Taking control of weekend eating

Weekend eating has always been a nemesis of mine – even before I jumped on the weight loss train and shed 80 lbs. Something about getting to Friday night and rewarding myself with making it through another grueling work week by going out to dinner and eating to my heart’s content seemed, well….. nice. Fulfilling, even (in more ways than one!)

Weekend eating continued to plague me while losing weight. I would work very hard, Monday a.m. – Friday at lunch to watching what I ate, log my calories, work my butt off with exercise. Friday night out was my “treat” meal, only it never really stopped with Friday’s dinner. It often continued through Saturday and partially Sunday – even though I’d often try to reign myself back in come Sunday morning. What resulted is usually at least a pound of weight gained – true weight gain or just water retention from eating out so much – and I would have to work all over again to lose that pound plus make some headway for the week.

Not so difficult when you have a lot of weight to lose. Much more difficult towards the end when the pounds are in the single digits. I find that it takes a lot of effort to work off a pound now. Long gone are the days of losing 2+ lbs every week. These days, I am happy with a half pound loss!

But the weekend eating was still a problem. After having Kate, I still ate like I was pregnant because pretty much everyone told me that the weight would come right off, especially if I was breastfeeding. Well, I stopped breastfeeding after a few weeks and the stubborn Last 10 remained. I was in between sizes….too large for my pre-pregnancy pants, but too small to go up a size. Clothes were uncomfortable. I couldn’t bring myself to buy larger sizes. So around April, I started eating like I was dieting….except for the weekends.

I found out I’m pretty good at maintaining. Not so great at the losing anymore! What worked in the past no longer worked with this post-pregnancy, newly 30 year old body. A few weeks ago, I decided the weekend eating needed to stop. It’s been hard…but… not having to re-lose that pound (or more) gained from weekend binging has been really nice, too.

Do you have problem with weekend eating, too? This weekend will certainly be challenging. Hubby and I have a babysitter and a date night planned, and Saturday starts college football season…which means tailgating! Which means lots and lots of food! Thinking and hoping the baby distracts me this time around.

Thought for today

"Your greatest runs are rarely measured by racing success. They are moments in time when running allows you to see how wonderful your life is." - Kara Goucher

Kara Goucher is one of my favorite Olympic athletes. Not only is she a fantastic runner, but she’s also a mom. I follow her on Facebook and it’s so cool to see a professional runner balance her life with motherhood.

What seems like forever ago, I used to run for pleasure. I had moments like the one described above – where I would be overwhelmed with emotion during a particularly good run about how great my life was. I would actually get choked up while running and have to compose myself so no one would think I was a weird crying girl out on the trail. It was like a wall of emotion would hit me mid-run. It was wonderful and delightful and overwhelming.

I haven’t run for pleasure in a long time.

2012 has been marked by successes and (mostly) “failures” when it comes to running. Taking a month off of running after having a baby made it difficult to get back into it. I haven’t felt as nearly as in shape as I was while I was pregnant. Most races don’t result in a PR (except for that odd Half Marathon). Most runs, I struggle to finish. Many runs I don’t even enjoy because I am measuring myself against past (and better) performance.

Perhaps it’s time to stop measuring, and start relishing.

Just a thought for today.

Hello? Anyone there?

I realize it’s been MONTHS since I last wrote! Months! I have no excuse (well – ok, I kinda do. Having a baby takes up a lot of time!)

I suppose I should just start where I left off. Kate recovered from RSV pretty well. She was on oxygen for a week after we were discharged from the hospital, but overall, she did just fine. Things went pretty well for about two months and I was really loving being a mom. She started sleeping through the night at about 4.5 months which made things IMMENSELY easier to handle. We have really been blessed with a great sleeper. I really can’t complain in that department.

In May, on the weekend of my first Mother’s Day, Kate was up all night with a 104 fever starting on a Friday night… just totally out of the blue. We brought her in to the pediatrician on Saturday and they immediately placed her in the hospital. She was miserable… very lethargic and non-responsive (very scary!) All of the tests came back negative… after 3 days in the hospital AGAIN, they sent us home with no explanation. I got to spend my first Mother’s Day with a very sick baby…. it was awful. It took her about a week to get back to her old self, but we came through. She was so miserable that we couldn’t put her down without her starting to cry at all…she just laid on us pretty listless the entire time. Which means we didn’t get much sleep! Not something I want to relive.

That was the week of May 13th… on May 18th, I turned 30 (boo), and on May 20th, I ran 13.1 miles in the Colfax Half Marathon and had my BEST TIME EVER! I knocked off a few minutes off of my half marathon time! I really wavered on whether or not I would run, considering I hadn’t run in two weeks and hadn’t really slept in a week. But the human body is truly amazing.

Which I guess brings me to now. I am still struggling to lose the last of my baby weight. I finally added in weight lifting/strength training and the pounds have started to come off. Right now I have 6 lbs to pre-pregnancy weight. I’d like to lose about 10, but we’ll re-evaluate when I get there. I have been doing Jillian Michael’s Ripped in 30 on the days I don’t run. Current weight is 142. Slowly but surely, it’s coming off.

I have another half marathon in 4 weeks but I’m not sure that I will be running it. I am having major hip flexor problems which is causing me to really cut back on my running. Add in that my husband is traveling twice over the next 4 weeks and I’ve lost my babysitter for long runs. One thing about turning 30 is that I’ve started to realize that I can’t just go and do what I did back in May. Since that half marathon, my hip has been bothering me. I really had no business running 13 miles on that little of training, and like it or not, my body doesn’t recover as fast as it did a few years ago. I’d like to focus on 5ks for the rest of the year because it’s doable in the amount of time that I have. There are at least four or five that I have in mind and it would be enough to keep me competitive with myself.

I can’t promise I’ll blog as regularly as I did before, but now that I have predictable free time in the evening (Kate goes to bed at 6:45 most nights!), and I’m really in the weight loss mindset, I’d love to get back into blogging. After all, you all are my support!

And now… time for Kate pictures. Here she is at 8 months old!

Such a stinker! Must take after her dad.

Not the way I envisioned a “break”

To say we’ve not been able to catch a break lately would be putting it mildly. I haven’t forgotten about blogging, or losing weight, or running. In fact, I’ve been doing the latter pretty well since returning to work last week. But then I got sick, and then I gave it to my baby. And right now we are holed up in the hospital while Kate is on oxygen treatments for RSV.

I just don’t see a way around it…

I’m going to have to become a morning exerciser when I go back to work next week. Le Sigh.

Do any of you work out in the morning? And I don’t mean the “morning” workout that I’ve been doing on maternity leave (roll into the gym around 10:30 a.m. after all the stay at home moms and elderly folks have finished their workouts). I mean like 6 a.m. workouts. The only appealing thing to me about this is having my workout done for the day and not having to argue with myself over whether or not I’m too tired or too burned out or too whatever excuse I tend to come up with at the end of the day to avoid working out. At my old job, I could run on the trail during lunch time and it was always nice to go home and not have to think about going to the gym.

It makes sense. I have free use of the gym facilities on base ( It’s free! Why don’t I use it?! I think it’s because I’m afraid I’ll look awful compared to military folks who are obviously in way better shape than me. Also, my boss works out there and I feel like it would be weird for some reason.) I need to get over that, and soon. If I want to maximize time spent with my hubby and baby when I get home from work, then morning workouts it shall be.

Yuck. I am so not a morning person. But if I have to get up early anyway, I guess I should go ahead and do it. If I’ve planned everything right, it should only push back my start work time by 45 minutes. Then I will work through lunches and be able to still leave by 3:15 most days.

If you are a morning exerciser, what gets you out of bed and into your workout clothes? I’m hoping that by not making myself get up any earlier than I have to and instead pushing back my start work time by 45 minutes will keep me from hitting the snooze button.

I do still exist (sort of)

The past two weeks have really thrown a monkey wrench into my running/weight loss plan. I wish I could blame it on external forces (some of which I can, I suppose) but some of the blame also definitely lies with me.

Let’s back up a bit.

Two weeks ago – the weekend of the Super Bowl – I woke up late Friday night with horrible stomach cramps. What ensued was 24 hours of horrible, awful, wouldn’t-wish-that-on-anybody puking. And when there was nothing left to throw up, it wouldn’t stop! My best guess is some sort of food poisoning, but it left me completely drained and I needed several days to even feel halfway normal. Picture me attempting to feed my baby by laying on the ground, her in her swing, and me holding a bottle in her mouth. I didn’t even have the energy to stand up. By the time I started to feel back to normal, the weekend had rolled around…and my husband got a stomach bug! Not the same as me, but it definitely kept him out of commission for a day or two so I was on parent duty 24/7.  And THEN….Baby Marathoner got a cold. And that is the worst one of all – not necessarily because she is cranky and miserable (she’s actually quite a good trooper), but because her sleep has been AWFUL. She can go down easily, but can’t stay asleep for too long and once she gets up to eat in the night…forget about going back to sleep. Last week was so exhausting. I never want to repeat it (though I know I will at some point). I tried running last Monday, and could only make it about 2.25 miles before feeling the exhaustion. Between working and it being a busy week anyway, exercise just wasn’t happening. Hopefully we’re turning the corner now…she’s slept well the past two nights and the congestion seems to be lessening. Ugh. You know it’s bad when you think back to something you did last week and it feels like ages and ages ago.

But that’s why I made a 16-week half marathon plan in the first place. I knew I would have weeks where I would need the extra time/rest. So here’s to a brand new week…

… and here’s my little runner at 2 months old. Time flies.

Laying out a plan

It’s no secret that my Type A personality loves to plan. I’m pretty sure when Microsoft developed Excel, they had someone like me in mind (omg – love templates!)

I talked with my soon to be personal trainer last week and she suggested I train 3x a week – once with her one-on-one, once with the treadmill class, and once with another class she teaches (athletic conditioning or boot camp). Normally, I would be all over this. But time with my family is limited, even if I am just working part time for the next 5 weeks. On top of working part time, I decided to go into the office twice a week because I can get more accomplished. As evident on Tuesday, from the minute I hit the door to the minute I get back in my car, I’m working like crazy. So now, Tuesdays and Thursdays are spent on site. This is actually kind of a relief, because undivided attention at home is hard, and I can get in most of my required minimum hours on Tuesdays/Thursdays. Anything else is just bonus hours at that point. Takes the pressure off of meeting the minimum at home.

Anyway, I digress. Like I was saying – I LOVE to plan and I LOVE schedules. I registered for the Colfax Half Marathon a few weeks ago and at 16 weeks out, now seemed like the optimal time to start training. So I kept sitting down all last week to try and write out a training schedule, but I kept getting distracted (or letting myself be distracted…. curse you, Pinterest!) The reality is, dividing my time up between work, husband, baby, and ME takes a lot of effort. I feel guilty if I take any time for myself, even though I know it’s good for me (happy me makes better wife/mom!) Throw in a crazy work schedule and time seems very, very scarce.

With that in mind, I think I’ve finally come up with a solution – at least for the short term until I return to work full time. I am home Monday/Wednesday/Friday mornings, so why not take advantage of it? The gist of the schedule is like this:

Sunday: Long Run

Monday a.m.: Personal training OR tempo run

Tuesday: Off

Wednesday: Treadmill class (p.m.) OR tempo run (a.m.)

Thursday: Off

Friday a.m.: Personal training OR Interval training

Saturday: Off

Since the kiddo is old enough to go to Child Watch at the gym, she’ll get to hang out with the other babies while I work out. Seems like it’s doable (so far…)