The triumphant return of Weight Watchers.

Yesterday's workout:
BodyJam

Today's workout:
Not dying

Quick recap of yesterday: I ate a lot of delicious food at breakfast because... reasons.  Then went to Trader Joe's and bought more delicious food.  I couldn't help myself, there was pumpkin everything.  Then I went to BodyJam for the first time in MONTHS and was so so so happy.


Then I woke up today and realized that I either pulled something jamming it out last night or my back has just suddenly decided to loathe my bed.  Either way, my back spent most of the day randomly seizing up.  So that was super fun.  I had planned on a 3 mile run today, but it wasn't happening with the back pain.  In an effort to see the silver lining, though, I took this unexpected rest day to focus on getting back to healthy eating.  And by healthy eating, I mean trying to follow the 80/20 rule of 80% clean eating, 20% indulgences.  Let's be real, I'll be psyched if I hit 70/30.  I really love processed carbs, kids.


Breakfast was vanilla Shakeology with Trader Joe's pumpkin butter blended in - I'm not kidding when I say that I now own everything pumpkin that store has to offer.  Lunch was a bagel thin with roast beef and cheddar, plus some carrots and grapes on the side.  Dinner was tacos with Trader Joe's reduced guilt guacamole.  Otherwise known as my new addiction.  Not pictured here is my new favorite snack, which is an apple and Yoplait whipped Greek yogurt in vanilla cupcake.  IT IS GLORIOUS.


The real goal right now is to get back on the Weight Watchers bandwagon.  I know, I know... this isn't my first rodeo.  For those of you new to my story, here it is in a nutshell: I lost 35 pounds, I became a Leader, I maintained, I gained a little bit back, I lost it again, I came to Florida, I gained 25 pounds, and have been trying to lose those 25 pounds for three years.  It's not pretty and I'm not proud.  But I will say that I have worked harder this year to get back to my goal than I have the whole time I've been in Florida.  Following 21 Day Fix got me back on track with my eating and paying a lot more attention to WHAT I was eating.  I really started looking closely at labels and caring about ingredients.  But as great as that was, it got to me, and I wanted to eat clean 100% of the time.  As it turns out, that sucks.  It sucks a lot.  It means you don't get ketchup and I really love ketchup.  So I spiraled out of control in the other direction and stopped caring at all what I ate!  That lasted about two days before I wanted to die.  Now I'm realizing that Weight Watchers always has been, and likely always will be, my happy place.  I like that it doesn't tell me what I can and cannot eat (because I'm a small child), but it still gives me guidelines.  And that's what I need right now.

In unrelated news, I had a really big interview today for something I am really excited about.  So if you've got some extra pixie dust laying around, please feel free to send it my way!


Tooting my own horn for a change.

Today's run:
3.22 miles in 45:00
Today was my first run since the Dumbo Double Dare last weekend.  I set out to run 3 miles.  I'm grateful that was my only goal because while I did achieve it, most of the run was spent focused on foot pain, shin splints, and asking God why he had forsaken me.  So all in all, it was a great run.
But I did it and I'm proud of myself for that.  Furthermore, I didn't beat myself up about how slow I was or how much pain I was in because I ran 19.3 miles last weekend, damnit, and that's really cool.  Sometimes I don't give myself enough credit.  Does anybody else feel like that?  I tell myself that I don't really "run" because I take walk breaks and because I'm slow.  I tell myself that because I've done so many half marathons (last weekend marked my 11th) it isn't very impressive when I finish one.  WTF?!  Of course I really run!  I'm out there huffing and puffing while other people I know sit on their couches!  I deserve so much credit for stuffing my jiggly bits into workout clothes and busting my butt!  And it's still CRAZY impressive when I finish a half marathon!  I don't care if I run 50 of them - each one is a massive triumph and I earn those medals and all the bragging that comes with them!
This is something I'm working on, really.  I'm working on being better to myself.  The truth is, I've spent the past few months being REALLY hard on myself.  It's one of those tough parts of getting involved in health and fitness - it starts to surround you.  I did the same thing when I became a Weight Watchers Leader.  I was constantly talking to people about weight loss, food choices, meal planning, emotional eating... it started to become my whole world.  Since I thought about it so much, I started to pick my own choices and tendencies apart.  If I talked to my members about meal planning, I told myself I needed to be perfect at it.  If I harped on getting in the Good Health Guidelines (fruits, veggies, healthy oils, lean proteins, etc.) in the meeting, then I better go home and check every single one off, every single day, without fail.  Not very realistic, right?  But it's how my little perfectionist brain works.

I thought with age and wisdom (let's be real, it's mostly age) that I could grow past that and not fall into the same pitfalls with coaching.  But here I am, eight months later, struggling.  I'm not good at eating clean (because cake).  I still don't know how I got through P90X because as it turns out, I kinda suck at following a workout program exactly (because half marathons).  I spend way too much time comparing myself to other coaches and coming up short, which is stupid, but true (because Lindsay Matway).

But I just spent two weeks pretty much unplugged from the coaching world and when I got back, something in me snapped.  I realized that living this double life of being perfect on social media while having a really tough time in my personal life was just dumb.  So I'm knocking it off and being honest.  And I'm also BRAGGING ON MYSELF A LITTLE.  Let's start here.  Today's run was freaking slow.


But you know what?  It was still a run.  Who cares if I'm slow?!  I've finished 11 half marathons and I'm just starting to train for my 12th.  Tonight, that's enough for me.  I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty great anyway.
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Welp. Let's try this again!

So... I'm just going to be honest here.  I have been missing this whole blogging thing for a while now.  And about halfway through the Disneyland Half Marathon this past Sunday all I could think was that I really wanted to blog about it.  Because that's how well it was going.


But the truth is, I've been thinking about how to get started on this blog again for months now.  I thought about it on nearly every run that I went on and considered all sorts of big, exciting posts reintroducing myself into the blog world.

Those posts never happened.

So here I am, just quietly reintroducing myself into the blog world at 10:42 pm on a Friday night.  Which I think shows that I am so ready to get back to blogging that I don't even care if I don't do it perfectly.  I definitely don't think it shows that I have nothing to do on a Friday night.


The point is that I am excited to be back.  I'm actually excited for a lot of things right now.  But that's for my next post.  See you real soon, blogosphere!

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