Eating a few more points

I've been getting increasingly frustrated with very small to non-existant losses on the scale - as well as (unfortunately) very little to no loss on the measuring tape. I think my waist is down a bit but it's so hard to tell. It would probably be best to get someone else to do this - this is a service they have at the community centre - but I'm not willing (at this stage) to spend money on this.

I exercise quite a bit - on average 60 min a day every day, and I don't pansy-ass around with my workouts. They're tough, sweaty & ugly. I've been finding that the only time I see much of a real loss is when I work out like crazy all week and eat basically JUST my points target of 21. But then I can do the same thing the following week and see no loss or even a gain. It gets annoying.

So I went to a WWs meeting last Friday. I quite like this leader better than other one's I've had there before - although the "group" isn't all that suitable to me. Anyhow, I mentioned my frustrations to her and she's recommended I try eating 4 extra points every day for at least 2 weeks and see how that affects my weight. She said I could even need more than that, but to try this for now. She also told me to stay off my scale. I've been told to stay off of it before, and I have, but it's made no change. It's not like if I don't like the # I get in the morning that I eat more. If the only change I make is to not step on the scale I can't see how that makes a difference. But this time I will because I know in the past when I've used more than my 21 pts in a day I see a gain on the scale and if I do this for a few days in a row I freak out and go back to my 21 pts. So she said to ignore it, stick with the extra points, and see if it works itself out in a few days. I sure hope she's right.

This is terrifying for me. I'm terrified that I'll gain 6, 8, 10 lbs and then have to fight for another year or more to get that off. But ... I'm giving it a shot because "if you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got" - so it's worth the risk.

I'm also getting more and more interested in learning about proper fueling for exercise. I think this would definitely help my running. Normally I don't eat before I run because it makes me feel sick - even if it's 1-2 hours before. About 3 hours seems to be good, but when I run in the morning I don't get up early enough to have this buffer. Then after any heavy exercise session I rarely have ANY appetite at all. But this can't be good for replenishing my needs after working my muscles so hard.

So this Sunday before our group run I got up a little bit early and had half an english muffin, toasted, with a bit of peanut butter - about an hour before we ran. That actually seemed to work out pretty good. I didn't feel sick at all. Don't know if it gave me more energy, nothing significant anyway, but it's got to be better. I'm also going to work on spacing out meals and forcing myself to eat a little something after workouts. Maybe eat a little less at dinner if I have an evening workout, then have a snack afterwards.

Oh... and the results were posted for our run from the 8th. I ended up 42 out of 102 in the 5K division - 11th out of 28 for women age 20-39 (I'm 36). I think that's not bad considering everything! My husband was 38th out of 95 doing the 10K - again pretty good, especially considering he's not a regular runner. My son was 14th out of 102, he had thought he was 7th, but I still think 14th is incredible. And his time was 26:32, which makes me feel a heck of a lot better about my time (officially 32:46, but my watched clocked it at 32:30 something). I had dreams of doing it around 27-29 minutes, so if it took him 26:32, there's no way I could have done it in that time as he is a MUCH faster runner than me. In fact ALL the runners were slower on this route than in previous years, by about 10-15%. It was a different route than they normally use and I'm thinking either it was slightly longer or just tougher terrain.

Our Sunday run was amazing this weekend. It is so beautiful, warm & sunny here and the trail was incredible. At one point I just stopped and let the sun beat down on me - ah heaven! I'm hoping to go to that trail at least once more during the week before our next race this weekend (8K). I want to work on hills.