Goals This Week

Last week I did ok on my Goals board. While I kept my carbs low, I did eat sugar twice in the form of 88% dark chocolate and once in hoisin sauce (I am counting it because there was so much sugar in it that it had more carbs than my chocolate).

I became a bit de-motivated to do my strength on the weekend since I wasn't running. It kind of deflated me and I just didn't care as much. I did do stregnth twice on Friday, though!

I was consistent with my HRV training and did at least 5 minutes a day, and did a 20 minute session on Saturday. I think the combination of keto, exercise, and HRV training is doing great things for my mental health, energy, and creativity.

Writing every day has been a great addition to my weekly goal board. I've produced much more blogs for our business than in the past and I love that. I also have some work projects that nrequire mostly writing to get done in the next week so I will be writing a lot. I hope the lack of running doesn't hurt my creativity too much this week.

Goal Board Daily List

Write
HRV/Meditate
Carbs Under 30
Cardio and Strength

-Switching the food one from "No Sugar and Under 30g Carbs" to just the 30g carbs. I'm not in the mood right now to go completely without sugar (my 88% dark chocolate is the only sugar I eat).

-Cardio and Strength is new this week instead of just strength. Gotta force myself to do something else in place of running until Wednesday.

Weekly Lists

Work:
Finish Spectating doc and FAQ.
One race plan per day for Chattanooga athletes
Email each client with thoughts on upcoming race and/or off-season

Household:
List 3 things for sale
Cook one thing kids can eat for breakfast (granola, muffins, something like that)
Go through Jack's clothes and get rid of small summer stuff

Family:
Go to the YMCA with Andrew and put Jack in the daycare
Send Andrew a card in the mail
Write each kid a short note for lunch box or put on their steering wheel

Long Term Progress:
Call one of the following: fencing company, insulation company, or someone with a backhoe
Begin to formulate plan to Buy Nothing New and cut expenses

Training Week Recap #12

Oh, how I hate to say this. I had to take some days off of running due to my foot problem. I saw our chiropractor on Friday and was told there is a 50-60% chance that my injury is a stress fracture. It could alternatively be soft tissue stuff, so I am supposed to do some self-ART on it every 2 hours.

Doc also told me to lay off running but that I could run if running didn't make it worse. I don't think the running is making it worse but to be safe I am taking 5 days off. I think that's all I can handle mentally right now and I am hoping (really, really hoping) that it's not a SF and that the ART is working to fix it. It hurts like heck to manipulate it and my foot is more sore now than it was before, but hopefully in a good way??

Earlier in the week my runs had been consistently going great. My times are coming down really nicely thanks to the weather and I felt strong out there.

Anyway, so that means I missed a 2 mile run and my long 6 mile run last week. And I will probably skip my long run this week as well, just to be safe. I plan on trying to run again on Wednesday and in the meantime find motivation to get on the bike, which so far is non-existent.

Not much else to report. I love both my new Merrells. I'm losing weight very, very slowly. I'm still only down about 2 pounds total as of this morning and I've been keto for a month or so. However, my brain is working really well and that is motivation enough to stay ketonic.

I'm going to make a new post for my weekly goals from now on.

Training Week Recap #11

This was not the best but not the worst week. I'll bullet point the good and bad:

• Had a great long run this week thanks to cooler weather. Ran 6 miles a full MINUTE per mile faster than the same distance last week! It was first thing in the morning after one cup of bulletproof coffee and my energy level was great.
  
• Stuck with 20 miles this week just like I was hoping too.
  
• Am seeing my pace slowly, slowly creep back down as I get more keto adapted and the weather is slightly improved.

Bad:

• My foot. My foot. My foot. Ever since I had a stress fracture in my foot back in 2008-9 (can't remember exactly), I have had trouble with foot pain when I try to start running longer distances again. When I had the initial injury, it was caused by a sharp increase in miles, running a half marathon I wasn't trained for, changing my stride, and running in Newtons. I haven't run in Newtons since then but just recently decided to give them another shot. Well, here I am about 3 weeks later with pain in my foot so they are never going on my feet ever again! Never ever! I just ordered 2 pairs of zero drop Merrells that should arrive in the mail today. One of them has a 14mm sole and the other is 6mm, I think. I also saw a woman wearing Nikes that looked like exactly what I want to replace my current 2 year old pair that is literally falling apart this past weekend. She told me she found them at the Nike outlet so I will be heading there this week.
  
• I'm still not losing weight so it's time to make some adjustments. I'm no longer nursing Jack at all so my calories need to go down and I need to be a bit more pure with the foods I choose to eat. I felt great when I was doing strict Paleo, although I wasn't weighing myself at all. I still feel good (my brain does well on keto and I tend to have more energy) but I think all the cheese and a lack of veggies weighs me down a bit. Gonna focus on eating more veggies this week. 

Since my foot was bothering me this week, I stuck with 20 miles for the third week in a row. While on my long run I had a sharp pain in my foot at mile 2 and my first thought was that I had suddenly for sure gotten a stress fracture as I had to stop running. But it quickly subsided and I was able to finish the run just fine. My best guess at this point is that I am prone to have soreness and inflammation there and I have to manage it wisely but that the pain is not necessarily from the bone. I will continue to be cautious this week and may stay at 20 miles yet again if it seems the right thing to do.

I added a page to my weight spreadsheet to log my running. One thing I decided to do was calculate my average pace for the week to help me see improvements over time rather than day to day. I was hoping to find some motivation there but it wasn't as black and white as I thought. It's got to have more to do with the weather at this point than my diet.

Goals for this week:
Stay smart with the foot and see improvement in how it feels.
Try to find new Nikes and try both Merrells.
Run first thing in the morning when possible.
Go to yoga class with my husband one time this week.

Stuff I Cooked This Week

Stuff I made this week:

Low Carb, Gluten Free, Grain Free Pizza

I've made a variation of this before from a Reddit recipe but this was by FAR easier to deal with and just as tasty. I made this in my cast iron skillet and it took maybe 10 minutes. A keeper. I didn't feed it to my kids but I shared it with Andrew and he liked it.

Chicken Strips (again). 

Split Chicken Breast and Broccoli Casserole. Nothing special here. A decent weekday meal but I'd like to experiment more with the chicken.

Ahi Tuna Steaks. Yum. As easy as it gets and done in 5 minutes.

Shrimp Scampi. I ate mine with spinach instead of pasta. This is a super-simple and quick recipe.

Alfredo Sauce. I ate mine with broccoli, bacon, spinach, and cubes, cooked chicken thigh meat. This is in regular rotation in our house (about once a month).

Training Week Recap #10

This was a tough, tough week. I'm not getting decent sleep, which is Major Problem #1. Jack has slept pretty horribly this week and we have had more stress to deal with in the house as well. Friday night was the worst - I don't think I slept longer than 2.5 hours at a stretch the whole night, between picking up Tom from band at 12:30 in the morning to Jack sleeping in his crib and spitting his pacifier out every hour or so...ugh. Or maybe is was earlier in the week where Jack cried until 11pm and I spent the night sleeping on the couch while trying to pacify him in the swing, outside, etc.

Not that this should be surprising, but when you have sick kids at home, a baby that isn't sleeping well, a kid that is grounded, major stressful kid-related decisions to make, a cross country meet and a band event back to back, trying to run 20 miles, a husband who is sleeping worse than you, and miserable heat and humidity, YOU TEND TO FEEL RUN DOWN! And boy did I feel run down. So much so that I took my first day off from exercise since July 2nd yesterday (Saturday). I was so tired from the night before and then being on the go from 5:45AM-2PM that I just sat on the couch watching football for the rest of the day. Plus it was storming.

BUT BUT BUT, I did get my 20 miles in. BUT I gained weight this week and I am not sure yet if this is a temporary hormonal issue or something else, but we shall see what happens this week. If I feel like keto isn't cutting it, I am happy to bump my carbs up to 50-100 and see what happens. I'll still be plenty fat-adapted at that range. Keto has to be working on all levels to make it worth it - mentally, physically, etc. While I certainly enjoy eating all the fat and dairy stuff, I can go back to high fat/low carb paleo, too. I just don't want to do keto paleo as it's way too hard without dairy fat.

This week I will probably stick with 20 miles again, since my body is struggling a bit with the mileage and I am in no hurry to bump it up and rush things. If I can get more sleep I hope I will absorb the training better and be able to move up in mileage next week.

On Being Disillusioned

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts while I run lately and my new favorite is The Angriest Trainer podcast. While I totally love it and the content, it's also got me thinking about how I don't think I can ever go back to being a personal trainer or doing sports nutrition consults ever again. Why? Because when they cover listener questions, it's always, always the same thing that I faced when trying to get people to change the way they freaking eat. And it always will be. 95% of the people you coach/train won't accept that there are no tips/tricks/hacks/shortcuts to success with weight loss.

Food and what we eat is such a powerful issue that most people can never permanently re-frame how they interact with food. Our culture makes it impossible to be normal AND healthy and thin, and the 95% continually battle between a desire to lose weight and a desire to be healthy. A sense of entitlement and the "I deserve a treat" mentality is always battling "I want better for myself". Future vs. present, will-power vs. rationality.

When I new to teaching my Boot Camp class, I remember reading something along the lines of this: "bad personal trainers make their workouts too easy for their clients". I found myself doing that over time with my Boot Camp class as it was a small class and everyone had gotten to know each other so well. It's so hard to push someone to do a decent pushup or squat when they have been coming to your class for a year and just.don't.give.a.shit how good their squat or pushup is.

I will tell you - it was SO hard for me to accept that I was no more effective than the next guy because all my clients were just like most of the population - feeling the health benefits of exercise and being a bit stronger but not looking any different because the dietary changes weren't there (or weren't there consistently enough). And that failure was very dejecting. I wanted my clients to be successful but in the end MY definition of success was not theirs. They just wanted to hang out with their friends and work out. That's fine, but it wasn't what I envisioned for myself and for my desire to change people's lives.

My position now is that how I feel about food and fueling sports is very, very rarely mentioned in public or in my job as a coach. I would rather keep my thoughts to myself than tell a client what they need to do to lose weight and have them ignore it because it requires real and lasting change. I hope some day that will change and I can be more vocal but that will have to wait until I work through this disillusionment in some way.

My Keto Weight Loss 2012

I found my weight loss tracker from when I went ketogenic for the first time back in 2012. At the time my weight had creeped up to 148 pounds and my clothes weren't fitting. I found a lot of great resources on Reddit in r/keto, which is where I found this spreadsheet. Every day I logged my weight and my data from My Fitness Pal.

As you can see from the spreadsheet, I ended up losing 11.7 pounds in 81 days (11.5 weeks), a very reasonable 1 pound per week average loss. I did not exercise at all during that period and my weight at the end was perfect. All my clothes fit me very nicely and I felt great.

This time I am 10 pounds heavier at the start but I am also exercising (about 20 miles of very slow running a week right now, which is about 4 hours for me). I don't believe that exercise is a good way to lose weight, so I am not sure if this will help with the weight loss or hurt. I am running because I want to be in shape and I am "dieting" because I want to lose weight. The two may or may not work together - only time will tell. I am also still nursing but just barely. I would say I am about 90% formula, 10% breastmilk at this point.

I would love to be at my goal weight by the time I run the marathon, but I have 22 weeks and 25 pounds to go. Like I said, I have no idea what affect the exercise will have on the weight loss. It'll be fun to find out, though!

It is a blessing to be in the middle of a big goal. The finish line is over-rated. I much prefer being in the trenches and being challenged both mentally and physically in the pursuit of something.

Here is my old spreadsheet.
Here is the new one.