Resolutely keeping my eating resolutions.

A bike ride was on the schedule for this morning, but of course there were 18 mph winds at 4 AM so it was onto the spin bike with me.

It's just too bad the outside world didn't get to
see that head scarfy thing.

I managed 18 miles on the bike at speeds I have never seen on an outdoor bike, so I automatically assume the bike is lying to me.  It's essential in fitness that you develop a distrust of your home exercise equipment, I've found.  And by "essential" I mean "not really."

LIES.  Maybe.

I accomplished this distance and those speeds while being surrounded by lazy animals, including a human one sleeping in a recliner.

Supervising my sweet patootie.

Sorry you had to see our crazy curtain setup there so we can actually, like, feel the AC when it's on.  But, as you could probably tell, I'm not really the Little Suzy Homemaker type...I'm more of the "What? Curtains? I should have some? OK I'll go to the discount store and buy whatever I find first and throw 'em up there and move on with more important things like indoor cycling" type.  You know...like most people are.

And, like most people, I'm still concerned with all the excess fat I have on my body.  If you remember, after the Glass City Marathon I made two resolutions concerning said excess fat.  These two resolutions were to (1) cut out processed/refined carbs, and (2) eat veggies that weren't carrot sticks.  I am happy to report that I have been resolute in keeping both resolutions...however, if you're considering cutting down on your refined carbs, here are some things about which you need to be aware:

• You're going to have to meal prep.  I don't know if you were aware of this, but most pre-packaged "food" tastes FANTASTIC but is stuffed full of refined carbs and other junk.  So in order to eat real food, you'll have to prepare it yourself to make sure there aren't any added sugars and then portion it out for yourself all week.  Since I don't mind cooking when I get home from work, I have to meal prep for lunch every day.  While it is some work, you also don't have to prepare super-complicated food.  For example, I took the low road and just made a buttload of egg salad for the entire week to have with some of the bagged pre-mixed salad.  What can I say--I take meal prepping to an all new low.
• It's going to take you to a level of exhaustion that you never thought possible.  All week I have been struggling to stay awake from around 11 AM onward.  And I mean STRUGGLING. Like "standing up at my desk to work and even then I was falling asleep" struggling.  Today was the only day I felt relatively normal after that time, with only a slight dip at around 2 PM.  Holy withdrawal, batman.
• You'll revisit some foods you used to love but were just too lazy to make.  Hello again, egg salad.  And you too, chicken sausage.  Mmmm.
• You'll finally use that hard boiled egg maker thing that your sister gave you.  Holy cow-everyone needs of these things.  Except those who can make boiled eggs on the stove.
• You'll feel more like you're eating to fuel your body rather than to make yourself feel good.  I am a stress eater.  I freely admit to eating to self-medicate because, you know, it's like getting a high off crappy food and it feels so good when you really feel so bad.  But with all the prepping and the planning and intentionally NOT eating that crappy food, your mindset starts shifting and you kind of begin to think about stupid things like "nutrition" instead of "what tastes good and will make me feel better."
• You stop making excuses to eat crappy food.  Instead of making up an excuse to eat nutritionally void food (I had a bad day at work, I ran 13 miles today so I deserve this, OMG that tastes good I MUST HAVE IT), I just say, "I don't eat that junk."  It's been working for me.
• You realize that there is such a thing as "eating too many eggs in one day."  Yep.

The one thing I didn't address in that beautifully bulleted list above is this:  Have I lost any weight?  Well, I have lost about 1.5 pounds, but my next weigh-in is tomorrow so that number could change (for better or for worse).  Stay tuned kids - I'll give an update on that tomorrow.

Until then, you'll just have to settle for these meager learnings:

• I do have an inherent distrust of fitness equipment displays.  I've been lied to one too many times.
• You cannot deny the awesomeness of my head scarfy thing.
• It's hard to justify the cost of curtains when your house is surrounded by corn fields.  Just saying.
• You know how many eggs is too many in a day?  5.  That's how many.
• So how come my leg looks perfectly fine in that pic above with all the lazy animals but it looks like a size 22 whenever I get a race photo?  I bet the answer to that question is physics.  And bad photography.

Tomorrow's workout: A "long" run of 6 miles.  Buh.

I got more workout than I wanted today.

Let's start off this post with two things:

Thing #1: I found my awesome Stridebox head scarfy-thing that is a collage of all the stickers you get in each box.

I do love a busy head scarfy-thing.

Thing #2: The dumbest weather I have ever seen in April in northern-almost-Wisconsin-Illinois.

SO DUMB

Now that I got those out of the way, let's talk about my workout.  I had planned on doing a bike ride on the stationary bike and then a weight workout, but I got busy cleaning and cooking and baking a cake that expressed my feelings about having to clean, cook, and the state of my cake decorating skills:

Buh indeed.

So I just ended up wanting to do a weight workout.  As I scanned my copious amounts of Cathe workouts, I realized I just wanted something light and easy, seeing as how my marathon is this Sunday and all.  So I settled on Cathe's Low Impact Cardio/Metabolic Conditioning workout from her latest Fit Split series, seeing as I've never done it before and it had the word "low" in it, so it must have been pretty super easy, right?  Right.

Yeah.  Wrong.  Let me give you the run down of each part of this workout:

Low Impact Cardio: Low impact?  Yes.  Cardio?  Only in the part where you're not using a gliding tool of some kind (I have sliding discs).  Once the gliding tools came out, my heart rate plummeted.  Which made me sad because I was really enjoying the non-gliding part, which moved quickly between moves that were fun and interesting. What helped redeem the part where I was sliding around on large yellow discs was the fact that she had some nice ab moves towards the end (hellooo dragging plank) that are making my abs whine at me at this very moment.

Metabolic Conditioning:  This is a lower-weight workout (the heaviest weight Cathe uses is 15 pounds) that had a nice variety of moves and worked all the major muscle groups.  Cathe uses a lot of compound exercises that work both legs and upper body so your heart rate does get up there a bit.  However, if you're looking for a workout that is going to help you get yooge and swole, this is not the one for you.  For a tapering runner like me, this is kind of the perfect weight workout.  Again, I liked that Cathe incorporated the abs in the last few exercises so I didn't have to internally sob about doing a completely separate ab workout.  Thanks, Cathe!

Overall, I got a decent workout...more workout than I really wanted to do.  Which is way more of a workout than these slugs got:

They're just in prolonged recovery.

But the workout situation today is what it is. Whatever that "is" is.


And these learnings are what they are:

• Head scarfy-things.  I'm kind of addicted to them now.
• Everyone needs to have some BUH cake once in a while.  My BUH cake is white with chocolate frosting.
• I plan on eating the "B" of the cake first so eventually it will be an UH cake.
• I kind of dug doing a little cardio and a little weights in one workout.  I'll have to do this workout again.
• Female cat appeared after the workout was over, and here mere presence is a sign of approval.

Tomorrow's workout: Only a 6 x400 and lots of worrying about my marathon on Sunday!