Last week I mentioned in my blog that I was going to clean up my diet and get back on track for my marathon. It has now been one week since making that commitment. While I have not eaten flawlessly this week (it's hard to just stop cold turkey), I did WAY better than I have done lately, and I am feeling much better as a result. I did make 2 big mistakes, which I'll get to in a moment, that hindered my progress; but overall I did make progress. My weight is down a little, the pain in my achilles has subsided considerably, my energy level is up, and I feel much more emotionally on top of things. I feel more inspiration and focus than I was feeling before, and I feel much more on track to being prepared for my marathon (only 20 days away!).
The two big mistakes I made were first, I chose to take the day off from eating well on Saturday. I had been to an overnight mom's retreat (it was really awesome; it is actually meant for LDS homeschooling moms, and even though I don't homeschool my kids, I came away from it very enlightened and inspired; if you're interested in finding out more about it, go to momsretreat.org), and as a result I decided to take a retreat from healthy eating as well. That's one of my weaknesses that I am still working on correcting: taking vacations from eating right whenever I go on any sort of vacation. So Saturday turned into binge day for me, and it wasn't pretty. As a result, I gained back some of the weight I had lost earlier in the week, and I went back to feeling lousy for the next couple of days.
I realized--again--that when it comes to eating right, consistency is key! If we eat really well for a few days and then eat lousy for a day or two, we are seriously hindering our progress. Now don't get me wrong. I am in no way saying that you can never have a treat again. On the contrary, I believe the all-or-nothing approach is like trying to break up: If you're not emotionally ready, you are sooner or later going to rebound back and have a crazy binge of all the junk you've been so carefully or desperately trying to avoid. So consistency! Write it on your bathroom mirror so you won't forget. Or better yet, put it on the door of your fridge where you'll have to look at it every time you're going for that less-than-ideal treat.
The retreat I was at this weekend took place in the beautiful Rocky Mountains, and on Saturday morning we had the opportunity to go on a little hike and watch the sun rise from the tops of the hills. It was a beautiful and inspiring experience, and on the way back down, I was overtaken with the desire to run down. So I had a nice little run back down to my cabin and felt very satisfied by the time I got to the bottom. Unfortunately, my achilles did not feel quite as satisfied. In fact, it was so not satisfied that I found myself limping around for the next several hours. I suppose trail running was not the brightest idea I've had this week given my already tender achilles tendon. That was the other big mistake I made that accounted for not quite as much progress as I had hoped to see by today. It is feeling better now, but this little experience has reminded me of the need to listen to my body more.
So in summary, I would call this week a success in that I made progress in the areas I was working on, but I definitely didn't get the A due to a couple of poor choices. That's okay, though. Life is all about learning from our mistakes, so forward march!
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