Category Archives: Fitness

One Day at a Time

Live from New York…

NYC Snow

We’ve gotten some snow, and much more is supposed to come later tonight.

We got out of work at 2 today to go work from home, and I used the time everyone else was using to commute to go get in a quick run on the treadmill at the gym. I haven’t run since the half last weekend since I had a terrible sinus infection all week that went into my chest.

But I finally feel human again!

The week before I got sick, I’d been really busy at work and with some other stuff and didn’t put myself and my training first. I got my runs in but they kind of sucked. I was just ticking the boxes and rearranging the schedule Jess had put together for me.

Why was I paying her if I wasn’t really going to listen? Last week when I was sick, I contemplated abandoning my PR attempt and just running this race for fun. I’d had two weeks of sub-par training, I wouldn’t be able to PR.

But, I listened to those negative thoughts and told them to shut the hell up, I had work to do. Jess and I agreed at the outset of my training it might be hard to PR in March when I hadn’t been training hard for more than a year, and that Brooklyn might be a better time to try to PR.

I looked at my training plan and got nervous looking at the race date and my runs to date. And then I decided my only choice was to take things one day at a time, one run at a time.

So today, I went and I banged out 4 miles on the treadmill. I felt tight and sore and achy but I got them done and didn’t worry about what they meant for my race other than being one run closer.

*Edited to add: I read this AWESOME post from my girl Anne about her trip to Canyon Ranch. Towards the end, she talks about getting a body composition analysis and how your body fat percentage may be a little higher when endurance training than doing other types of training. I wish i had read this last year when I freaked out about my body fat analysis!

How have you changed your mindset while training for something?

The Number on the Scale vs. The Size Tag

I shouldn’t worry about either of those, right? And in the scheme of things I worry about (that long, long list of mostly irrational things…), my weight doesn’t always take center stage, which is why I’ve gone back and forth with those 5-10 pounds I’ve gained back since hitting my goal weight.

But a month or so ago, I stepped on my scale and it said “Lo.” SWEET! Low weight! Or, oh, just low battery.

When I was losing weight, it was both the scale milestones and the size tag milestones that excited me, as well as various body image and strength markers.

I’m glad I discovered running, because it shifted the what-my-body-looks-like to what-my-body-can-do markers. (And I discovered that, hey, this body could run from the Verazzano to Central Park in less than 4 hours!)

When I was overweight, I despised shopping because nothing ever fit and it was incredibly humbling. When I lost weight, I LOVED shopping because I felt like I could fit into anything. Maintenance is the boring part of weight management; there’s not the extreme highs or weight loss or the extreme lows (that I felt) being overweight. Even though a certain size not fitting can still be a bummer, I’ve learned to accept it for what it is: either some massive size fluctuation/vanity sizing (I mean, hi, a few summers ago, I had Lillys that ranged from size 2 to 8 and all fit basically the same. And that’s just within one brand!)

But yesterday as I tried on some Christmas gifts, there was one Lilly dress that was really snug. It zipped, and it looked fine, but it didn’t feel awesome. But I’ve also basically eaten carbs for a solid week straight (I regret nothing) and not worked out much in the past two. It’s a good reminder to get back to my healthy habits with a small wakeup call instead of the big one it took nearly six years ago to change my life.

Take this photo for example. I’ll fully admit that in order to get a cute one, first of all, this was maybe the fourth or fifth one we took, I’m totally sucking in, doing the super sexy hand on hip everyone loves and doing this weird lean in to get the most flattering angle possible.

I work out too hard to mess up my results by eating like crap, and I want to rock that dress in Puerto Rico in February with no regrets, and I know it’s possible. I’m done with the Christmas CarbFest of Amazingness and starting half-marathon training tomorrow — while keeping up strength training. I’m so excited to get strong and fast.

What about you? How do you measure progress? By a size tag? Number on scale? What your body can do?