Reasons Why I Can

Tori and I walked 2.17 mile last night and for the first time in 6 months I was back under a 20 minute mile.  Yay me!  We were actually also faster in the second half of the walk than in the first which made me feel strong.

It was a really rough walk though, my feet were killing me.  It was like walking in pins and needles.  Afterwards we went right to the store and bought me a new pair of shoes.  Hopefully that will make a huge different.   I can't imagine that it would make it worse.

The best part though is even after three straight days of serious walks or work outs I don't feel like I'm going to die today.  I'm a little achy but it's nothing major.  I also cleared a big mental hurdle today about the Princess 1/2.  I looked up the race results for 2012 and saw that the last person from Florida crossed the finish line at 4:32:25.  That means that they were just over a 20 minute pace and they didn't get swept!

Oh my god... I may actually be able to do this.  I was having a huge mental block about having to get down to 15 minute miles.  I have NEVER been at a 15 minute mile, but maybe I don't have to?  Maybe really the only thing that I need to worry about is my endurance.  It's a lot easier for me to just focus on one goal. 

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Wine Math...

I know I mentioned it yesterday, but it's really bothering me.  I've been pretty unhappy about my weight gain last year, largely because I couldn't quite figure out where it was coming from.  I had maintained my weight for quite some years without real effort.  However, over the last year (as I've also mentioned) I have considerably increased my wine consumption.  Last night, as I sat down to enjoy my "reward" glass of wine, I decided to do some basic math to see if it could have actually been the wine that's added the pounds. 
Okay let's do some math.  These numbers are estimates, I haven't actually kept track of how much wine I've been drinking.  But I went from maybe buying a bottle every other month, to buying 5-8 bottles a month.

2 Glasses (300 about calories) of wine a night roughly 5 days a week = an extra 1500 calories.  That's like a whole extra days worth of food a week without any nutritional benefit.

We'll guess I did that maybe 40 weeks out of the last year x1500 = 60,000 calories

Roughly 4082 calories = 1 pound, means that the wine can account for about 14.5 pounds of my gain.

Take into consideration that I've been exercising less, and I think that is a pretty fair look at what's happened without too much detail on the rest of my diet.

However, that's great news!  Because that means that with an increase in my exercise and a decrease in my wine consumption I can at the very least stop the gain right away.  Stopping the mystery gain is a first step in getting back to being comfortable with my weight.

Three simple changes...

I spent the day downtown Chicago with my girls yesterday, and today I feel like a truck has hit me.  My pain levels are through the roof!  Seriously having Fibromyalgia SUCKS!  But... so does being old and fat.  How on earth am I going to make it through Disney in June?  I need to make some changes in my routine.  I've gained a bunch a weight over the past year and I just need to get this under control or I have no hope at all of doing that 1/2 Marathon next year.  

Okay... here's my plan as it stands...

1) My wine consumption needs to go WAY down.  The only major changes that have occurred since I started putting on this weight is that I am drinking a LOT more wine.   Empty calories that I do not need. Wine is getting relegated to a once a week treat. 

2) I need to cut pork and red meat out of my diet.  Last time I did that I managed to lose a ton of weight without really trying.  Seriously it melted off of me.  I'm crossing my fingers that will be the case again.

3) If Tori and I don't get back to the gym consistantly there is no way we're going to be able to run the Princess next year.  Now, honestly I'd rather try for the 10K bu I really want a pretty Princess Medal.  We know that if we don't go together we don't get a work out in.  We're going to have to suck it up and starting going to the gym after I pick her up from work at night.  We HATE working out at night, but this is the only way that we're going to get this done. We're going to shoot for 3x's a week like in Jeff Galloway's Marathon Training Plan.

Three fairly small, fairly simple changes.  Hopefully ones that are going to make a BIG difference.