Running for Treats

Day 3

Dog Walk 45 min

Ran 3 miles

 

Man, that run this afternoon was rough. I think it was the sprints from yesterday. My legs felt heavy and I had to walk a couple of blocks. Oh well, I'm not training for a marathon. Running is something I had to warm up to. I hated it when I was kid in high school. Whenever we had to run the mile in gym class I just plain hated it. I was active in those days. I skateboarded and I was pretty serious about it...I had abs back then! Running, now that's a whole other animal. I would not recommend jumping into running. If you've never done it, ease into it. That goes for the gym too and in all honesty if you've never been an active person, runner, gym person, etc...you should probably go see the Dr. first and just get checked out. When I started running years ago it was a love/hate relationship. I was running a wellness program at work and so I needed to get moving personally. I started out walking every day for a week and the next week I walked a block then ran a block and slowly moved up to jogging a block to running the next block 'till within a month I was running about half a mile. It then turned into "Ok, once I get to that stop sign I'll keep going instead of stopping". Back then I had really bad lower back problems, the kind that throw you onto the floor and force you to crawl because you can't walk. It's odd but running has helped that particular issue. When I don't run the pain comes back and when I run it goes away. You wouldn't think that would be the case since it's such a high impact thing to do. I believe it's because running is excellent for your core and strengthening your core can really help your back. I'm not a Doc so take that with a grain of salt. I'm not claiming anything here. I'm telling you what's working for me. I'm trying to break the running up so I don't destroy my knees. I might ride my bike tomorrow.

 

At about 4:30pm today my brain started saying "Hey, an entire can of pringles sure would be delicious wouldn't it?" So as any cow would behave I started to graze the kitchen. I opened the "fridge" and peered into it, standing there. Nothing looked good. I considered a handful of blueberries but my brain declined. Then the food monster in my head said "Hey, check out those pringles again." Thankfully I said no and walked away.

 

Cravings, what a curse!

 

I love treats...oh my gosh I love them so much. Chocolate is my favorite and my best friend from High School likes to give me a hard time about it and tells me that only girls like chocolate as much as I do. Is that true (comment below please)?

 

One of the hardest things for me having a healthy diet is the dreaded night time sweet tooth. I cannot escape it. 8pm hits and it comes crashing into my head like a bowling ball. Where does that craving come from? It's a killer for sure but, I have found a way to quash it (sometimes, not all the time). Special K cereal makes Chocolaty Delight. It's a terrible name / branding idea but with 3/4 of a cup of it and a cup of skim milk Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it kills the beast that plagues me. The milk fills me up and I get to eat these awesome nuggets of chocolate at the bottom of the bowl. Mmmmmm so good. That said, doing Weight Watchers for as long as I have has taught me one very important thing....Moderation: I can have brownies just not 5 of them at a time. So last night we had a friend over so my wife made brownies. Not just any brownie - double chocolate & peanut butter brownies. If there is anything I love more than Chocolate it's Peanut Butter and Chocolate. I could have eaten the entire pan of them but alas I did not. I had one and it was wonderful. So, because I had earned some extra points with my exercise and had watched my points during the day I was successful. The thing is you gotta enjoy some treats like that. If you don't you will break at some point and when you do it will be very, very bad and you will hate yourself for it the next day. Also, I'm not an alcoholic but I have decided to lay off the micro-brews for the next 10 weeks. Beer dries me out and I need to be on my game especially with all the running and cardio I'm doing right now. I don't want to get dehydrated.

 

I was going to post a picture of the brownie I had last night but these were better. The sun was coming up at 6:30am and Sasha and I went on our usual morning walk. I do get to see the sun come up every morning.

 

 

36,000 & I am a temple

DAY 2
Dog walk - 45 min.

Spent 45 minutes in the gym - Intense running sprints (also called fartlekers...sounds like "Fart" Lickers), spent time working the weights, core workout and then worked out on the elliptical for the last 10 minutes or so to cool down. I think I burned about 250 cal.

 

Thoughts for the day:

Still thinking about the former coworker's husband. How terrible. How sad. Things like that just sneak up on you. I read an article recently that indicated that for men, "...before you hit 44, a fatal accident is your most likely cause of death; but once you reach 45 heart disease becomes your number one threat, killing 36,000 men over this age every year. If that wasn't enough, scientists at the University of California discovered that men over 40 were twice more likely than women to develop melanomas". Fear. I'm not going to lie and say that there is no fear motivating this  Long Haul, healthy lifestyle thing for me. I realize I'm not going to out run death or cheat death by doing weight watchers or running 4 miles a few times a week. That would be stupid. That said, I don't want melanoma, I don't want cancer and I don't want the last remaining years of my life to be spent in a lazy boy watching wheel of fortune and re-runs of Jeopardy. I don't want that life. There is this guy at the gym (www.goldsgym.com ) that I see occasionally in the mornings when I'm there super early (doesn't happen that often anymore) and he must be 50+ years old. He looks great. He's super lean, ripped like Captain America and works out hard (and he has a cool tattoo on his shoulder). I don't think that guy sits around much. That's what I'm shooting for. A more active and healthy lifestyle. I also need to remember that God has provided me with this body and part of my job is to take care of it. 1st Corinthians 3:16 say's "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" and again the scripture say's "For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple" in 1st Corinthians 3:16-17.

 

It's all about the heart right?

 

 

 

 

MOTIVATION

DAY 1
Walked the dog for 45 minutes

Ran 3.96 miles (some walking included to catch my breath)

www.mapmyrun.com indicates that I burned 583 Calories.

Only over ate my weight watchers points by 1

 

Thoughts for the day:

I'm feeling highly motivated. I took pictures of my pudgy self a couple of days ago (see below) and saved them as my screen saver...keeps me humble. That said, a former coworker's husband who is only 54 had a heart attack a couple of days ago. He was just sitting there watching some TV with his daughter. This caused me to think back to the history of varying cancers that run rampant through my family. All kinds: skin cancer, brain tumors, lung cancer and then there's the one that keeps me up at night...Alzheimer's. Well, if I get that at least I won't know I have it. The reality is that at age 42 (soon to be 43) grey hair not only in my head of hair but in my "cool" goatee, wrinkles, back aches, waddling like a duck when I get out of the bed and walk down the hall to the bathroom and a recently fair amount of nostril hair are the least of my worries. This is going to be what I call "Long Haul Living". The short term goal is to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks but the long term goal: stick around and enjoy living the life that God has given me and be available to the people that I care about and that care about me (family, friends, my dog....seriously, no one else is going to get up at 6am or earlier to walk that old girl). I need to get healthy and stay healthy. I need to be healthy in body, mind and soul.

 

A long time ago when I was responsible for running a "Wellness" program (it's almost laughable) for the company I worked for, I got down to 155 lbs. This is where I want to be physically speaking.

 

 

Long-Haul Living

Ok, I'm starting a blog. It's ironic that I'm starting a blog even though I don't follow any blogs. I read a few once in a blue moon but I don't really "do" blogs. My wife follows a bunch of blogs but she doesn't even have a FB page much less a blog. We don't even "tweet" (birds chirping in the background) and we don't have smart phones. We had a friend over this evening and she explained how Tumbler (sp?) worked.

My wonderful Mother-in-Law has been on me for almost a year to do a blog. I was like "a blog? I'm not a writer and my grammar, well it's terrible." At the time I was on a Weight Watchers kick and I was losing weight and I had started posting my exercising regiment on FB and talking about my challenges. My M.I.L kept on me about the blog but I put it off which is normal for me to do with things and I was also bouncing all over the place with my weight. Enter two weeks ago. I recently accepted a new job and I had to travel to the Corp. HQ for training, meet people and then go visit the client I would be working for. This meant that I had to buy new clothes. NOT GOOD, my clothes were "years" old and I had lost some weight and my dress pants didn't really fit and my shirts were pretty dated. Oh my...Standing there in the dressing room, trying on dress pants and realizing that I had to go up a size was humiliating. I felt terrible and it was embarrassing. Every little roll on my body was mocking me..."look at you. You fat little piggy." Uhhhh, the mirror just screamed at me.

Understand something...I'm not obese nor am I at a point weight-wise where I'm in a dangerous spot and need to try out for one of those T.V shows where some buff, 20-30 something year old who spends every waking minute in the gym busts through my front door and takes me on for a year and lives in my house forcing me lift weights before I go to bed and turns my living room into mini-gym. I'm not that guy. I'm the guy next door. I'm married, I have two kids, a dog, a great job, church, etc...but I'm over 40.

"42" to be exact and "43" is creeping up in the next couple of months. So here it is: it's the clothes, I have children, I have family and I'm involved in a lot of things that really matter. That said, I wake up every morning and bones crack and make noise. When I push myself up out of the bed it almost hurts a little. I don't walk down the stairs, I waddle until my muscles loosen up. I over eat and lack control and my exercising has not been consistent. I also have a family history of cancer and Alzheimer's that keeps me up at night sometimes.

Here is the game plan:
1. Get healthy - that means not just body but mind and soul
2. This blog will be my journal and will help me stay motivated, track my successes, failures and I will post humiliating photos of my pudgy body. A little self humiliation goes a long way.
3. Perhaps I will encourage others (over 40 or not) to get off the couch, put down the chips, lose some weight and stick around for awhile.
4. Short term goal: Lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks
5. Long term goal: I'm in it for the Long Haul. This is "Long Haul Living" from now on for the Glory of God, for myself and for my family.

Here we go....