This week was much better than the previous, as far as my eating goes. Jerry and I have been back to eating whole foods (only a few days in so far though) and I already feel ten times better. It’s so interesting how much of a difference diet makes in the way we feel. We’ve all heard that a healthy diet and exercise is crucial to feeling your best, but it’s one of those pieces of advice that are so generic and it’s overwhelming to even think about.
One thing that I noticed over the last several months is that my running pace is very closely correlated to my weight/diet. My mile pace had gotten down into the low-9:00’s for a little while in the fall, and then as I gained weight or just didn’t eat very well, my pace got up to 12:00-ish.
On the weekend, after eating so poorly for a couple of weeks, my 0.4 mile morning run felt like a 10K race–and that was at an 11:00/mi pace! This morning, after only two full days of being back to eating whole foods, my pace was 9:55/mi–and I felt a million times better during today’s run than I did last week. Less effort and faster. I know I didn’t gain that much fitness in two days, so it’s got to be my diet.
Anyway, the week was kind of uneventful. My birthday was last Wednesday, but I don’t like to celebrate my birthday, so we didn’t go out to dinner or have cake or anything like that. Since I don’t have a car during the day right now, I’ve been doing a lot of small projects around the house (things that just take a couple of hours at a time–like touching up paint, cleaning out and organizing cupboards, mending clothes, and even building a couple of night tables for my bedroom out of scrap 2×4’s).
It was kind of fun working on a wood project in the garage again! I didn’t do much woodworking over the summer because I felt burnt out with it. I did a ton of sewing over the fall and winter, but I think I’ll make it a point to do some fun woodworking projects this summer.
Noah’s girlfriend came over a couple of days ago because she wanted me to help her sew something for Noah for Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is her favorite holiday–isn’t that interesting?! That’s the first time I’ve heard anyone say that their favorite holiday is Valentine’s Day. This will be her first Valentine’s Day in a relationship, and the gift she is making is SO CUTE. Noah doesn’t know that she’s making him something, but I think he’s going to love it. (Once she gives it to him, I’ll post a picture.)
Finally, to get to the point of this post… my weigh-in!
It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting, thankfully. I’m up a pound from two weeks ago, but I know that it was higher last week (and over the weekend). I felt so puffy, but eating really well the last couple of days made a huge difference (I can always tell by the way my ring fits–sometimes I can barely get it off, but right now, it easily slides along my finger.)
For this coming week, the plan is to continue eating (mostly) whole foods. Also, just for this week, I’m going to add another block onto my morning run; I haven’t increased the distance at all since I started in September (other than a few random runs where I felt good and wanted to run a little farther). It’s only another 0.1 mile to add a block, but I don’t want the thought of, “I have to run farther!” to make me stop my morning runs altogether. So, I’m just going to test it out this week by adding a single block and seeing how it goes.
I feel confident going into this week–let’s hope it goes well!
