friends challenged him to see who could run 100 miles first using the Nike+iPod gadgets that they both have. The challenge starts tomorrow and I want Carlo to win, so I’m going to make sure we get our miles in each week! There is nothing like the fat person showing up some skinny people ;P

sore, but happy

2007-01-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

I just came back from the gym. I had intended to go to a hydro strength training class at 9, but I'm struggling with some post-3M half marathon injuries and pains. Instead, I went to the gym, spent a while in the hot tub, swam for 30 minutes, cooked in the sauna, back in the hot tub, and then finished off in the steam room before taking a shower to cool down. It was very nice and relaxing. I thought that sitting in the hot tub would make me less sore, but my back and ankle still hurt. I think I need to get a massage this week and hopefully that will make a difference.

On Sunday, I ran the 3M half marathon. I also ran 3M last year and it was not only my first ever half marathon, but then the longest that I had ever run by 3.1 miles! This year I thought that running 13.1 miles would be easy in comparison to the ARA 20-miler 3 weeks ago and the impending Austin Marathon in less than 3 weeks, but it was still hard and I couldn't imagine running 13.1 miles after I crossed the finish line. I started out way too fast because I saw a couple of people that I really wanted to beat, so I hauled ass and did the first mile in around 9 minutes. The start of the race was really busy and I couldn't find any of my training partners, so I ran pretty much the entire race alone although I did run into my people from my group sporadically throughout the course. The course was fast with lots of downhills and it ran by my house so Carlo, Andrew, Mum, and Dad cheered me on just after mile 8.

I had no defined finish time goals, aside from just finishing and hopefully being able to beat my time of 2:52:52. I knew I was going fast when I ran 8 miles in 1:31 and even though I was super tired in the last two miles, I kept on going and crossed the finish line at 2:28:31 - 24:21 minutes faster than last year! I couldn't believe it. I knew that I am a lot stronger and fitter than I was a year ago, but I did not imagine I would smoke my half marathon PR by that much. Last year, I averaged 13:12 minute miles, this year I averaged 11:20 minute miles. Even though I thought that I ran the first half super fast and then slowed down in the second half, my splits show that I actually was a tiny bit faster in the second half:
1st half - 1:16:50.3 - 11:20 minute miles
2nd half - 1:15:59.4 - 11:20 minute miles

With under a 2:30 hour half marathon, I'm hoping that I can run a sub-5:30 marathon in a few weeks if my ankle gets better! Although, I will be more than happy just crossing the finish line regardless of the time.

Rain rain go away

2007-01-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

I'm so sick of cold, grey, dark, rainy (or icy) days. I thought Austin was supposed to have over 300 days of sunshine a year. It feels like we are having the other 52 days of the year instead.

I need to blog about our trip to San Francisco over the weekend, as well as post more ice storm photos but I don't have the energy right now...maybe tomorrow.

I did join a swanky new gym today and even managed to force myself to run 3 miles on the treadmill in anticipation for the 3M Half Marathon that is on Sunday.

fit and 50lbs less

New Philosophy

Figuring things out

What I inspire to be one day....

WWGD

More celeb workout routines

How to look like Gwyneth

Change of Plans

Alex vs. Her Belly

Running Solo in San Francisco

RELAUNCH

does this wedding dress make carlo look like a dwarf?

perspective

stupid taffy

There has to be a positive somewhere...

Torture

Lots of Heart

i <3 my heart and i want it to be healthy

Chocolate Bacon

Stress Eating

Because I'm a HUGE dork

Too Good to be True

See Saw

Murmur

Why processed food is gross

Run like a Girl

Alex 1 - Snooze Button 27

so far so good

For real this time

Be back in 2008

Thanksgiving Bloat

What I ate last week

You are what you eat, or in my case drink...

Fried food is yuck

Give Me a 1! Give Me a 6! Give Me a 7! What does that spell?

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I *heart* the Biggest Loser

You Are What You Eat

Last week's weigh in and race

Back to work in the morning

Just Say No to Candy

Reese's Peanut Buttercups don't taste that good when....

Hello 160s.....

Last week's WW

Exercise Revelation

1st week back on Weight Watchers

Alex 0; Larger Ass 1

Back in the saddle again

Seriously, where did I come from?

This is so gross, but so cool

When Botox goes wrong...

Fat people and salad buffets

Friday: More legs

Tuesday: Running up hills with a log

Monday: Upper body circuit training

The beginnings of an incredibly shrinking Alex

13.1 miles in San Francisco

Last week's workout stats

San Francisco here we come

Last week's workout stats

7 miles down to SF

Friday: Legs

Thursday: 15 lbs heavier!

Wednesday: Boot Camp Cardio

Last week's workout stats

Thursday: Bench Press Queen

Tuesday's boot camp from hell!

Yummy summer recipe

Last week workout stats

Last long run before San Francisco

1 year smoke free

Boot Camp Tough: The First 2 Sessions

Hello again

Mr. Boo's Awfully Big Adventure

30 for 30 challenge

Hello Hello

Last Marathon Post

the slow steps back to recovery

A big change ahead!

95% ahead or 0.001% ahead

I heart the Biggest Loser