left behind

burning up and burning out.

This past week the whole family has had some kind of bug. Even today I'm still feeling under the weather and we're over a week. Today was the first day I really felt up to running. I did a 25 minute work out alternating 90 seconds of 5 mph jogging and 90 seconds of walking. I am a results person so I find that difficult to take.

I feel like a total failure. Logically I get that I'm not going to wake up and be able to run a 20 minute 5k, but I have such a hard time accepting that fact. I've been running off and on for over a year. It's really frustrating to have so little to show for it. I get really aggravated at myself. I know I should be pushing myself harder, following through and most importantly for me, keeping a schedule. Like so many other things in life I have the best of intentions, but I leave it on the back burner until I am so far behind I can't even finish. Instead of pushing on and making the best of the time I have left I spin around like a chicken with my head cut off, try to accomplish the impossible and instead achieve nothing.

I guess I should look at the positives too,

• I can run a mile without stopping for the first time in a long time.
  
• Even though I'm still not feeling well, I still pushed myself to stay with the program and I finished the workout.
• I've worked out 2 times this week so far

I have a long way to go if I have any hope of running my 5ks this summer, but if I stay focused and press on I can do it :)

running

I'm feeling kind of discouraged right now. I can only run .8 of a mile w/o stopping and that's at 4.5mph. at 5 I go down to like a half mile and it gets even lower from there. I was hoping to run a 5k this year, but right now I don't feel like I will be at the standard I would like to by then. I am guessing I'm setting my goals too high for myself.

I have been using week 1 of couch to 5k for speed training right now. That has been helping a bit. I'm hoping to be at 35 minutes for a 5k, but I'm feeling like it's unreachable right now. I guess I'll keep running and see where I am in a few weeks.

For the last week I've been feeling under the weather so I've only been doing about a mile at a time. I keep going back and forth between couch to 5k and just walk/running it until I can jog the whole thing. I think I'm going to start couch to 5k again next Monday and we'll see where that takes me.

5k training.

Just started up 5k training again. I have a long way to go.

Tonight:
Jogged/walked 2 miles
Longest time jogging w/o walking .5 mile
Mile: 13:14

Goals:
jog complete 5k
Total time <35 minutes :)

Also calories were about 200 over for the day.... still really struggling with that. I've decided to take the "Kat" approach and just watch calories for now.

So after a few months of teetering I'm back on the watch what I eat wagon. Good news is I've only gained back 10 pounds in that time frame, bad news those 10 pounds are back...

I decided to try South Beach again. This time I got the hubby on board so I think things may work better. I've also started tracking my weight in a spread sheet. We'll see how that goes.

Tonight for dinner I made something new. I really enjoyed it so I'm sharing it here.

1 lb ground beef (90% lean)
1 can of tomato soup (I used Healthy Choice)
4 oz of mozz cheese

brown meat, drain add soup and cheese. Melt into soup consistency. The girls and hubby ate it over some Mexican rice. I dipped pepper and cucumber slices in it. <3

Day I don't even know.

This past week has been a whole lot of struggle. I've been unmotivated and lazy. I decided it's not too late and that I'm just going to pick up where I left off. I'm going to start up on Phase 2 today. We'll see how that goes.

On a brighter note, even after all my cheating and struggling this week I managed to stay on track enough to lose a half pound. I really expected to be up when I forced myself on the scale this morning, if not because I didn't follow the diet, then because I'm at the high weight point of my month. :-D

Breakfast today:

• eggs and broccoli :)
  

Carb cravings

The carb cravings have been really bad tonight. I want nothing more than to take the night off and to go have a bag of chips or some crackers. It's been a bit of a struggle staying on track. I'm really glad I had only a few high carb foods in the house. I finally decided to take 2 pieces of American cheese and microwave it for 1 minute. I used to have it for a snack all the time until I learned how high in fat it can be, but in this case it was worth the fat. I'm feeling much better so far.

I was just reading that with Atkins they suggest carb cravings are directly linked to blood sugar. They also suggest going for a high fat snack to help keep you on track. I am guessing the high fat is exactly what I needed :) It also seems like if I don't have enough meat I crave carbs. I'm going to go look into the reasoning for that now.

Dinner:

• Pepper, cheese, 2 tbsp tomato sauce.