"The Complete Idiot's Guide to Triathlon Training"

I'm in Week 2 of the training program in this book for a Sprint Triathlon program. I have not signed up for a triathlon yet. My friend is trying to get me to sign up for one in mid-July, but I'm a tad concerned I may not be ready for the bike portion by that time so I told her to let me start training for a few weeks and I'll see how I feel. There are a couple more triathlons in our city in August and September, and I may feel more comfortable doing one of those.

Here's the link to the triathlon if anyone's interested:

http://www.dallasathletesracing.com/races/disco/sprint/

I do like the distance for the swim and run, 500 yard (457.2 m) swim and 3.1 mile (5 km) run, but it's the 17.6 mile (28.3 km) bike ride that concerns me.

The training program is 12 weeks long, I have room in my schedule to repeat a couple of weeks and to miss a couple of days here and there. I know there will be two weeks between now and then where it will be difficult for me to work out, and if I do get the chance to workout, I may only be able to run during that time.

It looks fun, and I'm sure I can do the swim and run without killing myself (or anyone else), but I'm lacking in bike confidence. Even if I get to the point where I feel comfortable I can complete the distance, I'm concerned about being in a bike race when I've never done one before.

If anyone has any suggestions, comments, advice, feedback, I'd love to hear them. I need some help getting over my mental block about biking. Thanks! =)

2012, Another Year, Same Goal

Unfortunately I did not make my goal of doing my first triathlon in 2011. On the plus side, it is still a goal of mine. I am going to keep working on losing weight, eating better, and if I get myself healthy enough I can start training.

I have two accountability people for the next 4-6 months. Our weigh-in days are Friday, and with one we also have a work-out goal for every week. Unfortunately I already told her I won't make our work-out goal this week b/c I'm sick, so my short-term goal is to rest, drink lots of liquids, and get better soon so I can start working out again next week.

I made a daily weigh-in chart and posted in on my mirror. My goal for the next 5 1/2 weeks is to lose one pound every three days. Before everyone tells me that's too much, just know that comes out to 2 1/3 lbs every week. My goal here is to get into my red dress for a function in Feb. Even if I don't get into that dress, I'd like to at least fit in one of my other dresses better. Oddly enough the problem isn't my hips like it usually is, its my waistline, so I'm going to have to do cardio and core/weight training (I have a bad habit of skimping on my core and weight training even when I do get into a good workout routine). If I could keep up the pace of losing a pound every three days I could reach my goal in four months, but life usually doesn't work like that, so I'm glad I have almost six months to do this.

Luckily my husband also wants to work out more this year so I hope we can encourage each other without crossing over to nagging each other about staying on track. =)

Here's to 2012; may it be a joyful, healthy, and prosperous year for everyone!

LET'S DO THIS!!!

Have a few things going on this week. Going to try to briefly discuss them all in this post.

First of all, a big THANK YOU to my friend Jeanne who was visiting over Thanksgiving who told me about www.sparkpeople.com. It's a COMPLETELY FREE diet website, with diets, exercise plans, groups, message boards, everything. Similar to EDiets, but again, it's free. Don't spend any money on an online plan, go to this one.

The site tells you before you change anything about your diet to post three small goals for the next two weeks. One fitness, one eating, and one motivation. Mine were to exercise 10 minutes a day, eat at least one fruit and veggie a day and to write down my goals. One of my goals is to measure out what I eat all week, even if I don't stay in my calorie limit, at least to be more aware of what I'm eating, especially at this time of year.

With it being the holidays and all, I'm trying to eat healthy at least some of the time instead of just giving up entirely between Thanksgiving and New Years Eve. There's a site called "Skinny Crock Pot" that has a lot of lower calorie holiday recipes. One of them I tried was called sweet potato mash with pecans. I'll be honest, it was okay, but still didn't give my sweet tooth all it wanted. I think I overcooked the sweet potatoes a bit which didn't help. I tried to do the recipe exactly how it is written, but next time I think I'll add vanilla and see if that helps. It does suggest adding some maple syrup or honey for those who like a sweeter version; I may try that when I heat them up. Here's a link for those who want to try it, or check out their other "skinny" recipes:

http://www.skinnycrockpot.com/skinny-sweet-potato-mash-with-pecans/

My first 10-day workout was climbing up and down our stairs for 10 minutes carrying an 8-lb medicine ball. Oh my goodness. I was depressed at how out of shape I am. I was totally winded and my lungs were burning after about three minutes. I finished and am glad 10 minutes was all I committed to for now. For those who don't have stairs, you can easily do a 10-minute circuit at home with no equipment. One minute jumping jacks, one minute push-ups, one minute butt kickers, one minute crunches, one minute mountain climbers, one minute tricep dips (need a chair for that one), one minute high-knees, one minute flutter kicks, one minute squat jumps, one minute wall sits. I think I just planned out my workout for tomorrow. =) And if some of those moves are too hard you can always just pick five you think you can do and then go through each one twice.

One last thing, I have another goal. The red dress I bought last year. I need to fit into it by Feb 11th. I will try it on tomorrow and see if it's even feasible. LET'S DO THIS! =D

Now It Can Be Said...

I've been quiet about my weight (in actual numbers) since the huge gain and setback I had this summer. To the point where I didn't even weigh myself when I first got back from vacation. If you noticed (if you didn't, you can look now), I still haven't changed the ticker on the top of my page since now that is a goal I HAVE to get back to. If I change it to my current weight it's like admitting defeat (in my mind). So now it can be said, that I am officially almost back to the point I originally started. =) Not 151 lbs, but I'm at 157.5 lbs. Considering I haven't worked out in over a week, I'm fairly happy about it, mostly its due to a lack of appetite since I've been sick, but considering Halloween was on Monday (and there's a TON of candy at our house), I'll take it.

My new short-term goal is to get back down to 151 lbs by the holidays. Its only 20 days until Thanksgiving, so to do it before then would be trying to lose a little bit over 2 lbs a week. Worst-case scenario is to be down at least to that by Christmas. Even if there are some days I splurge, as long as I still work out, losing an average of a pound a week over the next 6 1/2 weeks doesn't seem that unrealistic, even over the holidays. My next blog weigh-in will be either Dec 19th or 20th, and we'll see how I do.

Five Weeks to a 5K My Patootie

My body hates me right now. I ran today. If you could call what I did "running". It was more like this:



I got a free subscription to "Shape" magazine and I found a 5 Weeks to a 5K program. Here is a link to the program:

http://www.shape.com/fitness/training-plans/5-weeks-5k

Granted the plan does stipulate that you'll need to repeat Week 1 until you can run two miles without stopping. I cannot run two miles without stopping. My foot only bothered me about the first 30 - 45 seconds (yes, I will ice it tonight), but it was my muscles that rebelled against me. There were "you neglect us for how many months and now you expect us to work for you?!?!".

I used http://www.mappedometer.com/ to figure out my distance ahead of time (and where the half-mile breaks were). The total distance I went was 2.35 miles in my neighborhood, but it took me over a half-hour to do that.

Tomorrow is supposed to be my cross training day, I got the Bob Harper "Ultimate Cardio Body" from the library, I'll let you know how it goes.

Did I Miss Something?!?!

The secondary title of this post could be "Holy Crap I'm Not Eating Nearly Enough Fruits and Vegetables!"

I was vaguely aware that the USDA changed the food pyramid to a food plate. But I did not get the memo that the serving sizes of fruits and vegetables had changed. A cup of leafy vegetables used to equal a serving size of veggies, now it equals half a serving. A half a banana used to count as a serving of fruit, now a small banana only counts as half a serving. WHAT?!?!

I think its one thing to be aware of something, like most of us realize we're probably not eating enough fruits and vegetables, or I should probably eat less fried foods or drink less soda... but its a bit different when you plug the numbers and find out how far off the mark you really are. Like budgeting. When you know you went over budget for the month and you figure it was about $100 - $150, nothing you can't make up for next month, but then you run the numbers and realize you went $1500 over your budget that month.

I decided to see how many fruits and vegetables I should be eating a day. I went to www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov, when I plug in my age, activity and sex, it came up with 1.5 servings of fruits and 2.5 servings of vegetables a day. Now, I used to be lucky if I ate that many in a week, so I know I'm doing better, but I'm still not there yet. Despite my attempts to eat more fruits and vegetables at breakfast and lunch, I think I'm STILL at least half a cup short of each by dinner time.

You may be thinking, okay Tiff, only half a cup of each at dinner (or an afternoon snack) isn't that bad. No, its not. But I feel like I'm eating a lot of fruits and vegetables already. To me, this just emphasizes how short I've fallen for so long. Right now I usually eat veggie sticks (carrots, broccoli, peppers, etc) and hummus, a spinach salad, a smoothie (yes I make it at home so I know what goes into it), and a piece of fruit, and I'm still half a serving short of each for the day.

That doesn't even consider how I'm letting my family fall short every day as well. Granted the kids have less to eat each day, and I think they do okay most days on fruit, but I definitely need to make more kid-friendly vegetable servings a priority.

As a result of what I recently discovered, my current goal is eat my 1.5 servings of fruit and 2.5 servings of vegetables at least five days a week. The other two days need to at least come out to that total between the two days. I know that on days I'm not at home all day are going to be more of a challenge so I need to prepare for times when I'm not going to be home and bring something along with me. For my family I'm going to make sure to have more fruit and vegetable options as snacks and at dinner, and if we're out-and-about to bring enough for all of us.

"Better. Not Good, But Better."

Kudos to whoever can guess what movie I quoted the title of this post from. =)

So, I have not worked out in about a week, I know, bad me. I was able to renew my workout DVDs from the library, so I can still try them (and post a review) before I have to turn them back in. So how without working out can I say I've been doing better? Because I have been eating better. A lot more fruits and veggies, going for healthier snacks and meals. Typically my dinner hasn't been as good as the rest of my meals, and I still crack and eat some Cheetos or Reese's Pieces as snacks, but I do count them so I have an idea how many calories I'm eating. =)

The good news is I'm now a pound and a half down from when I weighed myself three weeks ago. The weight loss has been just this week b/c earlier this week I weighed the same. So, what is my unorthodox plan for weight loss? Weighing myself and tracking my weight every day. I know this doesn't work for a lot of people, but for me, it seems to be the only way to keep myself accountable. I post a piece of paper on my bathroom mirror with the days written out for the next month (or two or three) and each day I write my weight down. It helps me track if I'm making any real progress or not.

That's it for now, this post is a bit boring I know. I hope to post a workout review in the next couple of days. I think I'll try a Bob Harper DVD; either "Totally Ripped Core" or "Inside Out Method". I'll let you know how I do. =)