Conquering Challenges

Us wanting to lose weight, isn't a recent development. There have been various attempts before, but none of them stuck. We've tried to stop drinking soda, but failed, we were able to compromise with ourselves and switch to "zero" versions. We've stopped having ice cream for desert, we've compromised with ourselves by switching to Skinny Cow Ice Cream Sandwhiches and some sort of frozen flavored ice (not popsicles, comes in a plastic cup). However, these diet changes haven't made impact because our diet is still dominated on other "unhealthy" food and beverage items that we are still unwillingly to change. Anna has worked on making her meal portions smaller. She had mild success before our wedding. However, it hasn't yet provided a significant sustained change in weight.

Obviously the other side to losing weight is exercise. A couple years ago we did Tae Kwon Doe. Unfortunately, we had to make a 20-30 minute commute to do so and weren't able to go on a consistent enough basis to see impact on our weights. We ended up quitting when wedding planning became too stressful. Now we are trying running. We can do it from home and on our own schedule, two big plusses. However it isn't nearly as entertaining, and provides many more physical and mental excuse options.

I'm sore, I hurt, I'm tired, I'm too exhausted to run for another minute, are obvious excuses that you'd expect to encounter.

One of the biggest challenges we're still fighting with is changing our sleep schedule. During the summer in Tennessee, the weather during the day is unbearable unless you are already in peak athletic condition. Heat and humidity are not a good combination. We have three options, run indoors, run in the late evening, or run in the morning. Running indoors means one of us would have to commute to Vandy since neither are there at the same time. Also running a small indoor track becomes very repetitious. Running in the evening doesn't really beat the heat during July and August, its still too hot and humid. So that leaves us running in the morning. It it really hard to set a new sleep routine. This past week we've woken at 6:30am and gone running at 6:45am. I'm so happy Anna has not worked this week, because she's been some of my only motivation I can find when I'm struggling to wake up. We are going to bed early, but the transition is still a work in progress. Half my body is dead tired when it gets to 10pm-10:30pm. However, there is still a part of me that is used to staying up longer and it hasn't gone away yet. I'll be much happier when we've successfully completed the routine change.

Unfortunately, running in the morning has made us more hungry in the time leading up to lunch. We haven't quite solve this one yet. Today, we ate eggs afterward for breakfast to fuel us with more protein than cereal. However, we also had bacon and a little mayo, and cheese (yummmm a tasty sandwich). This can't be a long term solution if our eventual goal is weight loss, maybe just eggs. Tomorrow we make our first true attempt at curbing the pre-lunch hunger. Our plan is to wake up even earlier, now at 6am. We'll have a piece of fruit 30 minutes before running, as the running plan actually suggests. Another bonus of waking up earlier we're also able to do a light walk before the workout to warm our legs up, also suggested by the running plan. I guess waking up earlier won't be too big of deal since our desired routine has yet to set.

Anna and I also face two difficult individual challenges in the upcoming weeks.

I will be going to a week-long conference the week after next. Will I be able to stay disciplined? It will require me to continue going to bed early, and waking up early. I'll be in a strange place, with different weather and different surroundings (Tuscon AZ in July... blah). I don't think it would be wise to not run that week. Not only would I lose a week of running, but I'd probably also have to repeat the previous week's workout just to regain the little running shape I had reached. Essentially I would push the 8 week goal to 10 weeks. Also, it will be the first time I've excused myself from running. To me, that first excuse is dangerous, because I know the next excuse will seem much more acceptable. It's a potential slippery slope I would like to avoid until exercising in the morning is second nature. How I handle this obstacle on our running goal is my first major obstacle.

Anna's obstacle is much more difficult, she works for the first time since we started running. If I don't run during the conference, I can still reach my goal. I may be 2 weeks behind my original target date and may have had to grapple with the excuse slippery slope early than I wanted, but I can still finish. For Anna, she will always work. For those who don't know, she works 12 hour night shifts. They are extremely exhausting especially when she's on her third in a row. The running plan we're working off of, has us doing some sort of exercise 6 of the 7 days of the week. That is not an option for Anna, because of work. We're already modifying it for her so she can finish in 9-10 weeks. Also, her schedule will always be different week to week, making it harder for her to set a routine. We know she'll be able to exercise in the morning before her first night of work. What we don't know is how much she's able to after a night of work. Exercising the morning after she gets off of work from the first night will be crucial if Anna's is going to complete her goal in any reasonable time frame. Exercising after she's worked two nights would be preferred if reaching a sustained 30 minute run goal is achievable in 10 weeks. However, this may not be possible. We've already accepted exercising after a third night of work is just not feasible. To successfully overcome this challenge, Anna will have to many times exercise on her own, accept that her sustained progress will be slower than we'd ideally like, not stay at a single workout schedule too long and continually push herself with tougher workouts each week. There isn't a running guide out there that Anna can use as a guide. With her negligible background of running she alone will have to keep setting small goals for improvement with no guide for advice. We'd be extremely happy if she's able to finish in 9-10 weeks, proud if she finishes within 12, and if it goes past that, we'll just have to keep working until she gets there. Regardless of how long, if we're still trying we'll make it to a sustained 30 minute run.

...then we can start setting weight loss goals.

I've never thought I'd have to get in shape in order to lose weight.

Onward!

Running update:

Yesterday (Wedensday, July 2) was a walking only day. It felt good to not have any running because my legs were quite sore. I had stretched on Tuesday after the run but it wasn't enough- my calf muscles were in mutiny Tuesday and Wednesday.

Today was an ok run day. We did a 1 min run and 2 min walk x 10 for a total of 30 min. This was the same as Tuesday. I think the thing that hurt me today was I didn't drink enough water before hand so I was hurting for some water during the run.

Tomorrow we are going to run again (2 days in a row!!... my calf muscles don't know what's up just yet). We are going to do a gradual increase in running time- run for 2 min, walk for 1 x5 for 15 min and then run for 1 min, walk for 2 x5= grand total of 30 min. This will bring our total time of running up to 15 min. In a way, that puts us half way to our goal of running for 30 min. It's just that the goal is really to run for 30 straight min with no stops for walking. So that means adding in that next 15 min will be quite difficult. But I got a little thrill when I realized that tomorrow I will be running for 15 minutes. That's not something I've ever been able to do before. I'm holding on to small victories.

Go For It!! Yeah!

This past weekend, while having dinner and a few drinks with some friends, the topic of recreational running came up. Our friends (Josh and Chrissy, Mary and Daniel) are all at various stages of running abilities and they were comparing running stories. Several drinks in, while they were talking about various marathons they were/have been training for, Brian and I began to say "Why aren't we doing something like this? We're so out of shape. We should do this to!"

The next day Josh says to us "You do realize you committed to running a half marathon this fall?"
umm.... maybe he doesn't realize that I get winded when I climb the stairs at my house?

But Brian and I need to do something, that much is very clear. I shouldn't get winded walking up the stairs. I'm not doing tae kwon do any longer for so many different reasons and I miss having that something for exercise. Brian was a runner in high school, and said this past year that he was going to start running again. But he never did, and now we are both quite out of shape.
So we really are going to start running. There are so many reasons for us to do this- we are out of shape, we need to lose weight, we need physical exercise, it's cheaper to do this than tae kwon do, our friends are doing it (peer pressure, right?), Brian's familiar with what all is involved in long distance running... I can keep going but the point is Brian and I have put together a running program. We're not thinking marathons, not even a 5K run. We're starting small and going to work our way up.

I found this on runnersworld.com and we are modifying it for my crazy night schedule. This is a program to get you to run for a full 30 min with no walking breaks in just 8 weeks. My goal is to do this in about 10 weeks. It gives you 1 day of rest each week, and there are some weeks where I'll need 2 because of my long shifts. It will be a work in progress and I'll be treading a fine line between an excuse of "I'm too tired!" and the safety concern of "I'm too tired". I don't want to fall off the sidewalk because I fell asleep while running.

We are trying to follow the pointers of this article- one thing we have done is to write out a schedule of when we are going to run. I know everyday I'm going to run from today to Labor Day (mostly...there could be some tweaking due to the aforementioned tiredness). The article also said that an easy 30 min run (approx 2 miles in 30 min) will maintain your weight, and maybe you'll start to loose. We know that motivation will be hard when we aren't going to be seeing many results weight wise until we have been running for 10 weeks. I'm hoping that by posting what we are doing that we will be held accountable for keeping up with the running.

So here goes:

Today we walked for 2 minutes and ran for 1, x 10 for a total of 30 mintues. I was proud that was able to do that but by the last 2 "runs" I was moving very very slow. I was moving my feet in such a way that I was "running" but could have been moving faster if I had still been walking still. It's progress!!