A Confession, Reality Check and Recommitment

This is from my blog on SparkPeople, which some of you may know is a site I've been using for my weight loss journey. Some of it I've already posted here but I wanted to put the whole thing out there to make sure I'm documenting my full story here, sorry about anything that I've duplicated from prior posts here:


So, I had a setback during Summer 2010 where I was just worn out from my Winter/Spring training and races and had to take a break...during which I hardly exercised and didn't eat very well. At the end of July when I last blogged here, I thought I had only gained back 11 pounds…turns out my scale was messed up and it was actually 20.2 pounds. I was not only shocked when I saw that but upset and to be honest, embarrassed. Had I really indulged that much? Was I really that inactive? When I first started using SparkPeople, I lost 45 pounds. In just under four months I’d undone almost half of what I had accomplished.

I didn’t want to log my weight on SparkPeople and see my weight loss ticker jump so far the wrong way-I’ve even been using an app on my iPhone to track my weight recently instead, figuring I’d start doing it here again once I’d lost all the weight I had gained back. I thought of all the people on here who had told me I’d inspired them and felt like I’d be disappointing them if I tracked the reality here where they could see the huge backslide. But I’ve already disappointed myself and really, that’s what hurts. The past week I’ve been trying to get back into my good eating and exercising rhythm so I can fix my mistakes...and thankfully when I got on the scale this morning, two of those pounds were gone. When I got on the computer this morning and started doing my daily SparkPeople stuff, I decided to just own up to it and chalk it up to lessons learned.

Maybe I just did too much too fast-not the initial weight loss but the training/racing part-and pushed myself too much...this past Spring I did do two half marathons two weeks apart, followed by a 5K two weeks later and a 10K three weeks after that. For some people that may seem like nothing, but afterward I felt burned out and like I deserved a rest-I just took it too far. So today I’m publicly admitting I messed up BIG TIME and moving on. I’ve already gotten back to my training, going slowly here at first (speed-wise and number of weekly sessions), planning my training to gradually build myself back up-with all the huffing and puffing like when I first started.

The big thing-I have signed up for my first full marathon in January, the Walt Disney World Marathon. I’ve been wanting to do this ever since I first started adding running intervals to my walking and know if I do it properly, I will be able to cross that finish line without burning myself out. I do have a half marathon on Halloween and another mid-December that I signed up for before the whole backsliding thing happened. These fall on training weeks that have approximately that distance on the schedule so they are really like training runs; I won’t be putting any pressure on myself to PR...well, not for the Halloween one anyway. The one in December has a 3-hour time limit before opening the streets back up (although they will have the mats down for 3.5 hours) so I may push just a little on that one-my PR is currently 3:16. I was considering another half marathon for November but I think that might be too much pressure and might drain me again so I’m not going to do that.

I hope my friends out there keep up with me this fall...I plan on blogging as much as possible during my training to help keep me honest and from falling by the wayside. After all, as much as a cheapskate as I am, I’d be really ticked off after spending $135 plus Active fees (plus another $12.79 for a Disney marathon pin-total $150 and change) just to get swept in January LOL. So come along for the next chapter in my journey...I’d love to have you along!