15 Miles a Week 'til training begins..

See how this works :)

5%

Tonight was my 5th weigh-in at WW. I hit my 5% goal in only 4 weeks! I'm ecstatic. I'm down 10.4 pounds since I started. Next goal: breaking 180.

So, what have I been up to? Well, I'm a terrible snacker, so instead of hitting the candy machine at work (read: cheez-its and m&m's), I bring a TON of 0 & 1 point snacks with me to work - pears, apples, grapes, 97% fat free popcorn, baby-bel cheese. The other thing I've been doing is, rather than cutting a recipe down to avoid leftovers, I use the leftovers up. I cook up the recipe & then divide it up into the number of meals for which it was intended, then I eat them up. It makes it so much easier to not be caught off guard. For example: going to Noah's bagels on the fly, thinking, "Oh, a turkey wrap on wheat should be pretty healthy." That's a negative. 14 points. And not even that tasty.

So, tip of the week: Plan ahead!

Back at it.

Hello, blogosphere...it's been a while. Obviously the Nike Women's didn't happen for me. It was a crazy summer, and when the commitment deadline approached (i.e. the deadline to commit to $2.5k), I chickened out.

So...after a summer of doing not much productive by way of losing weight, I got on my kitchen scale 2 weeks ago for the first time in 2 months, and saw what I was afraid of - I'd gained about 7 pounds over the summer. I was almost back to my highest weight that I'd ever been, which was way back in high school. It was time to take action.

I did WeightWatchers with my roomie senior year, and lost almost 20 pounds. I knew it worked, but I also knew it didn't work for me if I didn't have support. So I decided to take the plunge and join the meetings. I'd always had a fear of them because I thought they'd be a bunch of fat old ladies & they'd judge me for being my size at my age. But that's not the case at all!! They range in age from 20's on up. Both genders. And there's absolutely no judgment. I'm half-way through Week 2, and so far, so good. I'm 5.2 pounds down. My goal is to lose 40 by May. I'll try to update each week with new recipes I've tried and my progress.

To find a WeightWatcher's meeting near you, click here

Look, Ma! I ran!

Ok, so it was only a mile, but I did wake up at 5:50 to run this morning. Thanks in large part to JWalker waking me up. It is much easier to tell one's alarm to shut up than one's friend.

But this is where I got to run this morning. So all-in-all it was worth it. Buddy run tomorrow, short run on Wednesday, and track practice on Thursday. Is it really only 125 days until Nike?? yikes.

Good News, Bad News Part II

Well, the good news is I've been running with some girls fairly consistently(except this week because of midterms) and I think I've lost weight.

The bad news-I've also lost a lot of muscle :( and haven't been very consistent with weight training.

La-Awesome job on the marathon training! I'm a proud running mama..even though I know running you did NOT go tonight ;)

Cross training = anything but running, basically. weights, biking, yoga, playing a game of tennis. Anything that gives your body a break from running for a day and works some different muscles but you're still remaining active instead of doing nothing. Make sense? 

Let's both keep up the great work and by Christmas (or thanksgiving) nobody will even recognize us!

Good News Bad News

Good news first - lost 1 pound on Monday weigh in! woo hoo!

bad news - I haven't worked out since Monday morning, when I ran (actually, more like a shuffled) 2 miles.

But Mario's dragging me out to Lake Merced to go running tonight. Even though I'd much rather curl up in bed with rocky road ice cream & Finding Nemo for the 3rd time this week.

But I have people to prove wrong. So running I will go. :)

Three down, 23 to go.

Today we went to the Baylands in Palo Alto for our first group run. Let me tell ya. Running with people (even complete strangers up to that point) is so much more fun than running alone. I made it to mile three. A new personal record. And I'm so excited that I get to do this once a week until October 18!

Here's a pic of some of the girls I ran with today. This is what we look like after 3 miles of running (and one mile of walking).

Here are some lessons I learned today:

1. Cotton is Rotton. They coaches told us this...when cotton is wet it doesn't feel good. But i didn't want to be cold, and the running top I have that is of appropriate fabric makes me look like a sausage. So I wore it under the UT t-shirt. It was super humid out there, and the cotton felt really heavy. Not comfortable.

2. New shoes, while awesome, sould perhaps not be broken in on a 4 mile course hello, 4 blisters!

3. More than 3 hours of sleep would have greatly improved my performance and overall feeling of wanting to die.

More soon!

-Lauren