That little guy is really booking it...

Another 3 mile run hidden inside this 3.5 mile run! And it was pretty easy! I was surprised because Bikram really sucked away a lot of my will to live yesterday. But once I got on that treadmill and finished the first mile I knew I would finish the whole run no problem. I felt awesome at the end and it actually wiped out the rest of my Bikram headache. Which is weird because I sweat during the run and I assumed the headache was from dehyration. Who knows, our bodies are weird things.

I had another Bikram session this morning. I felt SO much better this time around. I was able to do all the poses and I didn’t get the headache after class this time. Waking up at 5:30 though just to get DISGUSTINGLY sweaty and not feel like I’m burning that many calories…I don’t know if it’s going to be for me long term. I could get up at 6 and put an hour in on the treadmill and get probably more (weight loss) benefit. There are other benefits to yoga of course, but right now my main priority is losing weight. Not sure it’s really going to help me there.

This weekend I really need to get to the grocery store. Exercise has been going well but food has been totally random. Very healthy one day and not the next. Or healthy for breakfast and lunch and a free for all for dinner. More structure, more planning. Then I think I’ll see those numbers drop…

This has become my day. Chugging and chugging liters of water.

I did bikram yoga this morning and while I felt amazing right after the class for about 15 minutes I then got a dehydration headache like you would not believe.

I’m going again tomorrow mostly just because a friend wants to join me. I’ll be wearing my heart rate monitor to see if I’m actually burning calories. Mostly curiosity. I feel like I’m mostly just sweating, stretching, and trying not to die of heat exhaustion. I’ll also give it another chance to see if hydrating better tonight and tomorrow before class makes a difference.

It did remind me how much I miss regular yoga though. Maybe I’ll get back to that if tomorrows class isn’t any better. Oh well at least I tried something new!

You might be curious how this

turned into this

All thanks to this fabulous recipe.

But then all of that…turned into this →

I ate way too much pasta. I did not work out yesterday.

I went to bed too late

and was too tired

to wake up early and run.

I’ve had a yogurt for breakfast so far.

I’ve got a bowl of fruit waiting for when I’m hungry again.

(Still so full from pasta last night.)

I’ve got string cheese and almonds for snacks.

I’m going to have a salad with chicken for lunch.

And something healthy for dinner.

And I will run tonight.

And be healthy again tomorrow.

(And the day after)

(And the day after that)

Hello internets! It’s funny–each time I visit the blog I think: “Oh no need for a blog post today–I did one just yesterday!” But in actuality I have more like 4 days between posts. Yeesh!

So a lot has been happening and I’d like to keep you in the loop. Let’s start with cooking. I made this fabulous recipe last week. It turned out amazing! I’m not great at cooking fish (I tend to overcook because I’m worried about under cooking) but I hit this one on the nose! Seared on the outside, creamy on the inside. And yes! That’s a dollop of butter on top! Herb mustard butter to be exact. So while the dish was yummy it was very calorie dense. 700 or so calories for one serving. How do I know this? By using this fabulous tool. (Everything’s fabulous! Haha.) Seriously. That analyzer has saved me so much inputting and calculating. Just copy and paste the ingredients and then tell it the number of servings it makes. Perfect! (You do have to watch things like beans though–it always wants to think they’re dried and the calorie count skyrockets.)

Then, continuing with the festivities of my birthday the BF and I took off for a weekend at my parent’s beach house. I LOVE that place to pieces. It’s so quiet and restful. They have a screened porch on the back of the house that is just heaven. That’s where I enjoyed a bagel, egg and feta sandwich lovingly created by the BF with half a glass of OJ.

Then, dear internet, I discovered Hipstamatic. I had heard of it a while back but saw no use for it. Then I started missing my old 35 mm. And nostalgia demanded I download something that would make my photos look old-timey. You will see a lot of this app in the future. It’s making me love photography again. Below is my dinner leftover from Sunday night, re-imagined as my lunch on Monday. Chicken kebab, with rice and chickpeas.

Oh, and then internet, I did something I’ve been doing a lot of this month. I spent a lot of money because it’s my birthday. Ha. A friend invited me to a Bikram yoga class on Thursday (morning–at 6 am!). And while I have yogaed many times before I have never purchased a mat. Why? Because–eh. Why should I have to? I’ll tell you why. Because in Bikram you are doing yoga in a 5 bazillion degree room and you will be sweating everywhere and I’m not going to borrow a mat that a million people have poured their sweat and rubbed their gross selves all over. Not when I can buy one for 30 bucks at Lucy on my lunch break. (Unseen–I also bought a yoga towel. Those suckers are expensive!)

After resolving to be healthy and do yoga and spending money (lots of it!) to that effect…I went and blew it all on dinner. Haha. My coworkers took my out and we feasted! I had chilled tomato and cantaloupe soup. I had Dayboat Haddock and veggies. All so I could have chocolate brownie with pistachio ice cream and wine. I love chocolate and wine together. And this wine? Was fabulous. My friend took a photo of the label and I’m determined to track it down.

After dinner? Why belly up to the bar for more wine!

But now? The birthday is over. I have one more present I promised to myself. (I’ve bought myself a lot of presents this month!) I will pick that up on Saturday.

But the biggest gift I’m giving myself is continued work on Project Me. I will be making a big pot of ragu from scratch tonight (we picked up fresh tomatoes on our way back from the beach), and then I will have a bowl of pasta and ragu. And then I will run 3.5 miles.

And tomorrow I will wake up early and run 2 miles.

And I will continue my running program. I will continue to track calories. I will do this for myself.

Good book, actually.

I turned 29 yesterday. Eek! Only one year away from the big 30. Or as my friend put it: “The 8th anniversary of your 21st birthday.” I like that better!

So what did I do? Only went to the most fabulous restaurant in DC! I’ll have photos later, but the night was amazing! 29 courses (only one or two bites each) and so delicious and innovative. It was an incredible evening.

Good for me for running my scheduled 2 miles first.

Tonight I’ve got a dinner with my parents and they specifically asked for a pizza place. Ugh. I love pizza but it’s SO calorically dense. And while I could just get something else…ugh. That’d be hard I know everyone’s going to want pizza and going to want to share. So instead I just saved up my calories and I can have 2 pieces with just water. Hopefully that’ll fill me up.

I’ve also got to do my 3 mile run tonight though. So hopefully that will burn any excess off!

!!!!!

Do you see that? I did my long run on Sunday!

Sure, that time may look slow to a lot of you. But hidden in those 50 minutes is a secret. I ran 3.5 miles STRAIGHT. I haven’t done more than 3 miles in SOOOOO long! And I felt so so good after the run was over too. I took a nice long time to stretch and listened to some happy, bouncy songs while I did it and I felt so amazing.

Not all runs feel so good. It’s hard to say sometime why one feels good and another doesn’t. Food? Water? Rest? Who knows. I just try to appreciate the good runs all the more.

Here’s to a new week!

Yikes. I gained 2 pounds in one day and now I’m basically back where I started.

It’s totally irrational but I blame it on the small bowls of cereal  that I ate. I was slightly under calories yesterday so after dinner I poured myself some peanut butter puffins into a tiny bowl I have (asian rice bowl). It was delicious–totally hit the spot and I was full after eating it.

So why did I pour myself 2 more bowls?

I have no idea. The taste was just so good I wanted more! I convinced myself they were small bowls and it was okay.

In the end I only went over my calories by about 350. So a 1750 calorie day. Not terrible and obviously not enough to make me gain two pounds. But the scale likes to play head games with me.

I’m going to continue to weigh myself daily–I actually do WAY worse when I don’t weigh in daily. It lets me ignore what I’m eating because I don’t see the ramifications over time.  But I’m going to give myself a mental pass for a couple weeks. Just weigh in–take note, get off and don’t use the scale as a barometer for how my workouts and eating is affecting my weight. It usually takes a week or two for me to see my activity on a scale anyway. I’m not sure why, but I’ll have a great week and gain weight and not no why, or I’ll have a terrible week and lose weight and think: “See I don’t need to work out so much!” We’ll see where my weight is in 2 weeks and reassess.

Well, what do you know. I am capable of getting up in the morning! For the past 3 days I’ve woken up early and jumped on the treadmill. I’ve done 3, 2 and 3 miles. Not too shabby!

My eating has been pretty darn good too. Ideally I’d like to cut out refined carbs, and artificial sugars all together, but that’s proving tough (I ate a biscuit with my white bean chicken chili the other day, and I had a bagel from my office’s free bagel day today). Despite those small bumps though I’ve been doing really well in terms of total calories and I’ve made my own dinner for the last few days so that’s good.

Weight is–going up. Which I can’t quiet wrap my head around right now so I’m trying to ignore it. Otherwise I’ll get despondent and end up not working out or eating an entire cake or something.

Now comes the tough part. I could go and kickbox tomorrow morning, and take Saturday off. Or I can take tomorrow morning off and kick box Saturday. It’d be nice to have one relaxing day before work, but it would also be nice to be able to sleep in on the weekend.

Sunday I have a four mile run. Eep!

So I’m taking this opportunity: a new week, a new month, my birthday month! to kick this up a notch. I’m still half - this whole thing. I know that that’s my problem. I’m reasonably sure that I’ve posted about it before. I vacillate between either “easing my way into things” or “going at things gung-ho”. This is one of my gung-ho moments.

A lot of it is centered around my race in October. I definitely need to up my training for that which will in turn help with the whole losing weight thing. Part of it is a number of events in October that I’d like to be at a smaller size for if only to buy a great new dress.

So today is the start of my longer training schedule. August looks like this:

The trouble is where does kickboxing fit in? I’m not sure yet. I’m thinking I might want to do Friday morning and then rest on Saturday.

Also in general I’d like to make these runs morning runs, but that’s going to mean a huge change in lifestyle. At the moment I tend to go to bed pretty late (11:30) and wake up pretty late (8:00). This would mean going to bed at 10:30 and waking up at 6:30. I still get 8 hours of sleep, but it’s down from the normal 9 I usually get. Plus–I have to get up early. I’m not very good at doing that. But I do get the benefit of being able to come home and just relax or cook dinner without having to worry about fitting my work out in.

I’m going to try and get up at 6:30 tomorrow for my 3 mile run. Let’s see how that works…

So you know those bloggers who challenge themselves to do amazing things? Eat only whole foods for a month, run 100 miles in a month, be vegetarian for a week. Those people?

If you are like me you probably read those posts and marvel at their willpower, their dedication. Maybe you even feel a little bad that you aren’t able to do the same.

Well, if you do feel bad, please feel free to stop by my blog and make yourself feel better! I did terribly at that happy hour last night. I had three glasses of white wine, I at like 5 nacho chips, and two small soft pretzels dipped in jalapeno cheese sauce. I ended up getting home around 10 and I didn’t work out. And I didn’t get up early enough to do the morning kick boxing workout (due to those 3 glasses of wine) and I’m going to a ball game tonight so I won’t be working out tonight either.

Ugh.

I DID bring all 3 meals to work today though. I’m not going to drink any alcohol at the game and I’m not going to grab a hot dog for dinner either.

Gotta get back to it after messing up!