The Beck Diet Newsletter

Still on the road!  My team and I are staying at this amazing hotel on the lower coast of New Hampshire - normally my employer wouldn't pay for resort-style accomodations but because this isn't tourist season in New England the rates are dirt cheap - so we are travelling in style this week!  Had a great walk yesterday morning before work, enjoying the cool ocean air and looking at all the gorgeous flowers popping up.  Last night's dinner was, unfortunately, too much food.  Sigh.  I felt icky this morning when I got up. 

When I checked my email last night I found the latest Beck Diet Newsletter.  It's almost like they knew I was on the road and needed some inspiration!  I can't say enough good things about this book - when every other diet book on the planet is telling you that you can eat what you want and still lose weight (yeah, right), the Beck Diet tells it straight and provides real tools to help change long-standing habits and behaviors.  I hope you get as much out of the latest newsletter as I did!  Check it out HERE.

FRUSTRATED!

This weekend I decided to switch to a Wordpress blog, and use a hosting service to allow me more freedom to customize.  Unfortunately I am way undereducated on webhosting and transferring domain names!  Although I've been researching how to make this happen without too much stress I've been unsuccessful.  Many apologies if you've tried to reach my blog and gotten a 404 page (or if this happens over the next few days)!  Hopefully by next weekend I'll be up and running properly on Wordpress...

In other news I am traveling this week on business - have resolved to eat well and exercise - so far so good!  No Wednesday weigh-in this week, though.  But I promise to weigh in next Wednesday and post some progress pics!

Goal Shirt

For the past few months I've been trolling through my bins of too-small clothes, trying to find a goal outfit - something that I really look forward to wearing after I've lost more weight.  I have lots of cute clothes all the way down to size 10 and briefly considered a pair of Jordache jeans from high school, but then I found a t-shirt that I bought in 1995 when I weighed 162 pounds (for about 5 minutes).  The front looks like this:

Cute, right?  Well, the best part of the shirt is the back - a play on the Nike slogan 'Run Like Hell':

Once I found this shirt, my search for a goal outfit was over. 

Out & Back Party Run!

The Out and Back Party Run for ALS was a BLAST!  Our friends, Elizabeth and Doug, rocked the 4-mile run, with Doug setting a PR for himself!  Woohoo!  Ken was kind enough to accompany me on the 2-mile walk, which I treated as an interval run.  My hip was feeling good and I managed nine minutes of jogging (spread out over five intervals).  It felt great to be running in a group, at sunset, with Boathouse Row as a backdrop.  After the run we headed over to the fabulous Lemon Hill Mansion for the par-tay.  There was great beer, lots of food and a rockin band, along with about 1500 people.  Definitely a fun time and I plan to sign up for next year's run.  However, next year I will do the 4-mile run and I'd like to finish in under 40 minutes.

Sadly, when I woke up on Saturday morning my hip was on FIRE.  It feels better today, but I definitely overdid it on Friday night and have decided to give in and call a doctor, in hopes that she can tell me what the problem is and give me some suggestions.  Stretching and rest just doesn't seem to be working and it's very hard to ice that area since it's, um, well-padded.

Today I was planning to ride my bike to the pool, but it is raining cats and dogs so I'll just drive to the pool instead.  I'm aiming for a 1500-yard swim today!

Back in the Game?

After a 2-week hiatus, I hopped on the treadmill this morning to try out my new running shoes and see how my hip, knee and ankle would hold up.  Although there was a bit of moaning from my various joints everything held up pretty well!  I made it through a few tentative intervals and decided that I LOVE LOVE LOVE my new Brooks Adrenaline GTS10 running shoes!  I purchased them at Fleet Feet a couple weeks back.  Fleet Feet is an amazing store - especially the staff.  After asking me some questions about my running style and any issues I was having (of course I had a long list) they spent a good half-hour helping me find the perfect shoes.  They measured each foot (both sitting and standing), watched me walk barefoot, and brought several different options to try.  They even let me run outside in each pair to see how they felt!  Then they hooked me up with some inserts to help support my high instep and absorb impact when I run.  The shoes felt great this morning - very springy and supportive.  Yay!

Tomorrow Ken and I are participating in an out-and-back party run for ALS in downtown Philly with some friends.  I actually signed us up for the walking portion (only 2 miles) because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to run at all.  My plan is to run some intervals and see how things feel on pavement before I make my final assessment of how well my injuries have healed.  But I have high hopes.

After the run there's a party in the park with good food and beer - can't wait for that!

Wednesday Weigh In!

Wow.  The scale read 236.2 this morning - a 1.2 pound drop from last week.  I don't know how it happened, but I will gratefully accept it!

This week's loss brings me past the 25-pound mark, woohoo!

There's guilt, and then there's GUILT

For those of you that say unspeakable things to yourself after you've strayed from your eating/exercise/whatever plan - read this, and cut yourself some slack: http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/wellness_articles.asp?id=692

Back in Control

Ahhhh - after yet another day of eating with reckless abandon (dinner out last night easily exceeded 2000 calories, possibly more, including 4 glasses of wine) - I am back in control today and feeling more like myself. 

Breakfast this morning consisted of whole grain bread with almond butter, and a cup of coffee with non-fat milk.  This is the breakfast that has carried me through the past few months and seems to be the fuel that gets my day started off right.  No more sugary breakfasts for me!  Half of a mango made up my morning snack, followed by a lunch of tuna salad on whole grain bread, a cup of brussels sprouts and cauliflower, a cup of raspberries and a small piece of a Lindor chocolate bar for dessert.  Dinner was a yummy sandwich of french bread, fresh mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, lettuce, pesto and one slice of bacon.  A scant quarter cup of vanilla ice cream with a tablespoon of chocolate sauce for dessert along with a handful of walnuts for crunch.  A nice well-balanced day including some treats and lots of good food.  Can't even begin to tell you how much less toxic I feel today!

Lost a battle - but not the war

Last weekend I was feeling pretty smug.  So smug, in fact, that I had a blog post half-written in my head describing how I'd finally conquered my food demons and adopted a healthy lifestyle.  How I had made this lifestyle a habit, and that I couldn't picture going back to binging and watching TV every night.  How I was no longer addicted to sugar.

Yeah, right.

On Wednesday I received a package at work - a stack of documents from a coworker in the UK - and she put at least five pounds of chocolate in the package as a thank-you.  Five pounds of British chocolate - several varieties of Cadbury, to be exact.   The package came at the end of the day Wednesday and I ate about 200 calories worth.  Yum!  Then I rode my bike to Rena's and did my usual training & yoga session and rode home.  No problem, right?

Unfortunately the chocolate was still there on Thursday.  And I didn't bother packing food before work because we were having a group pizza lunch.  So off I went to work, empty stomach, nothing healthy on the horizon.  I stopped at Starbucks for my coffee and thought "oh, I need breakfast - I'll just treat myself to a package of Madeleines."  That was my first mistake - it's been months since I started my morning with a sugary breakfast and I think that has been key to my success so far!  When I got to work and saw the pile of chocolate, everything just fell apart.  The pull of the sugar was reignited within me and I couldn't stop nibbling.  Three pieces of pizza, two garlic knots and two brownies at lunch...pizza for dinner...now it is Sunday morning and I've been in a free-fall of pizza, sugar, salt & fat for three days.  And I haven't exercised once during that time. 

I'm not really worried about getting myself back on track - I feel so crappy, tired, sluggish, sick and foggy right now that I'm actually craving fruits and vegetables.  But I learned an important lesson this week - the time when you think you've conquered a problem is the precise time you need to be most vigilant!  I stopped paying attention to my fledgling healthy habits and they weren't strong enough to survive on their own.  I have been humbled yet again on this journey.

PS - On Friday I turned the chocolate over to a coworker with a much stronger constitution.  And an office with a door that locks.

Good News/Bad News

The good news is...my hip feels a lot better after a week of not running.  And last night I rode my bike to and from Rena's studio, where I did a 45 minute workout with weights followed by an hour of yoga - 2.5 hours of exercise in one shot! 

After I came home I puttered around the house, took a shower and went to bed.  During this time I noticed a twinge on the outside of my left knee.  Hmmm. Fast forward to the middle of the night, when I got up to pee....bigger twinge.  Borderline pain.  This morning?  Not good.  I'm writing this now with an ice pack wrapped around it after taking 3 ibuprofen.

Here we go again!

Wednesday Weigh In!

Very happy with the scale this morning - 237.4!  That's a pound down from last week and after two meals out last week I couldn't be happier!

No time to write more now, have to leave for work in five minutes.  Have a great Wednesday!

Awesome Training Ride!

Such a great training ride today - 11 miles in 55 minutes, a vast improvement over last week's ride.  I was pretty pleased, as this is only my second ride outside this year and really my first outdoor training ride because last week was more experimental than anything else.  I attribute the improvement to having fully inflated tires and using my cycling shoes with clipless pedals instead of my usual sneakers.  The shoes really make a difference, especially when going uphill - I get more power out of each stroke.  Riding outdoors is also less abusive to my butt - my bike seat is nice and soft, and my bike has good shocks so I don't feel the bumps.  Far preferable to the pain after spin class!

After today's ride I'm starting to think of goal times for the SheRox Tri in August - previously I was just hoping to finish but now I'm hoping for more - I want to not finish last!   

I looked up race times for my age group from previous years, and it looks like finish times range from 1.5-3 hours.  I'd be OVERJOYED with a finish time of 2.5 hours.  I think this is possible - if I do the swim in 25 minutes, the bike in 75 and the run in 40, plus 5 minutes each for T1 and T2 (since this is my first tri I'm assuming I'll be a total spaz in transition) that's a total of 2.5 hours.  Right now I can swim 900 yards in the pool in 25, and today's ride time was a 12 mph pace, which puts me at 75 min.  At this point I could probably manage 45 minutes for the 5K so I definitely need some work there.  And of course I need to account for being tired after each leg of the race!  But that's what training is for, right?

After a calorie-heavy lunch of whole wheat rotini, pesto, pine nuts and freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, I'm off to do some yard work to burn off some energy.  Today Ken and I are assembling our compost bins, cutting the lawn, cleaning up the yard and planning out the garden.  Hoping to grill some buffalo burgers later today, YUM!

Post-Workout Update

I guess there's a silver lining to my hip issues, because it means I'm spending more time in the pool.  This morning I swam really well - covered 1100 yards in....wait for it...less time than it took me to swim 1000 yards on Tuesday!  Woohoo!

And here's another exciting bit of news - this week I noticed that my bathing suit is getting too big.  TOO BIG!  TOO FREAKING BIG!  Life is good :)

Injuries, Injuries, Injuries

Since I started working out regularly last summer, I have managed to accumulate a lot of aches, pains and flat-out injuries along the way.  It all started with training for the Breast Cancer 3-Day - after my walks reached the 10-mile mark my right calf would cramp up and cause a LOT of pain.  Sometimes I could walk through it, sometimes I was just done.  I tried ice, rest, elevation, ibuprofen...but since I needed to keep training I would only take a week off at a time and never fully recovered - I just ended up learning to live with it.  Of course, as soon as the training was over I gave it a proper rest and it healed with no problems!

Then came the Achilles pain - I developed stiffness in my right Achilles and a tender knot just above my heel.  This injury never became unbearably painful, but it was always worse after sitting or lying down for awhile and I worried about the lump.  Rest, ice, elevation, ibuprofen, stretching...no real improvement.  So off to the orthopedist I went, returning with a diagnosis of Achilles Tendinosis and instructions for some exercises to help strengthen my calf.  The area is definitely on the mend now.

There have been lots of other aches and pains along the way, most of which flare up and then disappear, but for the past week my right hip has been bothering me a lot.  It's fine when I'm sitting or lying down, but as soon as I stand up there is stiffness and soreness between the joint and my pelvic bone, right on the side of my body.  It subsides a bit after I walk around, but I did a treadmill run on Thursday morning and by the end of my workout I was in pain and starting to limp.

I'm inclined to think that the root cause of these injuries is my extra weight, but I'm also seeing a pattern - everything is on my right side and it seems to be moving up my leg.  Could it possibly be related to with the way I walk or run - maybe something I'm doing to compensate for having extra weight to move around, or perhaps I'm compensating for pain elsewhere and throwing my gait off?  Today I'm going to pick up some new running shoes, in case that's the problem (my old ones are starting to wear out anyway).  I've also decided to take a full week off from my Couch-to-5K program and focus on non-weight-bearing cardio to see if that helps.

I've been so dedicated to my workouts and have been careful not to add running mileage too quickly, so it's REALLY frustrating to have this happen!  Of course I've got alternate cardio options and I'm working out with weights and doing yoga, but running is a really efficient way to burn calories so I'm anxious to put this latest setback behind me and move on.  Since I can't change my weight overnight I guess I'll just have to keep working around my limitations.  So it's off to the pool this morning to swim another 1000 yards.

Has anyone else out there encountered hip pain like this, or suffered from a string of injuries?

Wednesday Weigh In

It's a happy morning here in Shrinking Jill's house, because I hit a new low this week!

238.4!!!!

Woohoo!  That's a 2.2 loss from last week.  I'm very pleased :)

This morning, however, I can't seem to find a pair of spring pants (it's going to be 90 today!).  I have bins and bins of smaller clothes all over the house and I know they are somewhere in one of those bins...but alas I have to leave for work in 15 minutes and it doesn't look good.  I'll write more later, but in the meantime I'm going to look for something to wear!

Update 4:38 pm - I found the pants I was looking for and even had time to iron them before I left for work - yippee!!!  When I got to work I opened a new jar of almond butter (the natural kind with a layer of oil on top) and spilled it all over my freshly ironed pants - BOOOOOO!!!!!

Oh well.  They were really too big for me anyway!

Fun in the Deep End

After 3 days of heavy cardio plus a great strength training workout I decided to give myself (well mostly my right hip) a break and go for a swim tonight.  There is a really nice pool about 3 miles from my house and they have about 10 lanes dedicated to lap swimming plus a sweeeeeet aquatic play area with slides and waterspouts.  I stopped off on the way home from work and surprised myself by swimming 1000 yards in less than 30 minutes!  Woohoo!

The pool is uber-nice - very clean, not over-chlorinated, nice cool temperature (I absolutely hate lap swimming in bath water) with wide lanes and lifeguards that appear to be actually watching people swim instead of reading books.  Most of the pool is at least 10 feet deep but there's a little ledge that runs around the edge about 4 feet down so you don't have to tread water when you're taking a break.  There are lots of windows so it *almost* feels like you're swimming outside.  The locker room was huge, clean and had a scale that looked like something out of The Biggest Loser (someday I'll post a picture, this thing could weigh farm animals).  Best of all, at 5pm there weren't too many people there so I had a whole lane all to myself!  This is a true luxury - I usually swim at LA Fitness where they only have 4 skinny lanes and I always seem to get stuck sharing with someone who flails about like they're drowning.  One time I got kicked in the head.  But I digress.

Anyway, 1000 yards is the farthest I've swum (swam?) since I was on the swim team in 9th grade and had to do a 2 mile (3600 yard) swim for charity (I puked afterwards).  I guess you could say I'm feeling pretty good about myself right now!

Bed of Nails?

I came across a cool blog this evening: The Everything Yoga Blog.  And the second post I read reviewed a yantra mat.  Apparently this mat is not for asanas, but rather for lying on and relaxing.  I've seen photos of these mats in Yoga Journal but this is the first time I've ever read a review.  I'm intrigued!  Has anyone else out there tried one of these mats?  What was your experience?

And speaking of yoga, there's a 2-hour special on PBS this Wednesday (April 7th) about the life of Buddha, narrated by Richard Gere.  Click here for more information and local listings.  I can't wait to watch this - already set my DVR!

Off to a Good Start

Today is off to a good start - I got up early and hit the treadmill, showered, and then packed a yummy breakfast and morning snack (2 slices of whole grain bread, almond butter and a mango).  Lunch will be sushi and a salad at Whole Foods, YUM!  After work I have a training session with Rena.  In order to get in all the workouts for my triathlon training schedule as well as keep up with my strength training and yoga (and have a social life!) Mondays have now become a double workout day so I can take Friday off.  I've been doing it for a couple weeks and it really gets the week off on the right foot.  Tomorrow night I'll swim to give my legs a break - there's a really nice pool at the local community center that I've been itching to check out. 

Don't have much else to say today, so I'll leave you with a link to a great website I found this weekend - the Stand Up and Eat blog from the Cooper Institute. 

Outdoor Ride!

This morning I decided to get my bike out and ride on the Schuylkill River Trail instead of doing spin class.  Last weekend Ken got my bike tuned up and ready to go, so I took advantage of the good weather and drove to Conshohocken to start my ride.

When I got to the trail head I realized my tires were a little on the flat side.  Since I didn't have a pump with me I just rode slowly and enjoyed the scenery.  It felt great to be outside and getting some exercise for the second day in a row - the fresh air and sunshine were amazing!  I ended up doing about 8 miles in 40 minutes, which is a little over half the distance of the SheRox Triathlon.  The ride back was a bit tougher than the ride out - I didn't think to check the direction of the wind and it was a bit gusty on the return trip.  But there were lots of other people on the trail, the sun was shining and the temperature was in the mid-60's.  A completely and utterly perfect day!  After a quick lunch of tortellini with pesto and a mango for dessert, I'm off to give my dirty car a full-on spring cleaning and then plant some summer bulbs.  Happy Easter everyone!

Cubital Tunnel Syndrome

For the past few years I have occasionally woken up in the middle of the night with a numb left hand.  The first couple times this happened I panicked, thinking it was a sign of a heart attack.  After awhile, however, it became apparent that it was most likely tied to my sleeping position and I kind of assumed it was due to being overweight - I'm a side sleeper and figured that lying on my left side must be cutting off the circulation.  But about a year ago, I noticed that sometimes my left hand would go numb even though I was lying on my RIGHT side.  I did some googling and found that other people have the same problem, and it is often due to sleeping with elbows bent - which is without a doubt my favorite sleeping position.  Unfortunately, even though I make an effort to fall sleep with my arms straight, I occasionally wake up with my arms bent and my hands curled under my pillow. 

The numbness is usually limited to my pinky and ring finger, but last night I slept so well on my new mattress that I must have stayed in the same position for a few hours - I woke up to an arm that was numb almost to the elbow!  It took awhile to come back to life and I started to worry that I might be causing permanent nerve damage.  So I googled again and came across a lot of useful information - it turns out that this condition has a name and lots of treatments options.

Cubital tunnel syndrome (also called ulnar tunnel syndrome) occurs when there is pressure on the ulnar nerve, which runs from the spinal cord through the elbow and into the hand.  When the elbow is bent, the nerve can be stretched against the bones in that area of the arm and cause a variety of symptoms.  The syndrome is common in people who sleep with their elbows bent, or who have a tendency to lean on their elbows a lot (also something I do).  Over time, weakness, pain, numbness and ultimately nerve damage can occur.  It seems to me that I have a bit less feeling/strength in my left pinky than my right (which might also be my imagination) but other than that I don't seem to have any permanent damage.  The website I found lists a few treatments, surgery being one of them, but the easiest and cheapest seems to be 'splinting' the arm with a towel at night for a few weeks to retrain yourself to sleep with straight elbows. That's what I'll try first.

Every time something doesn't feel right in my body I'm inclined to assume the worst (and also blame it on myself for being overweight).  My parents have had cancer, diabetes, heart disease and ALS, and I sometimes feel like it's just a matter of time before one of those conditions comes my way - that even though I'm working so hard on my health now, the damage is done and a devastating illness is inevitable.  It was a relief to discover that CTS is a common syndrome that is relatively harmless and easy to treat.  

I'm off now for my Saturday run - the weather is so amazing today that I'm going to hit up a local trail instead of the treadmill!