I think that at this point, it's no secret that this cycle isn't quite accomplishing what I had set out for it to. I'm basically right where I was when I started. 231.5 this morning. So the question is... what's the problem?
It's not really a question for me... I know the answer. It's not something I like to admit, because, well... it's hard to admit. Booze.
Alcohol is full of empty calories and I've probably been averaging 2-3 drinks a day. Maybe more. I'm not proud of it, but it's reality. I guess I'm also not being as careful about my food intake as I had been previously.
In order to make a good choice on goals, I have to figure out what my priorities are. Here they are... lose weight (duh), running, and cycling. I don't need to make a goal for my training. I work hard at it because I'm motivated by doing well. When it comes right down to it, I really enjoy the training. Mostly.
So when I think about my needs and what's worked for me in the past, I have decided that alcohol is the factor that needs to be changed. How am I going to change it? Good question. I'm giving it up.
Drastic, I know, but I need to see if this is really the problem. The only way to experiment is to remove the factor entirely. Well, not entirely. I'll make exceptions. Such as Cinco de Mayo and May 12th for the Quad County Metric bike ride. Other than that, I don't really have a reason to drink. I also realize that's two out of the four weekends in May, but this kind of goal will cut out the mid-week drinking.
So the goal is this... no alcohol for the month of May with the two exceptions I made above. I'm starting today, a day early, but it's going to help the weight loss for sure. I'm only doing a month, not my typical 90 day cycle, but if all goes well, I may extend it. For this kind of goal, I need to start small and build on the small successes.
In this month, I'm hoping to lose 8 pounds. From 231.5, that means I should be down to 223.5 by the end of May.
So I'll raise my water glass and toast to an alcohol free month of weight loss!
As some of you know, my wife and I moved over the weekend. Our stuff is still in boxes and I get to spend the day trying to unpack. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where my scale is, or even where to put it in the new house, so I'm not getting a weight this week. That might not be a bad thing considering how much junk food I ate over the weekend.
My brother in law, brother, and a friend came to help us move. It was uneventful and relatively easy, but we're still unpacking. I ate hoagies, pizza, and chicken wings on the weekend with lots of beer. I'm not sure why I didn't try to be healthier, but I didn't. Sometimes you just have a weekend like that.
I've got a great workout schedule for the week. Hopefully it involves losing some more weight. I'd like to get close to my weight goal if possible, although I'm not so confident these days. On the bright side, I'm still running and have started cycling. I'm doing well at both, I think.
On Friday, my wife and I woke up early so we could get our 10 mile run in before anyone showed up to help us move. My brother and brother in law were supposed to be here in the afternoon, so we figured we'd get some errands out of the way as well. When my brother got here, we hung out a little bit and then went for a bike ride. We only did 13 miles, but averaged 19mph. A pretty decent ride, but my legs were shot.
Since he's training for a sprint triathlon next weekend, he wanted to run right after the ride to get used to the transition. I tried it with him. I'm not sure if it was the 10 miles early in the day or the ride, but I got about a quarter mile before I decided I couldn't hang anymore.
I'm gonna try to get myself back on track this week and drop a few more lbs before the 90 days are over. I'll be keeping a glass of water by my side while I unpack. Typically if I'm busy, I'm not hungry, so we'll see how this week goes!
I need to be honest. These 90 days are not going so well.
Things just aren't the same as they had been when I started. Trying to fuel properly for endurance sports doesn't really coincide with eating a low calorie diet. With that, the goal is then hard to follow and my exercise goal has been hard to stick to because of a taper and a rest week. I'm already out of weeks where I can make a mistake. Not to mention that my weight loss is almost laughable.
It's time for me to really go back and look at these goals to see what I can salvage.
I'm keeping my weight loss goal. I want it, but I need to go about it differently. In reality, my other goals are "supporting goals" for the most part. They all are meant to help me continue to lose weight. The problem I'm starting to have is that certain days during the week, I have what my wife and I refer to as "hungry days." We called them that before we were swept up in the whole Hunger Games phenomenon. I know that losing more than 10 pounds in the next 5 weeks isn't going to be easy, maybe not even possible, but my training is picking back up this week and I'm excited about trying at least.
Hungry days are the days where I feel like someone has poured an entire truck load of coal on the fire that is my metabolism. I've got insatiable hunger. I try my best to satisfy it in a healthy way, but sometimes it takes a large quantity of food to get it to subside. This usually blows up my calorie limit for the day. At this point, I'm not sure I'd make it to the end of my calorie goal successfully. Since I have about 5 weeks left until the end of my 90 days, I'm going to rewrite my goal, start from scratch and give myself two high calorie days per week. I'll see how that does for now.
Starting today, I have 33 days left, which is just about 5 weeks. That means of the 33 days, I can make 10 of them high calorie days. So I need to stay within my calorie limit 23 of the next 33 days.
I'm going to remove my clean eating goal. I'll replace it with a new one that I'll write about at the end. When it comes down to it, I can't eat that cleanly. It was worth a shot, but it's not reasonable for me at this point in my life. I've made some changes, though. I eat better cereal in the morning and I'm more conscious of eating stuff with chemicals.
I don't feel like I need my exercise goal. I have a pretty intense training schedule that I am motivated to sticking to. I don't need a goal to keep me motivated to continue to do it. It's one of those things that I've figured out how to do on my own, which is kind of the point of the goals in the first place.
I'm also going to remove my time goal. What it really boils down to is that I'm simply not focused on that goal. It's not important enough to me at this point in time.
I need to make a new goal. This is a goal that I have had before, but in more than one way. I have found that if I drink anything other than water, I generally don't go back to water for the rest of the day. I have an addictive personality. I know this about myself. If I drink beer with dinner, I have beer for the rest of the night, or nothing. The same goes for juice, soda, and any other form of drink. So to combat this tendency, I'm going to write a goal for it. I'll call it "Liquids."
I may not have anything other than water until I've had my two liters for the day. Once I have done that, I may have whatever I'd like. Before I can have a second drink other than water, I must have another glass of water (my glasses are 20oz). This should save me some calories in the long run as well. I will accomplish this goal 28 out of the next 33 days. I have a reprieve from this goal during training... I drink Gatorade on longer bike rides and runs.
Hopefully these goals help me through the end of the 90 days with some success. My motives are different than they have been in the past, so I need to adapt for them. My number one priority is not weight loss right now. It's still important, but I have a marathon to run in 6.5 months, and I don't want to make a fool of myself.
For the record, I want to be between 200 and 210 by Marathon Day. Maybe lower. 232 again this morning.
I want to start off today by saying this week's post is a little bit different than most of my others. My wife and I ran a half-marathon in Atlantic City over the weekend with some family members. So this post is less about my week, and more about the race and what lead up to it.
Weight was 232 this morning. Still holding steady. Tapers do that to you, I guess. I'm not planning on running this week, so I imagine the weight will stay the same again next week. We'll see.
Shout out to my father in law for getting 5th in his age group for the 11k. Shout out to one of my wife's uncles for doing the same. Also, shout out to one of her aunt's who I didn't realize was running the Boston Marathon in two weeks. So cool.
This was one of the most anticipated weekends of my short running career. As the weekend approached, I knew that I had family coming in to visit/run with us, I knew that I would be running 13.1 miles in Atlantic City and neighboring beach towns, and I knew that it was going to hurt. How much depended on how much I put into this run.
Yesterday I spent the day freaking out about the weather. We had to drive up to get our race packets, so we did, but on the way we stopped at a few stores to see if I could find compression sleeves… just in case. I finally found some at a Nike outlet store. We picked up our packets, met up with one of my wife’s uncles, then drove home to relax for a little before going to church. My father in law met us there. I prayed for good weather and strong legs.
When we got home, it was time for dinner. Spaghetti. Lots of spaghetti. We spent a lot of our dinner conversation talking about what would be the appropriate attire for the anticipated temperatures. 42 degrees at the start time, partly cloudy, 4mph winds. A little chilly. Chilly enough for long sleeves? Tights? Just a t-shirt and shorts? WHAT TO DO?
Later in the evening, another uncle and aunt showed up with wine and bagels for the morning. It goes against my nature to drink alcohol the day before a race, but I admit that I had a glass. We talked a lot about what to wear with them as well. It was obviously stressing everyone else out too. I came to the conclusion that I would be wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and my new sleeves. It wasn’t going to be windy, and I’m a sweater. I’d rather be cold than hot any day of the week.
After pinning our numbers to our shirts laying out our clothes, and packing a bag, it was bed time. I didn’t sleep well.
I woke up before my alarm at 5:28. Beautiful. Got the dog, fed her, walked her, and brought her back in so I could use the bathroom and shower before leaving. After suiting up, it was out the door.
Once we went through the parking debacle of 2012, we finally checked our bag and got to the starting line. I’ve been stressing out about our time on this half for some time. My goal has been to run it under two hours. I did pace calculators that told me I couldn’t do it. I asked people on a running message board if I could do it, and many said no, it was too ambitious.
Tell me I can’t, and I’ll show you that I can.
The race starts, and we’re off. The goal was to stick to a 9:30 pace for the first few miles. We run past mile 1 and my watch beeps… 9:10. Ok. Too fast. Gear down turbo.
Mile 2: 9:29 – perfect
Mile 3: 9:15 – good enough.
Around now, I start feeling a sharp pain in my lower right back. I’ve never felt this before while running and wasn’t sure what to do about it. My wife, a physical therapist, tells me that it’s muscular. She can give me a stretch to do when we get home. Nothing I can do about it right now but tough it out.
As the miles tick away, we’re staying steady at a 9:10-9:20 pace. A little behind what we need if we’re going to stay under 2 hours, but we know we want to speed up to the end. After the turn.
As mile 4 passes, we’re off the boardwalk and onto the street. It felt like we were running on the side of a hill. My right knee, left hip, and right foot are all throbbing. The slope is killing me. We try to move up to the center of the street a little where the slope’s not so bad, but we end up getting pushed back down a little bit as runners are on their way back from the turn around.
As we hit the half-way turn around, my Garmin says we’re just over an hour. Pace is good, but we definitely need to pick it up here.
My wife is struggling with her asthma. I know she’s had to take her inhaler at least twice, maybe three times by now. I don’t want to push her too hard. I don’t want to leave her behind. But I also don’t want to miss my goal of a sub two hour half marathon.
Luckily my wife is a trooper. We’re pacing nicely. I’m throwing out high fives to the people who are still on their way out. I know that they need the motivation, and God knows I need the distraction.
Miles 6-9 are still on the street. We’re keeping it steady at around a 9:05-9:10 minute mile. We’re chipping away at the deficit, but not fast enough to be comfortable. At mile 8, I’m feeling like a champ. Although my foot is still bothering me and my hip and knee are still a little sore, I’m feeling great. Sub two hours here we come.
We decide that we want to hold back on increasing the pace too much until the last 5k or so. We turned back on to the boardwalk for the last 5k, and I’m hurting. My wife is pushing hard, I can tell. I feel like I want to stop for a second to walk. I don’t say anything.
We’re still running. Mile 11 comes, and our pace is right where it should be… 9:05 or so. We have moments of sub 9 pace, according to my Garmin, but I’m not sure if I trust it. It tells me 10:30 sporadically. I know we’re not that slow. I ignore the pace window on my watch.
We pass a clock. It doesn’t agree with mine. Neither does the distance. What the hell is going on? My wife reminds me that the clock says the time the race started. It took us a little over a minute to cross the line, so our chip time will be different. We’re still not going fast enough.
I feel like hell. I want to give up. My wife is ahead of me, and I don’t think she’ll notice if I drop back. She turns to give me a high five because “we’re doing it!” I start to get frustrated. I’m in a lot of pain. I just want to be left alone and concentrate on picking my feet up, and put them down. Quickly.
Mile 12. We’re not gonna make it. According to what I think I see on my watch, we need to keep a sub 9 pace to get there in time. I know I’m not going to have a kick. I don’t think I can pick up the pace any farther.
Mile 12.5. Wait a second. Do I have 6 minutes left to finish this thing and hit sub 2? I go into my head, throwing numbers around. I’m going to fast to focus, but I think I’m right. That’s a 12 minute mile pace. I can slow down.
No. Screw that. My wife’s setting the pace, just keep up. She has no idea how much farther we have to go, and she doesn’t know what the time deficit is. She’s just running hard. Keep up. Focus.
I can see the finish line. My father in law pops up on the side of the road for some pictures. I smile… or try to… but it’s time to focus. Head down. Move your feet. And do it faster.
We get close to the finish. I see the time clock. 2:00:**. Son. Of. A. BITCH!
Wait. We’ve got a little over a minute deficit from walking to the starting line. Our chip time isn’t the same as the clock. run. Run. RUN!
No kick. I’ve got nothing left. I’m about to collapse. I throw my body around like a maniac, and try to get my legs to move a little bit faster.
We cross the finish line. I look up to see our time, but my name is off the screen already. Shit. Did we do it? Don’t care… about to pass out. I kneel down for a moment to catch my breath. My wife looks like she’s about to topple over too.
We find the family that came to run (my father in law and one uncle finished 5th in their age group for the 11k that they ran… April Fools apparently means weird distances in the running world).They tell us that there’s a computer that you can plug your bib number in to get your unofficial chip time. After getting some refreshments, we make our way over. One of my wife’s uncles is checking his time too, so he gets ours for us.
Attempting to change your lifestyle can be... sporadic. I feel like things hit me randomly throughout the days, weeks, and months that I've been doing this. This week I was struck with a realization. I'm am, without a doubt in my mind, an athlete.
This is what I've been shooting for since I started on this journey. I wanted to be an athlete (again...?). I was always athletic. You know that fat kid on the playground that could shoot a basketball and knew how to throw a frisbee before a lot of his peers? That's me. I have good eye hand coordination. I have quick reactions, and I believe in my ability to feel where my body is in space. Along with that, I feel like I know where my body SHOULD be in space, so I get there. I can cut down angles. I can read a play. I don't mind laying out in the mud to stop a ball or catch a frisbee.
Having all of those abilities doesn't mean squat unless you have endurance. As a kid, I played soccer. I was the goalie. I didn't have to run much, but I could be active for about 10-15 seconds at a time, wind myself, then I'd get a break as I punted the ball down to the other end of the field. It worked well for me. I got to be a part of the team. I got to hang out with friends. I even got to have my dad coach me... so at least I knew I wouldn't be riding the bench for being the fat kid.
This week I'm coming to the realization that I am an athlete. Now, I'm not saying that I have ridiculous endurance or anything. I'm still not fast. What I do have going for me, though, is that I'm not afraid of going the distance.
When I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon a few weeks ago, I knew that I was getting myself into something that was going to test me physically and mentally. Honestly, it just seemed like the next logical step after running a half marathon. Why not a full?
I've found that when it comes to endurance sports, distance is all relative. If the farthest you've ever run is 2 miles and someone asked you to go run 5, you'd think they were crazy! 5 Miles? That's so much! It's over twice as many as you've ever done before. As I build to the half marathon I'm doing with my wife (and some of her family), I don't fear 10 mile runs anymore. I've done 5-10 runs over that distance already. Sure it hurts sometimes, but it's not bad, and I live. So when I think about running 13, it's just 3 more... and 3 miles is no big deal anymore. So when I think about doubling my half marathon to do a full... here's how I see it.
After my rest week, I have 29 weeks to build up to the 26.2. I could start at 0 and add 1 mile per week and I would get there. That's not scary to me. But I'm already at 13.1, so why start at 0? I won't. I'll start at 13.1. And then I'll build. My plan is to run 20 miles on July 20th. That gives me 14 weeks to maintain my endurance and build my speed.
Between now and the marathon in October, I'm planning on 3 bike rides (50 miles, 75 miles, and 100 miles) at least 5 foot races of varying distances (5k's to half marathons). I also want to do a Duathlon.
(run, bike, run). Not only does this stuff not scare me anymore. I'm excited for it.
As I go into my last week before the half marathon, I'm on the end of my taper, which means I'm totaling about 8 miles over three runs. I'm used to 20-26 miles per week right now (when the marathon training really picks up, I'm expecting 35-45 miles per week). The taper means I'm burning less calories which doesn't help with weight loss, but it does help with recovery which should allow me to run my best half marathon.
I want a sub 2:05:00 finish time. But more importantly, I want to finish with my wife.
All that stuff said, I'm already bored with my runs this week. I have two 3 milers and a 2 mile walk scheduled. I may or may not take the walk... if I do, Yahtzee can come.
I'm not happy about my weight loss as of late. I'm not completely sure what's going on with me. Regardless of if I'm eating too much or what, with the amount of running I had been doing, it shouldn't be a problem. I think I might have the appetite of someone running 25-30 miles a week but I'm only doing 15-20 over the last couple weeks because we're tapering for the half. What that means is that I'm burning 2000 calories in exercise instead of 2500, but I'm still eating like I would have when I was running more. I just need to get it under control.
With that in mind, I'm REALLY worried about this week and next week since I'm barely running this week and I'm taking a week off next week to let my body recover. My ankle has been screaming at me, so I'm gonna give it a break.
I spent a lot of time in reflection this week. I decided to look back at my life and really evaluate where I am right now. What's changed? Why does this feel permanent when nothing ever has before?
Well, first of all, I have a supportive wife and family. Not that I didn't have my families support before, but my parents can't physically do what I can/could, and although my brother can, we didn't live close enough to each other any of the times when I got serious about weight loss. My wife is with me now. I can talk with her about ANYTHING. Having support is extremely helpful.
In the past, when I lost weight, I think I looked at weight loss as a finish line. I had a goal, and I was going to accomplish it. It was a race. I dropped weight as quickly as I could and once I crossed the finish line, I didn't have to do this crap anymore. That's what it felt like to me. Crap. Lifting weights is BORING. Is it cool to see your body change, physically? Hell yeah! But do I want to spend an hour in a stinky gym a few times a week? Hell no! So once I was done, I was DONE.
Then the weight would come back. Sometimes slower than others. Sometimes I would sit comfortably... about where I am right now... but it wouldn't last. The weight came back. And every time I got scared that it was coming back, I'd "lose weight" again, drop down to where I was comfortable the last time, and call it quits. I would try to maintain by going back to what I had always done, eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I had already done the work, why wasn't I maintaining?
Well duh, Matt! Just because you're lighter doesn't mean you can eat like a fat man again. Eating like a fat man makes you fat!
So this time, things are completely different. I'm taking it slow. I'm not racing to the finish line. I'll get there when I get there. I'm also changing habits. I feel gross on rest days. I know I need the rest, but I'm finding that I don't think to myself, "Thank God I don't have to work out today!" Instead I'm thinking, "I really want to work out, but I can't because I don't want to hurt myself or have a setback in my training."
I'm also changing my palate. I often think that I really love chips and fries and other junk food, but once I'm eating it, I realize that it doesn't really do anything for me anymore. In fact, the other day I went out for brunch with some friends. I had a healthy sounding burrito... grilled chicken, black beans, vegetables, some salsa... but I ordered some sweet potato fries as well. I knew they were going to be deep fried, but I thought I wanted them.
I was wrong.
I ate them anyway, but I found myself eating them because I felt guilty for spending the extra money, not because I was hungry or because they tasted good. Shit, I covered them in katsup... I didn't even taste the sweet potato fries.
Sure, I guess I enjoy junk food sometimes... the occasional slice of pizza or Chinese food is nice, but I wouldn't say I get out of it what I used to. I certainly don't crave that stuff very often anymore.
The other thing that's really changed in my life, is exercise. Winter is by far the hardest time to exercise for me. That's why I decided to do p90x on my last cycle. To push me through the winter. I've found joy in exercising. I think that I stopped cycling in the winter in the past because it was too cold to do it. I don't have the gear. But I certainly have stuff to run in the winter, and there's no excuse not to. Is it pleasant? Not always. But it works, and I do enjoy running.
Now that it's been warm out and I'm training for a half marathon, I'm encouraged to keep going. Last week, I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C. It's on October 28th. I have 7 months to train for it. That's 7 months to stay in shape and continue losing weight.
Over the weekend, my wife and I ran a 10 mile race in Margate as a warm up for the half-marathon on April 1st. We finished in 1:33:51 (9:23 pace). That's a personal best for me. We're looking at finishing the half somewhere around 2 hours. I'm hoping to get under 2, but I'll be happy with under 2:05.
Despite sitting on a plateau at 232.5 pounds, this is my life now. I eat well. I exercise a lot. I have goals. I keep pushing. And I will continue this process until I'm where I want to be. Then I'll keep pushing forward. Because if you're not moving forward, you're standing still. And I'm not ok with that anymore.
So I have a disappointing start to the week. I weighed in and gained 2 pounds. Like I said last week, I thought I had lost a bunch of water weight... after this weekend... I'm pretty confident I'm holding water again. There was a lot of beer and salty meat, potatoes, etc. YES, there were vegetables too.
This morning, I was 234.5
Like I said, disappointing, but not the end of the world. My weight loss goal is still attainable. Especially with the training we're doing. This was just a bad week for weight loss in general. I only ran 3 days this week, I also ran less mileage than I was supposed to. This week, we're busting out 12 miles on Saturday. That will be my high calorie day, and I'm not anticipating having another one this week.
When I started this blog, I decided to name it The Matt Train because that's what I wanted to be on my bike. A train. The steam engine, pulling my group along behind me. I've always been a leader, but I don't physically look like guy who's gonna do all the work. I want to look like that guy. I even said to my wife the other day that I'm starting to get self conscious of my stomach again. Which is weird because it's so drastically smaller than it used to be.
I also haven't been so in to cycling lately. I'm finding it hard to even think about getting on my bike and going out for a ride. Running has, for better or worse, replaced cycling as my passion for the time being. Over the weekend, I had a friend here for our party that is really great with bikes. He looked at my bike and tuned it up for me a little bit and told me what repairs I need to make... new chain... new shifter... etc. Another friend send me a new pair of bib shorts, which I'm pretty excited about wearing.
Once my bike is repaired and ready to go, I think I'll enjoy it more. It might also be a winter thing... it's too freakin cold outside to ride!
I'm looking at signing up for 4 big bike rides this season. Hopefully they all fit into my schedule. Plus the half-marathon, and the full marathon at the end of October (I'm signing us up on Wednesday!!!). Maybe there is something like a triathlon in my future. Who knows?
In the mean time, I'm going to refocus, and get my eating and exercise back on track for the week. I don't have any weekend distractions scheduled for the next few weeks, so I should be able to drop a decent amount of weight in this time period.
I feel like I should talk briefly about how my body feels lately. My wife and I ran 8 miles on Friday evening. When we do our long runs, it's usually in the afternoon. So I expected to not feel so great on the run. Oddly, I felt fine. I also felt fine at mile 4, despite the rain. And at mile 6. And 8. I could have kept going, but it was raining, and I wanted dinner. haha
I did not like how I felt this morning or yesterday after all of the drinking and eating I did. Although I stayed under my calorie limit, I didn't eat well. There was a lot of starch, and not a lot of vegetables. I laid in bed thinking about how terrible my body felt.
When I'm working with clients and we're talking about nutrition, I talk about how important fueling your body with the right kind of fuel is. You don't want to fill a high performance engine with low-grade gasoline just like you don't want to fill your body with low-grade food. I don't usually forget about this, but when I do, my body remembers and lets me know.
The Matt Train is back on track from this point forward and we'll be chuggin along until we reach our destination. At this point, it's inevitable.
.JPG)
.JPG)
