Goal Report: One Month In

On April 22, 2012, I wrote this post outlining my next goal to lose weight and shape up in preparation for running my next marathon in April 2013. I promised I would keep you all updated at least once a month, for better or for worse. So here goes:

It’s been a rocky month. I have not blogged much because of that whole “If You Can’t Say Anything Nice Don’t Say Anything At All” thing.

In a nutshell,

We are moving in 4 weeks but still don’t know where to yet. Yeah, crazy stressful. It’s a long story.

My coach is kicking my @ss to the end of the galaxy and back. And by “@ss”, I really mean my brain – easy to confuse the two. I feel like every molecule of brain matter is being rearranged. She has this really soft, gentle, quiet voice but she comes out with things like “The Wall doesn’t even exist. You just created it to give yourself a reason to have to struggle. You are already standing on the other side.” Well, that’s like 45 years of struggle that apparently existed nowhere but in my own mind. After our sessions I do a lot of just laying down on the floor in a stupor, not sure if I should laugh or cry.

I took my family completely off cow’s milk. I will write an entire post about this, but basically I reached a very painful tipping point and that was that. It’s all positive and all good, but a major shift none-the-less. I will explain it all soon and you will see what I’m talking about.

So that’s the Life As Roller-Coaster Stuff that’s been going on. In terms of my goals to lose weight and get in great shape:

I’m down 4 lbs (2 kg) in 1 month. Slow and steady wins the race, don’t it.

I had to scale down the 2000+ calories per day I was eating during marathon training back to 1400-1500 calories per day for normal activity. That was REALLY hard but I did it slowly, slowly, coming down just a little bit each day. Despite the gradual decline in calories, I was physically hungry and emotionally struggling with the deficit. I finally feel I am here in daily deficit range and more or less comfortable.

I put my back out again like the day after I set my goals. It’s like magic the way that happens, no? So also here I had to do some baby steps with my workouts. But I have kept at it – sometimes only 30 minutes each day – but never quitting. Now I can do 10 full push-ups (don’t laugh), I can kick up into a handstand without using the wall to support me the entire time, I can do a 90-second wall-sit, and a 60-second plank. You never realize how slow 60 seconds can go until you’re holding a plank.

Gluten. Ugh. As much as I REALLY did not want to have to eliminate gluten, I clearly cannot eat it if I want to feel good and not be doubled over with stomach pain. I haven’t figured this entirely out yet and seriously hope it is only temporary somehow, but yeah, I have pulled it from my diet for now. One day I glumly typed “gluten-free vegan” into google, thinking I was the only poor sap in the world who would have to not only not eat any animal products, but also not get to eat bread and pasta and crackers, and found tons of books and websites for people just like me. That was kind of comforting. A trip to the health food store for some gluten free bread, pasta and crackers also made me feel better (and drained my bank account, wtf?). I’ll live.

So that’s where we’re at over here. I have all kinds of juicy posts waiting in the wings. I just need to stay positive enough to write them!