20 lbs down and feeling better

While I haven't written on the blog in a while - that will change soon as I just bought a MacBook Pro today and now will be able to write more regularly - I have been keeping up on my workouts and on my eating habits.

First things first: I set a goal for myself several weeks ago. My goal was to get down to 225 lb by April 15. Well, I'm sorry to report that I only got to 227 lb as of the 15th. While I set my goals with the intention of achieving them, I'm not completely disappointed. I've lost 20 lbs since I began really working out and eating better near the end of January. That's not bad!

While that's only about 2 lbs per week, I know the accomplishment is more significant because in those 10 weeks I had a lot of bad weekends where I ate very poorly. I give myself credit for hanging in there and staying committed despite my own failures in self-control.

I feel better than I have in quite some time. This evening I went out for a 3.4 mile run. It was 1/3 up hill, 1/3 down hill and 1/3 flat. My early pace was a 12 minute mile or better but I slowed down as each mile passed by. I finished in 43 minutes. It may not seem like a lot in absolute terms (it isn't) but relative to where I was in mid-January of this year, this is a solid accomplishment.

In mid-January I could only jog 3 minutes on the treadmill before I had to slow down to a walk for at least 1 minute. I've built up from there, first on the treadmill and then more recently on the road, by adding resistance (inclines) and distance. Once I build up my strength and endurance for this distance (3.4 to 4.0 miles) I can then focus on getting a bit faster.

It's a Sunday night and I had another well balanced food weekend. There were no binges. While I definitely had some night food each day, I did not succumb to bread, rice and sugar.

It is easier now to avoid the junk food and the starchy, empty calories because I've had a few weekends of good eating and I can now look back on those and see the impact good eating has on my physical well-being. When I am tempted to eating unhealthy food I try to remind myself of how crappy I will feel shortly thereafter. It doesn't always work, but if nothing else, it does keep me from indulging more often!