Adjusted Reality

Tag: #projectraceweight Page 17 of 20

On Happiness

On April 8, 2016

I’m sure it was probably apparent to everyone around me the last few months, I had lost my mojo hardcore. I’m so relived to really feel like I’m getting to the other side of this shit. It’s good to be happy Quix again.

happy

This is a happy face. Lately, this has been forced. After a nice long walk at lunch and paddleboarding after work, this was not forced at all.

Gaining 10 lbs was weighing on me (badup CHING) for so long. And really – who cares? In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t have been such and issue. No one is going to be unhealthy or die over being 10 lbs heavier.

I think my big problem is that I couldn’t do anything about it for so many months even though I wanted to. That’s not true. I made the choice to not do anything about it because I wanted to fuel to race. I felt guilty for not making any progress, but now that I am completely onto #projectraceweight, I feel dumb about that. I could NEVER have sustained anything like this during race season. Losing weight, the process, makes you weak as shit during it. If I would have tried, I probably would have eventually fainted on the side of the road on a long run or ended up in my kitchen binge eating crazy shit like crackers and butter because CALORIES. It’s just how things work, and I can say this because it’s happened before.

Now that I am working on it and making at least a little progress, I feel better about it. Sure, I’m a little frustrated that my husband is down about 3 times as much as I am this month while I’m sticking to my deficit better. Regardless, my face looks a lot more like me, my pants fit a little better, and that plus envisioning how badass I’ll look in my new race kit come July is enough to keep me on the wagon for now. FINALLY, the inertia is going and I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s still very far away, but getting a little closer, so I know I’ll get there eventually if I keep walking. I just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

hammock

With maybe just a few stops to hang out in the hammock…

I’m still mentally dealing with having 3 terrible races. I mean, hello, perspective – I finished a 70.3 and 2 marathons over the course of 5 months, I didn’t DNF or get injured or die or anything. I learned things on all those courses. I actually had a SIGNIFICANT bike PR going at Kerrville even though massive cramps until I crashed at mile 50. I ran my fourth fastest half marathon in January, within a few minutes of my PR. I’ve done this racing thing 89 times (yes, I actually went back and counted), not EVERY race is going to be a winner.

I think it was the combination of gaining the weight to fuel performance… and then all my important races sucked. I literally feel like it was all for nothing. Well, besides the pleasure of consuming so many calories in a day for a while, but still, I never would have done that for funsies. I can take a little disappointment, but to have 2 personal worst marathons in a row? Why did I get fat again? Why bother racing? Obviously I’m not any good at this shit, and it negatively impacts my life, right?

Y’know what, it totally makes sense to me to really be proud or ashamed of my races if it’s what I spend 11 months of most of my non-work time and energy focused on. I need this time away more often to not specifically train and if I race, it’s for the energy, the people, the participation, but not for the results. I’m pretty sure my husband MAY DIE if we went months without any racing but I need to be strict with myself that some are JUST for participation. Removing myself from training for a while, I’ve also been able to remove my self worth from my race results. I had another personal worst at 10/20, but I also kind of intended to do that and feel nothing but happy about the day I had.

Various things keep trying to pull me back in sooner, but after being really depressed about racing and training in general the last 6 months, I finished the marathon feeling at peace… but not sure if I ever wanted to do anything like that ever again in my life. Between having some bad bike experiences and feeling like an utter failure at the run this fall/winter, there was not much joy there come March 6. I had ZERO desire to get on a bike with clips, or lace up run shoes in any serious manner.

The good news is that I’m healing. I think it’s going to take the full 4 months of offseason, but if that’s what it takes… fine. I’m getting tingles watching Ironman video clips again, instead of being like, MEH. I’m thinking about doing that a year from now and getting excited, but I’m not itching to even start a training PLAN right now, so it’s very much NOT YET TIME and I’m in no hurry. I had fun doing 10 miles with Zliten and not caring about the pace. I told him I’m ok doing that again during offseason somewhere pretty where we don’t discuss what our watches say and let it dictate what we do.

I rode my race bike for the first time since disaster noob day, and I definitely missed it. I also took my first step towards being less noob-y, I spent 10-15 mins in the back yard practicing the motions of being a confident unclipper. I’m ready to start making some progress there. I’m getting tons of guilt that we’re not doing group rides yet and while I’m standing firm that I’m just not ready to go ride in traffic with a bunch of people, I need to start doing things to get myself there.

feb3-1

Too much of this during the winter. This is not a good way to stoke motivation or run love...

I know winter isn’t really my season to begin with, but I had such a good one last year, I was hoping that my winter blahs were gone for good. Not so much. The cold was actually really mild this year, but the allergies were terrible, which actually kept me inside more. Weather, I can deal with. The air making me sick for a week, I can’t. Even if I WANTED to stupidly brave it, with Zliten’s allergy induced asthma, it was a no go. The treadmill is ok for occasional speedwork or runs in inclement weather, but for 3 weeks of running daily with long runs? Suck.

The bright side is that next year is completely different. I’m not running 2 marathons. Actually, I’m not running ANY marathons. No trip to Florida. No insanely quick ramp ups to half ironman or marathon. No run streaks. Instead, I’ll be riding my bike just about every day as many miles as I can and hopefully discovering bike love the way I discovered run love last year. And at the end of it… I’ll be doing a race distance I’ve never done before, so it will all be a new adventure where finishing is truly the main goal and anything faster than 16:59:59 is totally acceptable in my book.

I was worried that I’d be sad about missing spring training and racing. Sure, I get a *little* twinge when I think about Galveston 70.3 this weekend and the massochist in my head thinks “hey, if we would have ramped up biking this month you TOTALLY could be at that start line”. And that’s actually progress because if you would have asked me that two weeks ago I would have been like…

nope

NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.

However, it’s truly lovely to enjoy spring in a different way. Long walks. Paddleboarding. Camping. Little bike rides around the hood. Hanging out in the hammock. These things bring tons of joy and a smile to my face and I’m remembering what it’s like to not just be Quix: producer, triathlete, and eater of ALL THE FOOD. And it’s making me happy to not be that me for a little while.

I feel… free. I said I felt free at the finish line of the marathon but I had no idea what free really felt like. I thought the calorie restriction would be terrible, but it just feels freeing to work towards a goal I’ve wanted to tackle for a long time. It feels free to not be stuck somewhere you don’t want to be.

I’ll keep plugging away it until it’s time to do something else. I’ll start dealing with the training and racing stuff when it’s the season to do so. I’m far enough away from both last fall and winter’s disappointments, and next winter’s massive amount of WORK to get to Ironman that I feel like I’m on vacation. I’m in blissful limbo. I had this weird underlying anxiety thing building all winter and now it’s pretty much gone. And for the first time in quite a while, I feel light. And truly happy.

750m, 10 miles, and #hammocklife

By Quix

On April 4, 2016

In Uncategorized

After a full month off training and racing, I decided to do the latter twice (sorta) this weekend, while not resuming any of the former. It was actually a lot of fun! I approached it like a real life normal person. Instead of being so focused on time, performance, bettering myself, etc, I decided to frame it like this – hey, I’m going to go be active with a bunch of people – old and new friends – this morning and it’s going to be awesome no matter what the time on the clock says.

Nothing about “don’t take this shit so seriously” really clicked until this weekend. It took a month of perspective but I think the part of me that was burnt out with the multisport thing is healing. I can now separate races and my self worth and there’s an option between give 110% and give everything to the course and not bother – it is possible just to go meet up with friends and run and swim (we’ll get to that bike thing again soon…) just because it’s fun.

Saturday was the start of the swim challenge. Got to the docks, stuff stuff yank yank tug tug… whew. Thankfully the wetsuit still zipped, even if I felt like a dark rubber sausage. I jumped in the chilly-but-not-too chilly water (high 60s? 70?) and got my first wetsuit swim of the year out of the way with 25 other friends. It always goes like this…

0-100m Holy fuck cold cold cold warm up warm up pleaaaaase (while going about 1:00/100m, aka, way too fast)

100-200m Wheeze, pant, wheeze, I am so out of shape omg why body whyyyyy

200m+ Oh, right, now I remember how to swim in a wetsuit… this is fine.

I knocked off the 1 lap (750m) in a little over 15 minutes. Certainly not my best, but not my worst, and a good first day of the distance challenge. A bunch of people got in and did lap 2 (or more) but I was like, nope, done. Could I have swam another? Probably. But I didn’t really want to and since offseason is about only doing activity (beyond my 10k steps) when I actually feel like it, I just hung out on the shore and ate the best breakfast half chicken salad wrap I’ve ever had (swim-gries are real, yo).

Sunday was the 10 mile Austin 10/20. Our initial plan was to go easy, then we got a little race excitement going and toyed around with trying to go a little faster. We agreed to see what the day brought and roll with it.

Turns out in my heavy Hoka Kailuas, on a 750-1000 calorie deficit per day, without actually training in the last month – easy is the only pace there really is. The pain cave well was incredibly shallow and that’s JUST FINE with me. We ran the first half easy with Brian around 11’s, and then he took off for the second half, and we puttered up the (very small but totally significant at this point of my fitness) hills for a 1:52, or about 11:13/mile finish.

I may have been grunting a lot at the end, though after the race I could definitely tell that it was more the shock of “wtf, I haven’t done anything like this in a while” rather than me actually being close to death. No deep tireds, just me being a little bit wimpy. But that’s perfect. I’m happy to keep it light and easy for a while.

We actually even stayed for awards and a beer and part of the concert, it was so weird. Normally we limp home right away after races and die on the couch. Instead, it was like… this is a thing I did this morning before getting on with my day rather than being completely wayyyyysted from racing hard. Again, I love giving it all out on a course, but it was really nice not to have it take up ALL weekend preparing and recovering.

The one nice thing about running 10 miles right now was having more calories to play with. To be at a 1k deficit, I could have about 2000 calories. Such luxury! I was able to have 3 reasonable meals AND also drinks. The only thing is – I can definitely tell my appetite wanted about 5 meals and drinks. 😛 Distance running makes you so crazy hungry, it’s definitely not the best way to take off weight.

However, being smart about making my calories satisfying when is definitely helping this #projectraceweight cause.

This was Friday night’s dinner – a flatout tortilla with tomato sauce, feta, turkey pepperoni, olives, onions, and green peppers. I added a chicken patty on the side (not pictured) with buffalo sauce and yogurt blue cheese for a little more protein. It was pretty filling!

This was Saturday night’s dinner – grilled chicken on the bbq, half in a bun as a sandwich (extra carb attempt for the race which really was too little too late, it’s clear I will not be race-racing until I quit it with the calorie debt :D), a small potato in 1/2 tbsp olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and parmesan for oven fries, and broccoli. Yum!

We were craving fish and chips, so we compromised and did the baked version at home instead. Good ol’ Gordons and Red Robin oven fries right there on the plate. It definitely scratched the itch for me, not quite sure about Zliten, but it was a nice filling lunch after racing that didn’t completely break the calorie bank.

I’m looking forward to training again to be able to have the real stuff every once in a while, but for now, the substitutions will work. Enough real pizza or fried fish and chips to fill me up would be a full days calories. I’m fully aware the fake stuff probably has chemicals and other crap that isn’t great for long term consumption (the flat-out has a BUTTLOAD of ingredients rather than flour, salt, and water like good tortillas), but less than half the calories is huge right now.

As for actual weight loss progress… not much yet. ~~Partying~~ Camping last weekend really jacked it up early in the week, but I did finally see a 180-something weight (twice so far), so as slow as it’s going right now, it’s going. Zliten offered, unsolicited, that he thought my face and shoulders looked different (and he’s a straight shooter, so I don’t think he was just paying me lip service). This is that magic fourth week where I should hopefully see some progress if I keep it on the straight and narrow so keep my hopefully shrinking ass in your thoughts and send me lots of good mojo if you have some to spare, yeah?

Besides the racing parts of the weekend, we had a pretty normal and mellow one. We puttered around and did a few errands. Zliten decided to bike to a few pawn shops to look for some disc golf discs to take to his parents’ house (they have an AMAZING disc golf course 5 minutes away and we want to PLAYYYY).

I also now am the proud owner of a new portable hammock, care of a bunch of birthday gift cards. It’s probably one of my favorite things right now in life. I haven’t had a comfortable way to sit outside and enjoy our backyard for a while, since our chair cushions got wrecked (and even then….eh… they were only comfortable when drinking because… drinking). It was super easy to set up, and I’m pretty sure I spent close to 6 hours in that thing over the weekend just reading and napping.

It did put a damper on my goals to work on my blog this weekend, but I’m pretty sure it was the best option for happiness points. Oddly enough, the week was a balance of really active without trying to force it (2 swims, 2 runs, 10k steps every day) and still relaxing and soul replenishing. Perfect.

What’s up this week?

Sticking to my plan. 1200 calories per day Monday – Thursday, and doing my best over the weekend. 10k steps per day minimum. Per ush.
The race this weekend reinforced some of the weaknesses I have in my body right now. Spend some time stretching and GENTLY start some bodyweight training. Like the kind where you do a few reps during commercials watching TV.
I’ve gotten 5 of my 7 days of my Bonaire scuba pics edited. I want to get the rest of them done. It should take two casual nights working on it, or just call it my project and really focus one evening.
I’d like to get ONE thing on my website to-dos list checked off this week (no, that was NOT an April Fool’s joke). I’m looking into a mobile friendly theme this week so if I *do* get it done, it will be apparent because we’ll no longer be the default theme! (EDIT: trying this one out for a while. Images need to be recentered but I’m really liking it so far!)
Paddleboardng on Wednesday after work. Water time!
Checking out a new salad place near work for their soft opening for FREE. Free healthy food is the best!
Camping! We’re going to a place where there’s a beautiful lake for kayaking (and mayyyybe swimming, depending on how warm it is), a super nice place to bike, and some great trails to run and/or hike. I’m looking forward to another weekend outdoors!

And if I don’t get every single thing on this list done it’s ok, because that’s how we roll here with #projectspring. 3 weeks down, 13 to go!

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Offseason

By Quix

On March 30, 2016

In Uncategorized

Whew, life.

And, let’s actually tell it how it is. I made this much progress on a blog post between Monday morning and Tuesday at 6pm.

So there’s that. Today seems to have calmed down, so let me share some random things about life, liberty (from training), and the pursuit of (offseason) happiness.

On the water…

I finally got out to the water to paddleboard. It made my heart happy. I seriously felt lighter after I got back from being out on the lake. I may love running, I may love(/hate/love) cycling, but there is nothing that feels more at home than the water.

I’ve signed up for a swimming distance challenge at Quarry Lake. Every first Saturday morning, we swim a lap further than we swam the month before. At first I hesitated doing it because blah blah scheduling blah blah fear blah blah bullshit and then I decided “fuck that” and signed up to go swim in the lake that makes me happy. I’ll figure out how to get around the lake 4 times in June when I haven’t actually been training and how the 9am Saturday time is going to affect my training schedule later. For now, I’ll just go do it.

Besides the annoyance of stuffing my body in my wetsuit like a sausage casing, I’m actually really looking forward to it.

On Camping…

We haven’t been camping in 2 years, because, frankly, it’s a lot of effort. You pack up everything you fucking need to survive for a few days down to water and tools to make fire, and then once you’re done you have to CLEAN UP all that crap. When you’re training, you worry about being rested enough to do the planned session on questionable sleep. So, we’ve considered it a bunch of weekends and then just could not be bothered.

One of the goals for this offseason was to camp a lot because camping is awesome. First up was Sherwood Forest Faire with the clan. We had Friday off work, so our goal was to attend the faire Friday, camp overnight, and then come home Saturday. However, we got the weeks mixed up and they weren’t open, so we changed our plans to 2 nights and with a short trip to the store a few miles away we were set. It was a great call. Instead of rushing through the faire, we spent an afternoon just relaxing with our books, talking with people we didn’t know but since we were all Mug and Flame it didn’t matter, and enjoying the fact that my cell phone did not have ANY reception.

Over the two days, there was beer drinking and chatting with new and old friends and wandering around the campsites at two in the morning and finding a tiki bar with a dance floor where we danced for hours at the pleasure of the Easter Bunny. There was dressing up like a gypsy, walking about 10 miles in 24 hours without really meaning to, seeing a man unhorsed in the joust, and finding Zliten the perfect mug. There was fried olives, ogre toes (candied bacon wrapped in sausage wrapped in bacon), hot dogs cooked over an open flame, and a spectacular chicken gyro. There was also a similarly spectacular garlic pickle, a bunch of salad, and fruit.

One thing that epitomizes these vibe here is our buddy that came out Saturday morning, and just started cooking up breakfast tacos for everyone. Anyone who wanted them. Around dark, he fired up the grill again and threw on a massive amount of hamburgers for everyone, and then took off for the night. He wasn’t even camping. He just came to feed us and hang out. Another person works for a brewery and brought 12 cases of beer for anyone that wanted it. These are just two small examples of what the situation is here. These people are <3.

All that chillaxing + no screens besides a kindle + fun of being at the faire + nature and some beautiful weather made my little black burned out heart grow two sizes. Sure, it’s taken 3 days to get everything put away and my floor is still gritty from tracking in dirt, but my soul is pleased. So much so, that we immediately came home and looked around to find another place to camp next weekend. We’re heading up north a bit for two nights to a place with a beautiful lake, great cycling, and amazing trails. I just ordered a portable hammock. I cannot wait.

On the number of the scale…

As for #projectraceweight, I did what I could. Monday through Thursday, I maintained 1200-1300 calories per day. Camping, I brought a bunch of healthy food and reasonably low calorie beverages, and stuck mostly to those. My lunch at the faire was a chicken pita with ziki sauce and veggies. For dinner, I ate 1/3 a big salad, half an orge toe, and 10 fried olives. My eating was not perfect, but definitely was in the realm of acceptable. The drinking was a little more than I had planned, but I didn’t go crazy (I did not have to take a 3 hour nap to sober up in the middle of the day this time…).

I was unpleasantly surprised to come back to an INSANE number on the scale on Monday, but I’m back down to normal-ish ranges today so no harm, no foul. Our next camping excursion will be solo instead of a massive group, more relaxing instead of staying up all night partying with friends, and about enjoying a beautiful space away from everything instead of a booth with fried everything.

I must keep on keepin’ on. 2 weeks down, 14 to go. There is still time for my body to get with the program.

On the body and mind healing…

Here’s my step activity since the marathon (no, March 16th wasn’t a day in bed, I just left my fitbit on the nightstand :P).

I have done zero things from March 5th to March 29th at noon (my first run) to get active beyond walking and taking the cruiser bike out a few times, and you can see as the weeks go by, as my body (and brain) heals, I get more and more active just naturally. I’ve never taken enough time completely off and watched this process grow organically, it’s been fascinating to just actually want to move more not premeditated by a training plan.

We do the 10/20 race every year, and even though it fell during offseason, we signed up. As proved at the marathon (grumble grumble), I have the capacity to walk 10 miles if need be, and I wanted to participate. As it’s gotten closer, I’ve been cursing that decision because I honestly hadn’t felt like lacing up my hokas. Like, at all. With my disaster bike experience 2 weeks before the marathon and the disappointing run season, I had zero desire to thrust myself back into either of those sports right now.

But, sometimes we need a poke and a prod to remember that underneath all these numbers and training plans and gear and racing for PRs and junk, we do this because we love to move our bodies outdoors. And the thought of running 10 miles Sunday forced me into my shoes yesterday for 3 to make sure I remembered how to run after 3.5 weeks.

The good news:

Easy pace is still easy pace. I don’t think I have hard pace right now, but our mid-11s pace is still fun and conversational. I didn’t slow down to, like, 13s or anything. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it would definitely show significant regression for me.

Running is still enjoyable. I’m definitely ok sticking to the short stuff for quite a while, I’ve got less than zero desire to start a marathon training program right now. However, I can see doing 10 this weekend real slow and not hating it, and enjoying going out for an easy 3 every once in a while over offseason to shake the rust off. And that’s very different than my perspective last week.

My hip didn’t hurt! Like, at all! I felt like there was a tiny bit of tension there, but it also might have been psychosomatic. I haven’t been doing any sort of rehab on it with stretching or rolling or core so that might be something to start focusing on next week. Baby steps.

The bad news:

While my hip didn’t hurt cruising, I have a feeling it would have complained about speedwork. I originally wanted to transition fairly quickly to short interval sessions to keep up my fitness just a little, but I’m going to give it longer at the easy peasy lemon squeezy pace.

Now that I’ve peeled my calluses and blisters off (gross, I know), I got hot spots on my Clifton 2s within 1.5 miles. Great shoes for walking, shite (for me) for running. I feel like buying another pair of running shoes is EMBARKING upon something, which for some reason I’m not ready to do, so I’m going to deal with my perfectly nice, comfortable, but very heavy Kailuas for a while. Also, because the Clifton 3s don’t appear to be out yet and I’ll give them a chance since I read that they are widening the toe box again!!!

On tap…

#projectspring is in full swing. Obviously, there’s still a lot of things that I want to get going, but I’m making my way. I feel like, just finally this week, I can see a whole lot of fun things on the schedule and feel genuinely excited about the fun I’m going to have instead of thinking… ugh… stuff to do. I may not be bounding up out of bed without an alarm, but I’ve definitely lost the core “tireds” of endurance training.

I’ve got some fun stuff on tap for the rest of the week, like finally sorting Bonaire pics, gaming, going to a play, etc., and am really looking forward to a non-athlete type approach to a swim and a run this weekend. Show up, have fun, enjoy being active with a bunch of other people, and giving less than -1 fucks about how long it takes to get from point A to point B.

1200 Calories

By Quix

On March 25, 2016

In Uncategorized

Listening to music tonight and got inspired…. sung to the tune of 16 Tons. The #projectraceweight struggle is real, yo. Enjoy!

Ohhhhh, some people say diamonds are a girl’s best friend

But a dieting woman would give it all for a fried chicken tend’

Chicken and gravy and a side of mashed

My mind is weak but hips are strong

You eat 1200 calories and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in calorie debt

Pizza hut don’t call me cause I can’t go

I owe my soul to My Fit Foods

I woke up to a light greek yogurt breakfast and the sun didn’t shine

I counted ten thousand steps that I walked in a line

Grilled chicken and rice for lunch and veggies in a bowl

I skipped cake day, oh bless my soul

You eat 1200 calories and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in calorie debt

McDonalds don’t call me cause I can’t go

I owe my soul to My Fit Foods

If you see me comin’ better step aside

Some other people didn’t and some other people died

I’m mad as hell and hangry as a bear

I’ll cut a bitch and I don’t care

Cuz I ate 1200 calories, and what do I get?

Another day older and deeper in calorie debt

Taco Bell don’t call me cause I can’t go

I owe my soul to My Fit Foods

Wax on, wax off. Chopping the wood and carrying the water. Keepin’ on keepin’ on. That is all. Happy weekend!

A day in the new life

By Quix

On March 23, 2016

In Uncategorized

Days are a little different now that I’m on a bit of a break with this whole sport thing…

I wake up in the morning, shower, brush my teeth, take care of the pets, pack my breakfast and lunch (or not, depending on the day), and go to work. I still am not yet springing up at my alarm even on 8+ hours sleep, so sleep-a-palooza is still in effect. Though I do kind of screw that up a day or two each week by staying up too late, there’s plenty of sleeping long, sleeping in, and naps making up for it.

There’s no serious run, bike, or swim before work right now. There’s not even walk, stretch, yoga, or weights. No trying to squeeze in *something* in the mornings. It feels weird still, but I don’t really miss it yet. I miss the idea of being a triathlete, but when I think about actually doing a real workout session right now my body and mind cringe. It’s not time yet.

Most strenuous workout so far = 1.5 mile hike around a pretty park. We hated it.

At work, I am making a habit of having coffee first thing. I pour a little bit of the real stuff at the bottom of my cup and fill the rest with decaf. A little bit of caffeine is definitely helping curb my appetite in the mornings without making me wired, since I’m trying to eat less. I’ve kind of ditched the breakfast rules and have eaten everything from an oatmega bar to half a greek salad, anything filling around 100-200 calories. I’m finding I’m not dying for food in the morning but by 11 or so, I will get hangry if I don’t have *something*.

We usually go for at least 2 walks a day, one in the morning or at lunch, and one in the afternoon. Even without training, I’m hitting 10k steps or over about 50% of my days (and generally hitting about 8k on the other days). With a tiny bit of effort, moving your body 5 miles a day isn’t that hard at all. Even when I was marathon training, even when I was streaking and running every day, I didn’t always hit 10k steps on shorter run days. It’s interesting how the body just compensates to keep itself in stasis as much as possible.

I’ll have lunch around 12:30-1pm-ish, and generally something similar to I would have had before. Today was mongolian grille – veggies, chicken, sauce and brown rice. Oh, the rice was amazing. When I was training brown rice with just some soy sauce never was so satisfying but I ate that shit up today like it was plate of loaded cheese fries.

Freebirds salad with chicken, black beans, veggies, and guac. Something I would have eaten before, maybe with some cheese (sacrifices have to be made sometimes).

The short version of my diet is “I got rid of snacks”. This is taking a bit to get used to. I used to eat constantly. Breakfast. Mid-morning snack. Lunch. Snack around 3. Snack around 5. Dinner. Second dinner. Generally healthy stuff, needed to keep up being a triathlete, but still, lots of calories. I did have to stop for a bit because of my tooth problems. In this interim, I had to find more on how braces could keep my teeth from yellowing.

When 3 or 5 or whatever comes around now, I’ve been distracting myself with a cup of tea, and some gum (and making sure that my water stays full as well).

It’s a little weird to not have training in the morning and at lunch, but we almost always did something after work. That’s when it’s the weirdest. We’ll leave work around 5:30-6pm, maybe have one errand, but not always, and then be home, dinner prepared, and eaten by 7pm… and thanks to the time change, it’s still light.

It’s very odd to have evenings free. Because of this, the house has stayed very picked up, I’ve read probably close to 700 pages in books over the last 7 days, and on nights where I haven’t been stupid or unintentionally dosed with a bunch of caffeine (hello decaf coffee THAT CLEARLY WASN’T), I’ve gotten a heck of a lot of sleep.

In terms of following my plan, I give myself a gold star for the week. We’re not counting Monday, since it was Zliten’s birthday and we started the next day. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, I ate between 1200-1300 calories. Thursday was working SXSW for work, St. Patrick’s Day and D&D night, and even with all that I kept it to 1500 calories. Saturday was birthday celebrations with the parents and some drinks later, and I kept it under 1900. My fitbit said I stuck around the 1000 calorie deficit all week, and that’s generally where I need to be to see any changes (since I’m pretty sure it overestimates calorie burn, I don’t see any change at the “kinda hard” setting with a smaller deficit).

Sometimes beer is more important than food. Especially green beer.

Sometimes balancing the calorie bank + sanity = sacrificing a little bit of true healthiness in the moment. For example, I ate approximately 1000 FOOD calories so I could enjoy a green beer or three on Thursday. I counted my giant slice of carrot cake I was served (not my choice on the size but it’s a favorite of mine so I also didn’t turn it away) as my dinner on Saturday. Occasionally, it’s going to happen. Believe me, after how crappy I felt Sunday, I’m not going to make a habit of it!

I was actually nervous that I’d be able to hit these numbers again. I’m very happy I’m on day 9 now, and navigated some potential pitfalls in an acceptable way (and haven’t hated my life). This week coming up will have challenges as well. I expect they all will. That’s just how life goes.

Friday, we’re camping with a big crew of people at the Renaissance Faire. I’m just going to have to a) not do snacks and bring reasonable healthy meals to cook over the fire, b) pour my drinks with lots of mixers and stick to vodka/diet soda or something like that and c) realize I’ll probably be trekking all over that day so a few extra calorie are probably warranted anyway.

Been so busy triathleting I haven’t camped in TWO YEARS. We set it up to make sure it still could be a tent.

Sunday is Easter with my family. My strategy there is to enjoy the feast, but take a small plate for lunch and eat until I’m no longer hungry, not stuffed and bring home some leftovers for dinner. I’m also bringing cauli-taters and a green salad so I have healthy stuff to load up on and taste the rest.

As for my weight, I stepped on the scale for the first time Saturday, and I’ll continue to do it daily for the data points, but it doesn’t mean anything until about April. I’m not sad about it, I’m not happy about it, it just is and I’ll let it be until I start to see a trend.

I know my body is resistant to change, so I know that I need to be patient. I also know this works if you keep at it, so that’s what I need to do. This shit doesn’t happen overnight as much as you want it to. Oh man, I really DO want it to though. Am I at race weight yet?

In my head, I feel like I should be champing at the bit to start training again, or at least start doing some sort of running, biking, or swimming, but I am not at all. Not in the least. The idea of intervals or watts or garmins or peak weeks or getting packed up for a race doesn’t spark anything yet. I’ve rushed myself back into training for a few years now, sometimes under the guise of just going out and doing stuff for fun, and if I want to stay in this sport, I need to make sure I don’t do that. I got myself totally and truly burnt out and I need time.

7 weeks off in late 2012. The only time I took off in 2013 was an injury… a few forced weeks doing nothing and then doing everything as quickly as I could to ramp back up. 5 weeks off in 2014 summer. 5 weeks off in 2015 (which I honestly probably did way more training for an offseason than I should have). Every other moment of every other year I’ve been specifically training for races. I suppose I can give myself a break if I’m dragging my feet 2.5 weeks, especially in those circumstances.

The good news is I that found some pretty good joy in a cruiser bike ride around our neighborhood yesterday. We even went for a walk around the block to close out the sunset and joked that it was the first brick of the year. I’m pretty hopeful that I’ll get to paddleboard for the first time today, and if not, I’m looking forward to another bike ride. I’m coming around to the idea of doing some body maintenance, like stretching, rolling, and bodyweight stuff soon. Not yet, but soon.

While I’ve been hoping to spring out of bed one morning like “ok, my body and mind are completely fixed and I’m ready to be who I was last year at this time again”, I have a feeling it’s not going to happen quite like that. Instead of diving off the high dive right away, I’ve been sitting by the shore for a few weeks. Now I’m considering sticking my toe in. In a few months, I have faith I’ll be all the way in but I’m not rushing myself and letting myself acclimate to the water every step of the way, for the first time in forever.

Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Tag: #projectraceweight Page 17 of 20

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