New Year -- New Goals

Ok, for a while I thought this blog was dead too. You see, here are the priorities -- spending time with the family, work, training and then at the very bottom of the list is blogging. But here's the deal. When I don't blog about my training most of it doesn't happen.

So here's to a new year, with new goals. Right now I am planning on doing the San Francisco Marathon in July. It's a beautiful city, and I usually visit relatives in the Bay Area in July anyways. The timing seems good for me as well in the sense that spring events (i.e. the LA Marathon or the Big Sur Marathon that one of my friends is doing) are usually foiled by winter illness, and training for a fall event means doing lots of running in the hot, hot August. So there you go. A summer marathon with a few short tri's thrown in for fun. I'm also thinking of doing a time trial series. I have to justify having my TT bike, right?

So the first order of business for me in training for a marathon is dropping some weight. I had some great success a few years ago with DietPower (a calorie counting software), going from 280 to 235. Since then I have fallen off the wagon, and even with lots and lots of training over the last two seasons my weight has hovered around 245-250. Right now it is 240 (I have lost 5 lbs eating junk over the holidays. Go figure.) So I'm back to calorie counting.



Currently I'm at 240 pounds with a body fat percentage around 30%. I want to get that down to a healthy range of around 15%. If I can retain the lean mass that would mean a total body weight of just under 200lbs. So that is my goal, hopefully with lots of run training I can do it before a July marathon.

Now I won't do just calorie counting, I also will focus on eating more Paleo (more meat, veggies and fruit) and less starchy carbs. I have found in the past that I feel better and have less binges when I eat Paleo, but I need the reality check and honesty of the numbers that DietPower provides.

I'll keep you posted.


Really.

Weight Loss Tips

I was recently invited to submit my weight-loss story to a new internet site called Weight Loss Tips. You can check out an interview with me one their site here. After looking at many of the stories on the site I don't find my weight loss all that remarkable, kind of slow actually. But like I have said all along, triathlon was not really about weight loss. It was about challenging myself to do something beyond my comfort zone and about changing my lifestyle. The weight loss was just a very happy result.

And I'm not done. I figure I'm only half-way there. I have been working on my plan for next season, and I'll post it when I figure it out.

Sorry, still no Malibu race report. I'll get to it soon. I promise!

DietPower Update

I has been a bit anticlimactic after my first triathlon. I'm not sure why but my enthusiasm has gone way down. I was actually expecting this. Is has been around six months since I started this journey, and I have often had difficulty in sustaining interest in any project for over six months. I have been frequently thinking of all the things that I have given up to participate in this sport, which does produce a bit of longing for the gold old days of sleeping in and having relaxing weekends.

this troubling new attitude, in combination with recent family issues and work issues I just haven't had the focus on training that I need. The Nautica Malibu tri is less than two weeks away which puts me right in the end of what should be my peak training period. Instead I went 6 days last week without any training at all. The week before that was really light, and the week before that was another 6 days straight with nearly no training. I could definitely feel the effects of the lack of training on the Santa Barbara Tri. While I did better than I expected I would, I could have done much better. Now I am looking at Malibu and just don't seem ready. The course apparently has a very hilly bike segment which really scares me. I haven't trained much on hills. I assumed the course would be pretty flat since the tri is near the ocean. I guess that will teach me.

So where is the bright side? While I am feeling a bit down on triathlon right now, I have to admit that it has changed my life. I feel much better. I look much better. My daughter was sick over the weekend and I didn't catch it! I have met some great people and have really enjoyed the time spent outdoors. I remind myself of this as much as I can.

Today, I wanted to check in on my weight loss progress. I have been using the DietPower weight and nutrition manager as a integral part of my training and I give it a lot of credit with my weight loss. I could train several hours a day and still not lose body fat if you don't pay attention to nutritional inputs. DietPower gives my tools to evaluate where I am in regards to water intake, calories, fat, sodium, etc. It doesn't do all the work for me. I still have to not eat the double cheeseburgers (or eat less of them), but without its guidance I don't think I would have gotten this far.

Here is a screenshot of my weight history. You can see a bump up a few months ago where I changed blood pressure medication. I got through that and now I am nearly back on track.

You can see that I have a ways to go. According to the chart I have lost 25.5 lbs, but if you count the fact that I was 280 lbs just late last year, I have lost 43.5 lbs! My goal is to lose another 46 pounds, which puts me at nearly the halfway point.

One of the effects of lagging training motivation is the difficulty in keeping to my nutritional plan. I find that under times of stress I will binge eat. You can see from next screenshot of my calorie history. There are some serious red spikes which is where I went through a period of over eating. You'll notice that often these times also show low training levels (dark purple lines along the bottom).

I had a spike yesterday. Ugh! I missed my spinning class and ate an extra 1000 calories. Not a good combo. Today has been much better. I still have over 700 calories left to eat and I am not hungry. Into the bank they go.

The next two weeks are critical. I need to kick up the training this week and next week do a reasonable taper, and I'll be ok.

Inspiration from Marcus Aurelius Antonius

"It is a shameful thing for the soul to faint while the body still perseveres." --Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

I have been having a hard time recovering from last week. Last week was a recovery week, so what am I talking about? Well, last week I not only blew off training for nearly the entire week, but I let myself eat anything. I was really bad, eating fast food, ice cream and just all kinds of junk. It was pretty scary, and even in the last two days I have let my self eat way too much. My target is 2500 calories, but I have been eating around 4000.

How did this come about? Mostly I think it was a combination of stress from work, lack of time to think about or prepare food at home, and the fact that my regular routine was disrupted by attending court.

One thing I know about myself is that I have a one track mind. I can really only maintain control in one area of my life. Once I focus on that one area I can accomplish amazing things, but everything else tends to fall apart. For the last three months I have maintained my focus and dedication on my triathlon goals, and I am proud of that. But in the back of my mind I have a concern because I do not know how long I can keep this up. Balance is really the key, and I think one of the benefits of training for a triathlon is learning how to manage your life more efficiently and learn the discipline it takes to balance the various life demands that we all have, but I know that real balance is an issue for me, and something that I really need to work on.

Work demanded my attention and focus last week. It really was a test for me. Could I maintain focus and put in the effort to do what I needed to do at work and still keep the rest of my life in order? Well, I got the answer, and it was a resounding no! So now I am going back to put my training back in order. I had a good run on Monday, a good swim on Tuesday, and today I hit the spin bike hard for an hour. So I am back in the game as far as the training goes, but my eating patterns are still out of control. It is really hard to get back onto the path of eating right after enjoying a week long binge. Actually enjoying is not the right word. It was actually suffering. Eating all that bad food made me feel really disgusting and gave me a lot of gas. Then why do I eat all that stuff? In stressful situations I just eat compulsively. It does not make any logical sense and is something lurking in my subconscious that comes out in stressful situations, like when I'm worried about my family or my job.

It is all mental. The body is ready, but the mind is weak. Shame on me!

Ok, enough ragging on myself. Starting today I'll do better. Tomorrow, I'll bitch about Starbucks.

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