Oatmeal cookies!

One resource I couldn't live without is a recipe analyzer.  I'm sure there are plenty out there, but I use this one.  You enter the ingredients and how many servings you expect to reap from the recipe and voila!  It kicks out a nutrition label for your recipe. It's been a great tool for trying new recipes at home. I made a great pumpkin loaf with vanilla yogurt and my great grandma's oatmeal cookies. (Yeah, I've been craving some sweets lately!)  

One reason I've experimented with sweets is that I've been on the hunt for Real Food alternatives to Big Food / Diet Industry snacks. Main gripes with so many of these cookies and bars:

• Don't have all that fewer calories
• Taste like chemically-flavored cardboard
• Contain dozens of unrecognizable and/or unpronounceable ingredients
• Shelf life of centuries

The only one I've made some peace with is Luna. Usually 180 calories. I like the Peppermint Stick ones once in a while. But I was looking at my oatmeal cookie recipe and admiring its mere 5 simple, staple ingredients. And using the recipe analyzer (I picture a sci-fi type laser ray probing the cookie dough, abbracadabra!) I discovered each cookie has less than 100 calories and some fiber.  No, it's not an apple, but I stuck the finished cookies in the freezer and having a couple as a snack has made me feel very satisfied. Mmm, I made these...and I didn't use any molybdenum glycinate.  I realize some people can't have cookies, even frozen ones, in stock.  Actually, I am that person, but for some reason, perhaps because I was armed with the caloric "damage" information and knew I had made them as a homemade treat for myself, I didn't go overboard.

As a favor to my mother, for my initial foray, I made the recipe "as is" - no crazy yogurt or applesauce substitutions.  Which means there's a lot of sugar in these suckers.  And I'm ok with that for the most part.  However, I would like to experiment more with some healthy substitutions, just so long as the integrity of the recipe isn't completely compromised. (For example, I don't want to repeat the Great Spaghetti Squash Switcheroo of my WW days.  That's NOT spaghetti. I'm not fooled and now I hate life. I like squash enough, but I like pasta, too. Alright, I've managed to refind my will to live....)  

So if anyone knows about subbing out ingredients in baking, please drop me a line.  Is applesauce generally a sub for butter? Or sugar? And yogurt? I would like to take a recipe I know I like and maybe sub out 1/2 of a less healthy ingredient (sugar) with a better choice and see how that comes out. It will likely take some experimentation, I suppose.


 

Fun Run?

Even though I've been faithfully doing my C25k training runs and feeling pretty good afterwards (if not during and certainly not before as I cajole and harass myself into lacing up), I never thought I could get my head around the concept of a "fun run".  A fun dinner party, maybe. Fun date, sure. Fun night out drinking with friends...I could list dozens of "fun" activities before I scraped the bottom of the barrel with running. 

And yet, I had the most fun New Year's Eve ever running the 2010 Midnight Run in Central Park.  This is a 4-mile "fun run" that kicks off at the stroke of Midnight amidst fireworks and (sober) revelry in the heart of the Park. It was a balmy 34 degrees with little wind, which was good. Though it was snowing/raining and the roads were a bit slick at times. (Otherwise I totally would have won.)

I'm so glad I completed the race!  We didn't get a chip to track our exact times (this being a fun run and all), but I estimate I came in at about 50-55 minutes? Now I'm eager to run a race with the chip so I can get my personal time. My pace was erratic. I ran a faster pace with my boyfriend the first 2 miles, then waited and walked a stretch at that water station for my friend to catch up and ran a slower pace with her for about a mile, then ran the last mile myself. 

It felt good to be out there, despite the wet snow. A great antidote to the winter blahs I've been feeling. A lot of my favorite blogs are capturing this vibe lately, so I'm glad it's not just me.  I can't even blame holiday travel or festivities really...it's been a fairly low-key affair around here. Gym schedules get all mucked up, the weather makes me want to curl up with a book and a cookie, I feel sorry for myself that I'm not having some super terrific idealized holiday...who knows? Since my last post, I tracked my food a bit more, but there are still some gaps. I think I'm just going through one of those periods where I have to focus on doing the best I can, accepting that I have to just hang in there and cling to some minimal level of my plan instead of allowing myself to freefall completely (in my old Perfectionist way of being "off" or "on" plan), but rather to embrace days I eat more and days I eat less, days I burn lots of calories and days I burn less, as a way of life for the long haul versus some temporary regime to grow tired of until I come up with the "next" thing.

Bad Blogger

I think I started out with a vague goal of posting something about once a week. Yeah...

My workouts have been fairly consistent. Getting up to 25-30 minute runs of varying speed in the C25k program. Still making it to weekly yoga and strength (Body Conditioning) classes. 1 or 2 days rest in a typical week. Sort of suffering from the winter blahs though. My eating has been ok, but my tracking of said eating has fallen a bit by the wayside. 

Just typing that makes me want to log into my Bodybugg software and put in the 2 pieces of wheat toast I ate for breakfast today. At least I've been wearing the Bodybugg gizmo on my arm and meeting my activity goals most days. The contraption works on the basis of calorie deficit. Mine is currently set for a 500 calorie daily deficit. My caloric intake goal is 1900 and my caloric Burn goal is 2400. (I also have a 10,000 daily Step goal and a 60 minute daily Activity goal.)  There is a watch that syncs with the armband and beeps with a happy little message when you meet each of your set goals. The cool thing I have been monitoring is the breakdown of the physical activity after I sync it up on my laptop. There is a graph that captures the caloric burn throughout a given day. So I can hold the mouse over the time I was doing yoga and see I burned about 3 calories a minute on average (which is cool, caloric burn not being my main motivator for yoga) and sometimes I hit 15 calories a minute on my runs.  Which is probably why yoga lasts an hour and a half and I can usually run 20 minutes before I need a walk break!

I know I need to focus on both sides of the equation - the calories in as well as the calories out. I also know the perfectionist in me gets caught up and bogged down in the details of calorie tracking. "If I don't know exactly how many ounces of turkey were in that sandwich I ordered, why bother tracking...?"  And once you skip tracking one meal, the whole day won't add up, will it?? One day last week, I just overestimated everything. That was a little depressing. I need to just do it and make peace with entries being a best estimate of what I consume on a given day. And stop overthinking it!

I'm also editing the layout here, since this will likely be a loooong journey (and I'm ok with that, really!  ok, mostly...) I weigh in every Tuesday and track it here and on my own spreadsheet and on my Bodybugg software. I've decided to track it here monthly. I think that will help me see the forest/big picture more than the smaller, weekly ups and downs. I need to get a better feel for the trend and this seems a good vehicle for that.

Running on empty

I find this photo inspiring. There's water behind her, greenery. She's got her water. And it doesn't look very hot outside. When I do encounter "optimal" running conditions outside, I don't think I appreciate them. I was running on vacation in London a few months ago, but instead of experiencing it as a fit and fun way to see the sights and take in the local vibe, as a fitness magazine might suggest as a tool to not gain weight on vacation, instead I just felt like everything was really far away. Or had thoughts such as: When will this song be over? How long have I been running? How red is my face? Look at how fast that dude is! 

I always enjoy it afterwards. And am glad I did it. Honestly it does help me when traveling. At least it clears my head and sets me up to want to eat fairly well the rest of the day. I think I just have this idealist vision in my head of effortlessly running among the landmarks that I never experience in reality.

I've been doing this about a month now and seem to have fallen into a groove.  Running via the C25k program 3 times per week. (Just started Week 6 today.) One strength class and one yoga class per week, typically. And lots of walking added in whenever possible. Foodwise, I'm just eating and drinking (ahem) as consciously as I can. Tracking calories. 1900 per day on average, sometimes more or less. Not putting any food on a "Do Not Eat" list. Slow going. Which is what I say I want. Until I step on the scale. Then I have to talk myself off the ledge and remind myself about the marathon versus sprint, living on a plan I can live with for the long haul, weekly weigh-ins only data points, blah, blah, etc. Knowing all that intellectually is all well and good. I need to feel it and live it intrinsically though. 

One final note. If I really want to avoid a funk, I should not compare my weight or weightloss (or lack thereof) with others.  Like, I should not, for instance, have my boyfriend get on the scale so I can see that I've got a good 12 lbs on him! I really did not need that information today!

We're on a Road to Nowhere

Today was the start of Week 5 on C25K.  It was supposed to involve alternating 5-minute runs with 3-minute walks. Siiiiiiigh.  Even though last week also involved a couple 5-minute intervals, for some reason I couldn't hack it today.  And it really p!ssed me off! It felt never-ending, as if this particular treadmill at my gym had been surreptitiously replaced with this as I ran: 

There was a stitch right under my left ribs the entire time. So there were a couple "pauses", which put me off my scheduled time. And I got very frustrated. I probably ate too soon before I left for the gym. And I could have slowed my pace a bit, but I chose to stop instead. A couple years ago, I did a running regimen, but focused mainly on building mileage. So I usually ran a 5.5 mph pace, except on longer runs where I dropped down to 5.0 mph.  Since starting C25K, however, I do the running portions at 6.0 mph (a 10-minute mile), which is pretty speedy for me.

So I'm pulling a big re-do tomorrow to see if I can do this right. If I'm really going to run any significant distance, I guess I'll have to further explore the pace thing.  Or I should just take my butt outside where I really have no idea how fast I'm running. I'm such a weather wimp, though!  On any given day, it is most likely too dark/cold/windy/rainy for a December run for this wuss. I need optimal conditions! 

The good news though, is that wearing my Bodybugg confirmed for me that at least the treadmill session was not in vain. I still burned lots of calories.  And that is a good thing, Martha. I know one cannot have the time of one's life every freaking day at the gym, but today really felt crap. And it was all I could do to remind myself that the hardest part was getting there. (Usually it is! And once there, the workout takes care of itself, often enthusiastically even!) Today was just a slog from the get-go... Grrr! Frustrated...  tomorrow's another day...

ETA: The do-over was a success! 3 non-stop running segments of 5 minutes at 6.0 mph. Now I can move on.

Pain in the neck!

This picture hurts. I should label it "Before" and put a photo next to it of myself labeled "After" wherein I'm holding my neck with a wincing-in-pain look.  I'm so there. 

It all started when I woke up early to watch my dvr of Biggest Loser, where they run the marathon. I know all the pros and cons of the show, resisted the first few seasons when it was recommended to me. ("You'll love it, big transformations, inspiring life changes..." "I hate TV, especially 'reality' TV!")  But I was hooked somewhere in Season 5. I'm a sucker for Success Stories in fitness mags too. My big beef with the show (aside from the edited-in "drama" - isn't there enough drama inherent in their weight loss stories?) is that they hardly ever show us the other side of the caloric deficit equation: the eating plans. Aside from the requisite trips to Subway. And lots of Extra gum chewing. (The product placements actually crack me up. So NOT subtly integrated into the show!)

OK, I meant that to be a lead-in to my own workout woes, but went off on a tangent. So I mentioned I've been loving my Body Conditioning class in earlier posts. I saw there was an a.m. session with another instructor and thought it'd be good to see some other versions of the class. After being all pumped up and motivated by the BL contestants running 26.2 miles, I arrived at the gym to discover I lack the ability to read a class schedule. I had the day wrong and the strength training class I thought I was attending ended up being an old-school Step Aerobics class with the new-school twist of a 3-kg ball that I had to move from arm to arm, up and down and all around. It felt like a Harlem Globetrotters try out.  Why do cardio intense classes seem so damn loooooong?  We're up, down, up, down on the step, trying not to drop the freaking ball (literally!) and keep up, come on, you can do anything for an hour, it's not a marathon for crying out loud, you're almost done....and discover 3 minutes have gone by. Sigh...

After class I took a moment to really look at the class schedule and saw there was an actual Body Conditioning class that same evening. Being all pumped up with BL motivation, I rocked back into the gym studio a few hours later to try a different instructor's take on the class. I think I'll stick with my Monday night dude. Too much focus on abs for me. I know I have weak abs. I know my core needs strengthening. I know! But I find that when you try to work weak abs in a class setting, eventually you just end up straining back muscles. Usually I'm good at ignoring the class and doing my own controlled, focused crunches or some version of what "they're" doing that I can feel in my core. (Like if they have their legs in the air for crunches, I know that is instant back spasm and I do the same crunch with my feet on the floor. If they want to bicycle crunch, I'll cross one leg and do crunches on one side and switch to the other side halfway through. Controlled.) Usually. For some reason - fatigue? - I just did whatever the instructor called out. 

And of course at some point went from working my abs to just pulling on my F&#$!* neck. Idiot! Well, lesson learned, I hope. Not a sidelining injury, just a pain in the, uh, neck. But still did my C25K scheduled run for Week 4 (getting challenging, but I'm not panicking yet...one run at a time...) And yeah, one class in any 24-hour period is probably sufficient for this aspiring "Loser" - aspiring to lose weight, not be on the show BL. I wouldn't last a week. (Uh, where's the wine fridge? No thanks, I hate watermelon gum. How about a rest day??)

And the Finale??  Danny for the win. Can't decide on the At-Home winner. Rebecca? Daniel? Shay? Those nice Red Team guys? Too many to choose. Just looking forward to the transformations!

Checkin' in

Just checkin' in. I should check in more frequently, just to keep myself on track, I suppose. I worked out a bit less this past week. The Thanksgiving schedule at my gym meant I missed my favorite yoga class. Then I missed my new favorite Body Conditioning class through my own fault (as we used to say in the confessional).

I did keep on track with C25K though. I finished up Week 3 - woo hoo! And am just about to head out to start Week 4 - yaaaaay (she said unconvincingly). Each week incorporates longer stints of running, obviously. I think this week will include a 5-minute running segment. Yaaaaaaaay!

I'm pretty content with my eating over the past few weeks. Trying to incorporate some new recipes and be conscious of what I'm eating. Primarily, that means enjoying what I'm eating or, if not, trying not to eat it. Why does that sound so elementary written out like that? Is it worth it?? That's what I need to remember. I even made a semi-healthy dessert. An apple crumble thing with rolled oats and nuts and uh, apples. I serve it warm with vanilla frozen yogurt and feel like I'm having a good time. It's good, but it's not something that I would go crazy overboard with. And vanilla frozen yogurt is not calling my name like, for example, mint chocolate chip or chocolate brownie ice cream would. ("Finish me!")

Next stop - 180's! Please! I'm so sick of the 190's. Actually knowing the way I lose (up, down, up, down) I know 180's won't be the next stop. But hopefully I'm on the 180's line? If not, I'll have to switch at an upcoming station. For now, this track is feels like it's working for me.