The little things

I am on day 5 of my own personal February challenge. I am happy to say that it's going quite well. I have completed two of my half marathon training runs, both on the treadmill. We finally got a decent amount of snow and I am terrified of falling on the snow. I am having to get over my treadmill issues since I am not ready to face the snow. I have had to run both runs for 3 miles. I am slowly adding longer runs before my walking breaks. I know the lack of ability to run on the treadmill is all in my head.

I keep thinking back to the virtual 5k and remembering how "miserable" I was. It was totally in my head and I didn't need to walk nearly as much as I did. I made myself do a full 2 mile run on the treadmill this weekend to get ready for half marathon treadmill training and I did 2 miles straight. I have been slowly adding distance before I let myself stop to walk for a minute. My first 3 mile run, I ran 2.25 miles, then walked for a minute and then finished the 3 miles. The next run I did 2.5 miles before stopping to walk. I figure by next week I should be able to run 3 solid miles on the treadmill. It seems so ridiculous to me that I am having such a mental hurdle with the treadmill, but I am so proud of myself for making myself push through what feels like torture. (Torture may be a bit extreme to use here.)

I did figure out one thing that has helped with my treadmill running. I am not fast. I know this, but for some reason I had it in my head that I should be running a 10 minute mile on the treadmill. Why would I do that to myself? Last summer I was always training at a 12 minute mile and have recently gotten most of my runs around an 11 minute mile, but never 10 minute miles. I do usually run faster at races and can do 10:30/10:40 minute miles. I realized I was setting my treadmill at 6.0 mph (10 minute mile) and then constantly failing. I decided to just let myself run slow(er). I have been setting it between 5.0 and 5.3mph. I can actually run at those paces. Duh. I guess I couldn't face the slow speeds looking me in the eye the whole time, but I have overcome that. Also, it's much more enjoyable to run further then shorter fast distances for me right now. (I will be working on speed this summer after my half marathon. For now my running energy will be spent on distance.)

Along with my running, I have been tracking every single thing I eat. It has been interesting for me. I usually track all of my meals and then just "assume" I have enough calories left if I want a snack. I wasn't necessarily going overboard every day (although some days, I definitely went way overboard) I just didn't track things. Most of the time my snacks are just yogurt or fruit, but I also do some 'handful of crackers' here, 'chunk of cheese' there.

Along with the whole mindless snacking thing...
We have a few decorations up for Valentine's Day and one is the cutesy vase with holiday candy centerpieces. I found Valentine's candy corn and thought that would be adorable. It looks cute and I am not overly interested in candy corn, but I still do enjoy it. Last night I ate 5 of them. The difference is that I tracked the 5 candy corns. Usually I just assume I have enough calories left or that I probably burned them off on my walk to the kitchen. I discovered I went over my calories by 4 calories for the day. I obviously wasn't to worried about 4 calories (I ran 3 miles earlier in the day and burned over 300 calories there that I didn't track), but it made me think. Normally I would have had a few more throughout the night, but knowing I was already over my limit kept my hand from dipping back in there. Maybe there is something to the whole "track every bite" thing. (I know, how have I not realized that before?)

I also had another overly obvious observation this weekend. I tend to struggle more on the weekends with hubby around. Hubs is not into the whole eating healthy "thing." He will usually eat what I make him for dinner, but he prefers to eat things that I don't eat. I think that occasionally he just can't take another healthy meal and he takes control and makes his own dinner. This weekend was one of those times.

He had been craving shrimp scampi since he had some at his birthday brunch and he really wanted to make them. He bought some shrimp for Sunday's dinner and some extra because who doesn't like shrimp. He decided to make a trial run of the shrimp scampi on Saturday night. After dinner. I was sitting on the couch smelling the butter melting with the garlic and it smelled like heaven. I was thinking things over in my head about how I could justify eating one of those delicious shrimps. I kept telling myself I could eat it and track it if I wanted to, but I knew that it wouldn't end with one shrimp. It would end with a bowl full of shrimp and me licking the bowl and figuring that I might as well top it off with some cookies. I glared at him while he enjoyed his shrimp scampi. I couldn't believe that he dare eat that delicious bowl of shrimp in the same house as me after we already ate dinner. Then, within ten minutes it was all over. Shrimp had been cooked. Shrimp had been eaten. I had not been involved.

I realized that while those ten minutes felt like torture, it was easier to handle than feeling bad about myself for the rest of the night/weekend. I only had to "struggle" for ten minutes and then I felt proud of myself for ten hours. It made me realize that it's easier to skip the "extra" food than to feel bad about myself for eating and letting those feelings take control of the night/weekend/week.

I felt accomplished and am feeling amazing! (On a side note, I did have shrimp scampi for dinner on Sunday. I figured out the calories for them and planned accordingly. They were worth the wait.) I actually feel really in control again. I haven't felt this powerful since the summer.