Thursday, August 13, 2015

Magical powers of sleep


137.8

It is Thursday, so you know what that means. And do you see that number up there. This one, oh this one, I am PROUD of.  I am happy with. I am content.  I am excited.  This one, I take!  I earned!  This one is well, just happiness. Last week I was a total nut job, as in the previous week weigh-in and the number on the scale was great, 139.3 but I felt like a basket case in getting to it.  Something about being under 140 that makes me go batty I guess.  So last Thursday I vowed to myself to be kind this week.  That it was all about happy, positive, healthy behaviors.  I held true to my word. 

This is why I feel I earned this number and am proud of it.  There was no crazy scale obsessing. There was no frequent weigh-ins.  There was no exercise crazy.  (Well more than normal or beyond what I WANTED to do!)  And yes, there was good quality eating.  Hell, this loss even reflects date night of pizza and then the following night 4 Cosmo’s and a donut and 2 big old cookies.  I know, that makes me sound insane for thinking that any of that would add weight or stall me, but it’s a real deal.  It shows me that I can be happy and healthy and normal and still do this. Even at my current size.  With all that said the rest of my week was pretty damned fabulous on the eating front.  Somewhere in the course of the last 3 months my entire eating style has slowly changed.  Without intention or without realizing it I have completely shifted to eating very natural/clean foods.  It was a slow evolution done out of how I felt.  It wasn’t done because I thought I needed to do it.  It was done because the more I ate good stuff the better I felt, and the better my running felt.  This is the way it is supposed to be done.

My “lifestyle” now was something that even I thought sounded horrific some time ago and low and behold here I am. REALLY enjoying the benefits of it.  Everything they kind of ever said about eating is proving to be true for me.  I eat small little mini-meals every 2-3 hours as I get hungry.  All day long mostly.  Then I go to the gym. Come home and have a larger dinner meal and then always some sort of healthy treat post dinner.  I pretty much eat oatmeal for breakfast.  Rice cakes with peanut butter for snack.  Real grilled chicken for lunch.  Some sort of varying afternoon snack.  This is the one that is not 100% the same every day.  But it’s always pretty clean and healthy.  I throw in egg whites, yogurt, protein bars, veggies and fruits for snacks if I need more.  And then before I go to the gym I always try and eat a banana.  It helps.  Very clean, very healthy and all be damned I feel so much better than I EVER have.  Not a ton of processed stuff in my life and it’s pretty amazing.

So dinner is typically healthy clean again, just a larger portion and a couple items.  Meaning Chris likes bigger full meals.  Typically it’s a “meat” protein source then a bread, a potato and then a vegetable.  We like a full plate of food.  All clean stuff.  Now I don’t buy organic or anything crazy like that.  Not that it’s crazy, just crazy expensive!  Ha Ha.  The intent was never to eat totally crazy clean, it was just to fuel my body and the more I did it with quality products the more it responds, and the better I feel.  I can honestly say this is the kindest I have ever treated my body.  And I am shocked I am still managing to lose weight consistently considering I have forever convinced myself in my brain that it would be damned near impossible for me to maintain a 140 pound body.  It probably would be if I ate processed crap all the time.  Eating clean and natural it seems easy honestly.  It seems like something I want to do.  Sometime I enjoy doing.  Because I feel great! 

I know, I sound retarded.  Even I want to punch me in the face because I sound like a stupid infomercial that I had no idea I would ever become.  Just saying this is working for me at this point in my life.   I have 5 more weigh-ins until Maui.  5 weeks.  5 weigh-ins to see where this number goes.  As I have stated before the number is not really the be all end all. It’s not really the “goal” but it is sure a nice side-effect of the goal.  The goal being to run my marathon. Be happy and healthy.  Fuel my body the way it needs to be fueled, etc.   I tell you, marathon training has been damned good to me!  Since I really decided to train for a marathon on May 6, my life has completely changed.  Do you know that my weight when I first started this was 154.5.  As of today I am down 16.7 pounds from when I started.  I notice.  That is 10.81% of my starting weight.  I’ve lost almost 11% of my body weight since starting training.  That’s a substantial amount of weight to no longer be carrying around.  No wonder my running is getting faster!

All of this of course leaves me slightly terrified for post Maui.  Seriously. Hmm. Going to have to figure something out because I am just too damned happy living like this to ever want to go back.  I have found my happy/healthy comfort zone.  And yes, sometimes I can eat pizza and a donut and a couple cookies and survive! So that was this morning.  Happy, happy, happy girl! Oh, and I got a full night’s sleep last night too. FINALLY. And I felt so good. I needed sleep so badly.  Chris finally came to bed with me at the regular time and somehow that did the trick.  Slept like a baby all night.  I feel well rested and giddy almost. My body needed it. Sleep is magical! So this was me this morning!


Now speaking of lack of sleep, let’s back up to last night.  I was really feeling like utter shit to be honest, but then I put on my gorgeous workout clothes and suddenly I felt better. Ha Ha.  But seriously one of my favorite workout outfits ever.  And this seriously could be in contention for the big day.  I need to seriously start considering the big day outfit. It’s always been in my mind but it’s getting very real now and the big day is getting closer so I need to really think hard about it.  Anyway. Once I put on the clothes I felt amazing and was like, I got this!  Trick the brain into thinking you will be okay.  So off to the gym I went. 

I started with a run. And after the first 2 horrific minutes (the first 2 are always so God awful, I think my lungs are going to explode. Yup, still to this day happens to me almost every single time!)  and then of course it balanced out and I felt good. And then I felt better. And I ran faster and I felt better and then I ran faster yet and I felt amazing. And before class I ran 2 entire miles and felt on top of the world!  Yup, that good.  Running is just that good for me.  So then off to about a 45 minute strength class that was great. Left me feeling quite pumped up in a fantastic way!  I felt really on fire honestly. But truly the adorable workout outfit totally helped.  And then it was post class back to the treadmill.  I was feeling the exercise high for sure.  I only needed a 3 mile run but was like, fuck that I’m running.  And somehow the high kicked in and I ran another 2.5 miles for a grand total of 4.5 miles.  Plus everything I have read said that its good training to even occasionally break up your runs into 2 sessions.  Body confusion, etc.  So I don’t mind breaking it up like that.

Also, here’s the deal. I have said it before and I am really believing it.  I think my plan might be too easy honestly. I feel now as I look at other training plans that they are getting in far more miles than I have been. Of course this is not shocking to me because intentionally I picked an easy one from the start. On the account of not wanting to do it and all.  But now I feel like I am ready to run more miles. And honestly the 4.5 miles felt really easy. This is a good thing.  So I don’t mind in the least adding more miles to my plan.  I kind of have been doing that from the start anyway.  No plan called for half marathons every single weekend.  That was just for fun for me.  So alas, I just need to trust my plan. Have more faith in it I guess.  Because it has gotten me this far and mentally prepared me honestly for my first longer run this weekend so maybe I need to quit doubting it so much honestly.  Anyway. I burned 667 calories and I felt better after working out than I would have imagined I could.  I felt pretty damned good considering the lack of sleep I was running off of.



I feel ready you know.  Just ready for any and all of it. I feel excited and jazzed about life.  Like let’s bring this on. Let’s do this. Happy. Happy.  Yup, that’s the sleep talking right now.  The wonderful magical sleep that my body got last night. Yup…  Makes me think I can do and accomplish a lot of crazy things.  This could be dangerous honestly.

So anyway, after the workout last night I put on some lounge clothes and discovered that things are getting too big.  The side effect of losing more weight and toning up.  This shirt in particular is a little big but it’s cool.  Mainly I have to say that I really do start to notice things changing all the time on my body.  I guess a 1.5 pound loss this week is more noticeable on someone who is smaller.  I am really starting to see great changes and I am starting to feel REALLY good.  I feel small but I also feel incredibly healthy and muscular.  It’s not like I am a tiny pale fragile looking girl.  I look tough and strong and fit.  Things I have always wanted to be.  It’s crazy how much self-confidence I am gaining. Yes, because I think I look good but mostly because I just feel good. I feel happy and strong.  That is where the confidence comes from.  From the inside.  This body is not perfect by a long shot.  And when I go to a negative place I can rip myself apart from here to there. But truly I am happy and confident and feel amazing.


And there you have it.  I am in a great place today.  Yeah.  Sleep. Yeah. Tonight I don’t have to run per my training plan. I don’t intend to run.  Aside from maybe a 1 mile warm up before class. Tonight is boot camp class and it looks mean.  I saw the workout already and it is mean actually.  And then since its Thursday and day 6 in a row for me of working out I might call it.  As in I might leave the gym after that.  But I might not too.  Right now I feel better than I’ve felt in a couple days so I have all this crazy energy from sleeping that is wanting to burst out.  But that will probably fade by the afternoon honestly.  So whatever. If I only take class tonight and burn around 400 calories that is just dandy by me.  More than enough.  Tomorrow is Friday and then that will bring me to Saturday. Which I might have to talk about later or tomorrow a little bit.  Yup, I will save my plans for Saturday until tomorrow.

And I’m off.


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