Happy Valentine's Day To Me!

Well Happy Valentine's day everyone!

Some of you may love this holiday and some of you may despise it! To each their own. This is my first year being healthy and fit for Valentine's day and loving myself. So I thought this year for those of us on our healthy journey we could write a post about what we love about ourselves. Kind of a valentine to yourself it can be about anything you like about yourself!Do not forget to link up your Valentine post to yourself in the linky!

So here is mine:

I love the way my arms look all defined and toned. The other day we were nervous because we saw some bumps but realized they are just veins! Those strong arms are now able to lift 10 pound hand weights and sling around a 15 pound kettlebell. We have come a long way from the 3 pound hand weights we had when we first started doing the shred last year.

I love the legs that hold us up. They carry us running many miles. In 2 weeks they will carry us through our toughest challenge yet a half marathon! We have come to love running so much and we are so thankful for our strong legs that allow us to keep going.

I love your mind. Your constant determination to keep going even when the odds are stacked up against you is what I love most about you. You always find a way to overcome every challenge you receive and work towards new goals every month. You do not allow excuses to get in the way of your long term goals. Keep going and pushing forward.

We have come a long way together this past year and I am looking forward to continuing on this journey with you and getting to a healthy goal weight. I really cannot wait until we run a marathon this fall!

The Monthly Project

I have never participated in the Sisterhood's monthly project. I am not sure why, laziness maybe? ;)
But I cannot slack off on myself one bit and this monthly project is a perfect way to keep pushing towards my new fitness goals.

If you do not know what the monthly project is all about go check it out! Basically it is about picking one goal you will work on all month long and see how much farther you can push yourself each and every week. For me I will focus on my running speed. I would like to run 1 mile in 6 minutes flat.

When I began running I weighed over 200 pounds and I could run a mile in about 12 to 13 minutes. Slowly I chipped away at my time averaging today about 7 to 8 minutes per mile. The fastest time I had recorded running a mile was 7:10 for a challenge during the shrinkvivor competition. That time had blown my mind away and I remember thinking I could probably not get much faster than that.

Well this week I surprised myself again when I ran 1 mile in 6 minutes and 33 seconds! That is correct I did it while competing in the Sisterhood Olympics 4 mile relay race. We each had to run 1 mile for our team and I wanted to give it my all for my team. I ended up running 3 miles for my speed training that day but I ran a solid mile and a half at that super fast pace. If it was not for the relay then I may have not pushed myself to run that fast!

This is the point of the monthly project and I love the idea. If you do not keep pushing yourself then you will never reach higher goals. Sometimes we need to keep aming higher even if we are reluctant or do not think we can do it. The mind always thinks the body can do less than it is really capable of!
SO this week I will work on my speed again and when I do you can bet I will aim to go even faster than 6:33 :)

Weigh in Wednesday and power of One Week 6 check in!

Another week has passed. I cannot believe the Power of One Challenge is almost over! I trained really hard this week. My  Hyannis Half marathon is about 2 weeks away and I am just making sure I am really ready for it. I shocked myself a bit when I looked at my Polar HRM this week on Sunday night :

I could not believe I worked out for 7 hours this week!!!! And I burned 3000 calories!!! I think that may be the most I have ever done since my journey began. I have the Sisterhood and their Shrinking Olympics to thank. Doing the events on here has really made me look forward to hitting the gym and working out. The other day the challenge was to run for 2 miles, bike 10 miles and then run 2 more miles. And as I was doing it something in my head just went off and for the first time in this entire journey, I felt like an Athlete.

Never in my life, have I ever been considered athletic. In high school I dreaded the mandatory 'fitness' test they made us do every year, run a mile, do some chin ups, and random stretches. And now here I am almost a year into my journey and I am looking towards running a half marathon in 2 weeks. I am lifting kettlebells, weight training and just enjoying being fit and happy.

So obviously  I set my goal high when I went to weigh in at my weekly Weight Watchers meeting this week. I knew I had worked my ass off and my eating had been on point. I literally weighed and measured my food and counted every single stinking point. And you know what when I stepped on the scale last night I was still not happy:

A loss of 1.2 pounds. They were cheering for me but inside I felt disappointed and upset. I felt like I had a flat week last week, so I expected at least 2-3 pound loss this week. I know I know I should be happy with this loss and I am do not get me wrong I am, but I just have had high standards for myself and I was always putting up big losses each week. It seems my loss has slowed down a lot and it is frustrating. But I know this is going to happen.

So my total for the challenge is 6.8 pounds lost. 

I am looking forward to next week when hopefully I can finally say goodbye to 160s FOREVER!!! :)

Also I have my half marathon to look forward to! And I am hoping to start a walking club with my local Weight Watchers members once some of this snow melts!

Committ to Change

There has been something on my mind and I have been debating on whether or not to post it. But I am a strait shooter so I will go with post and hope I do not offend anyone...

I see so many posts, comments, and chatting about gettin derailed by a holiday, event, or party and I wonder why we allow our selves to work hard to days and even weeks on end and then snap, something derails us. I know it is hard to stay on track all the time. I am not perfect and honestly no one is.

But the point I want to make is that we can go and make excuses all the time, excuses that allow us to get off track. Today it may be Aunt May's birthday party, next month it may be Thanksgiving, etc. You get my point. If you think about it you could really come up with an excuse to overindulge and eat horribly almost every single month. And then what? You are working to lose the few pounds you gained that day or days, in addition to the weight you already want to lose?

It becomes a vicious cycle, and in my opinion an unnecessary one. If you commit to a lifestyle change then make the commitment and stick to it. Find healthier ways to enjoy the foods you love, it can be done and I promise you will feel better. Fried foods, high sodium, sugary foods, whatever your pleasure is do you really feel good physically after you eat them? I know I do not. So now I just omit them from my diet. And as hard as it was in the beginning, it is so worth it now.

You have a choice, everyday you can choose to commit to your lifestyle and make it work for you. Be the one who brings the healthy dish to the event. You may be surprised to see it go first. If you are the first one to get healthy in your family I commend you I know it is not easy. But I am telling you I have seen it with my own eyes they will follow your positive attitude and healthy living.

I brought a big salad to a super bowl party last night and you know what? Everyone ate salad before the chili. I thought about it today and I know they ate less chili because of that salad. So I felt like I scored a point in the healthy living battle lol. It was a good feeling I must admit. And today I woke up feeling fine, I was not sick because I ate my normal good foods. It was nice to not be depressed about a binge or an overindulgence.

We have to look beyond food at a gathering as the main focus and make it about seeing family etc. I know its not easy but I think we can come up with creative ways to try!

Any ideas?

My Longest Run Ever!

Well I woke up this morning a little sore from my intense weight training session yesterday. Also I knew today was the day of my longest run ever. Yes in 3 short weeks I will be running my first half marathon and today marked more training.

I was not feeling like running on the treadmill today, I saw the sun and was hoping for an outdoor run. But once I started walking outside I realized it was not possible, there was black ice everywhere :( I slipped twice while walking down the street to go to the gym! So I was not going to chance an injury this close to my race.

So off to the dreaded treadmill I went. I knew it would be harder because the treadmill is so hard mentally to over come a long run.I tried to combat this with a running magazine and it helped for a bit. But I kept peeking and this got me down. At mile 5 I honestly wanted to quit. I started thinking that I could not do it, it just seemed so far away. I remembered I had to do a 10K for the Sisterhood Olympics so I knew I had to get to 6.2 miles, but after that I really wanted to hit that big red Stop button on the treadmill.

Around mile 5 I stopped for my 30 second walk and water break, I glanced at my phone. I saw tweets from all of my wonderful twitter friends encouraging me to go for it and enjoy my run. It reminded me of this journey and what I was working for. It reminded me of my half marathon coming and what I wanted to accomplish. So I kept going. I ran 6.2 miles in 57 minutes and 25 seconds for the sisterhood 10K. Then I kept going. I had 4 more miles to go and I knew I had to finish strong.

The last 4 miles were the easiest. It was like I had found my rhythm and felt good. I was running a pace of 8.5 min per mile and it felt great. I knew then around mile 7 that I would finish 10 miles. And the last mile I ran at 7.5 min I knew then that I could and would keep going in 3 weeks. I finally realized that no matter what my mind was trying to say, my body could and would handle all 13.1 miles and maybe even hit my target to do it under 2 hours!

So I beat the mental mind game of the treadmill once again and finished my 10 mile run in 1 hour and 30 minutes!!!!! It felt great, I felt like I accomplished something. Then I felt so tired :) but its a good tired. I wish I could take a picture of my Polar monitor but my phone is broken and my camera needs to be charged but I burned 875 calories :)