I lost about 5 pounds the first week, and that was kind of crazy. Since then it's been much more of a struggle, learning how to prepare my own meals and get in the crazy runs and workouts I do these days (the training plan has me now doing 11-13 mile runs during the week...REALLY, TRAINING PLAN?!?) and get enough sleep to recover enough to get up and do the next crazy run. But while the struggle is real, nevertheless I persisted with the Medifast food and not eating out and not eating nutritionally void food people leave in the break room and here we are...10 pounds lost.
But where else am I (besides sitting in my house writing this post)? I mean, I'm feeling good about 10 pounds lost, but during this round of hard-fought weight loss I've been thinking differently about a few things, and my mind is in a few different places. Let's wander to those places, shall we?
1) What you eat matters--food is fuel, not self-medication for work stress. This is a lesson I seem to have to re-learn all the time (mainly because of reason #2 down there). I love to self-medicate with really really horrible frankenfood when I'm stressed, but this time I have stuck to the Medifast plan of lean meats, green veggies, and the little powders Medifast sends me of things to rehydrate and heat up religiously. And guess what--it turns out when you eat food with actual nutrition and no chemicals you can't pronounce, your body tends to drop the weight.
2) I really don't need as much food as I think I do. I didn't realize how much I used my running and working out as an excuse to overeat until these past few months. One day I was at my desk completely stressed out working on a project, and I caught myself rationalizing why I could go and have some of the delicious treats someone left in the break room. That rationalization was all about how much running I would be doing tomorrow, so it was OK for me to self-soothe and eat crap today because I would need that energy for the run. Now, I've done this a million times in my brain and been OK with it, but this time something stopped me and made me recognize that thought for what it was - a flimsy excuse to go and eat crap. Now when I catch myself doing this I tell myself that I don't need as much food as I think I do, especially since I figured out (again) that...
3) When I eat better, I train better, and then I race better.
I ran the Cowtown Half Marathon last weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, and man did I run way better than I thought I would. I was aiming for a 2:10 finish and ended up busting out around a 2:02. While not a PR for me by any stretch of the imagination, I was feeling so freaking awesome and I passed the 2:10 pacers in mile 6 and never looked back. This awesome feeling has happened all during my training in my little basement workout room, where I have cranked out some major workouts (9-12 mile workouts!) before work and managed to stay awake, alert, upright, and passably coherent for the entire day. That awesome feeling can only come from the actual nutritious food I have been eating on the regular. It's amazing what happens when you actually give your body what it needs, huh?
4) I need data to keep on track, even if it's data I don't want. I'm sciency by nature, so I need data. Although weight loss data isn't exactly the kind of data to which I look forward to getting, I knew that I needed to get continuous weight data over time to see the changes that were happening and adjust for them -- whether those changes be a gain or a loss in weight. So, each morning I suck it up, buttercup, and get on the scale while telling my cat to get out of the sink.
5) It's nice not having muffin tops. Not going to lie - it's nice not being regularly marked by my clothing anymore or spilling out of the top of it, either.
Overall, this weight-loss experience has been more about fixing my broken mental habits than anything else. Eating right is easy - getting yourself to do it is another matter. Let's see if I can do it to make another 10 pounds magically disappear.
But you know what won't disappear? Learnings:
- I honestly surprised myself by losing 10 pounds. My body kept hanging on to weight and then I would suddenly drop pounds over 2-3 days.
- I always feel like I have a tiny stride until I see race photos like that half-marathon one and then I'm all "what am I doing JUMPING each step?!?"
- Data. It's what I need.
- Muffin tops. They are definitely not something I need.
- No more food self-medication I swears.
Tomorrow's workout: A 14 mile (!) speed session because REALLY, TRAINING PLAN?!?
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