So far so good. . .

It's officially week 2 of 2019 and nothing terrible has happened.  (We won't go into politics, have I mentioned my sister is a federal employee and is currently furloughed?  She is looking forward to going back to work.)  I have kept up my run streak, in fact, it's so commonplace right now that I forget about it, but I still go home and run every day.  I'm on day 70 (I haven't run today, but I will).  I do have thoughts of a mile a day is kinda silly, to make it really count I should do more, but that isn't good for a person's body, I think.  People need rest days.  I know there's a whole other runstreak group that does 3.1 miles every day, but I don't see that happening.  It's one thing to get up at 430am to run for a little under 10 min, and another to get up at 430am to run for almost a half hour, not to mention the shower that then has to happen . . . and wet hair  . . . yeah, I don't think I'm willing to do that.  (I don't run in the morning usually, but when I know I have something going on in the evening that is going to make it difficult to run, or I would be running really late, I will get up and do 10 min on the treadmil, I am not a morning exercise person.)

I have also started to weigh myself unofficially on Wednesdays.  I did start this before Christmas and stopped for the two weeks during the holidays but restarted today.  I am happy to say that I have lost all the weight that I gained over the holidays.  Now if I can just get it to keep going down.

I am trying a new thing with my diet.  I don't think this will be a long-term thing, but we'll see how it goes.  Number one I've cut way back on my wine (and alcohol) intake.  But the biggest thing is that I am trying out low calorie days and high calorie days.  I was reading a little about carb cycling, which is the same idea, high protein most of the time and high carbs on days that you are working out harder.  Well, I don't want to pay someone to figure out my macros, and I'm kinda lazy, so I decided to go with high calorie and low calorie days, while eating healthy on all days (except on this last Saturday I gave myself a pass to eat whatever).  I don't know if this is why I lost 3 lbs in 4 days, or it's just my body going back to "normal," but I'm going to continue for a little while and see how it goes. 

The carb cycling idea is that you eat carbs on higher calorie days that you are expending more energy.  Well, I do my long run on Sundays, but used my (really) high calorie day on Saturday.  I didn't feel any affects of not eating a lot on Sunday, in fact my run felt great, so I think I'm going to continue with that.  I'm kinda going every other day with this kind of eating, and when I mean high calorie day, I don't mean I'm going hog wild (except for this last Saturday).  Monday was supposed to be a higher calorie day but I ended up eating around 1100 calories (myfitnesspal gives me 1360 per day) and yesterday was a low calorie day and I ate around the same.  However, last Friday I ate 1700 calories and last Thursday I ate 1090 calories.  With the exception of Saturday (2355 calories) I am trying to keep my higher calorie days in the range myfitness pal gives me, although Sunday was a lower calorie day and I ate 1325 calories, but I also ran 8 miles. 

Looking at the actual numbers I'm not fluctuating much in my calorie intake, but I think that is okay.  I think if I give myself permission to be less good one day, I'm more likely to be good other days.  Today I've given myself permission to be less good, but I had also given myself permission to be less good on Monday and I nailed that day.  It's just the thing I'm telling myself, today is a low calorie day, so I tend to make good choices.  Last night Damian took my family out for taco Tuesday, but I didn't go because I needed to run and it was a low calorie day.  I ran and then went home and sauteed broccoli, mushrooms, zucchini, and brussel sprouts (I used too much oil though and it wasn't as good as usual), but I didn't go to bed hungry, I was fine. 

not my food, Damian's food

So last week I didn't run much.  I didn't feel very good and I went home every night, ran a mile and went to bed.  I was feeling much better on Saturday so I decided to try intervals on the treadmill.  I used my watch as the judge of the distance, so I'm not sure how accurate it was.  I know when I just run on the treadmill it tends to judge less distance than the treadmill, but it seemed to be faster Saturday, but I wasn't paying attention.

I did 5 intervals for 0.25 miles with a 1:30 min break between each.  I walked for part of all the breaks, but did stop completely for part of all the breaks as well.  I set the treadmill at . . . I think 7.2 for the first interval and increased it each time.  I have been running my one miles at about 7 on the treadmill, so I thought 7.2 was a good starting place.  However, on Monday I ran my one mile at a 8, so I'm thinking I need to increase intervals to at least that.  7.2 is 8:20 min per mile, 8 is a 7:30 min/mile.  I was a little worried about how far I had run, I wasn't keeping track of distance on Saturday, so I decided to run a mile after my intervals just to be sure I had the streak going. 5 x 0.25 is 1.25, but trying to do math with a tired brain is hard.  =)

Sunday I ran 8 miles.  I left home with no exact mileage in my head, more than 5, less than 8, but I felt good, added a hill and ended up with 8 miles.  It was nice.  It was my longest run since I officially quit marathon training.  My last long run for marathon training was 15 miles on August 26th.  Since then my longest runs have been in the 7 mile range. 

I like this picture, but it doesn't show all of my new leggings, so this is the picture I posted on Instagram.