Thursday treadmill hills; food update

Today I thought briefly about going to Liberty Park for a hard tempo walk; it was 23 so not terribly cold, and it wasn't snowing yet (it has snowed a few inches since then though!). However, my left knee gave me a few suspicious twinges, so I decided to baby it for another couple of days so that hopefully I'll be feeling all right for Saturday's Team in Training workout. With all that in mind, I climbed onto the treadmill and warmed up for 10 min at 5.3 mph w/0.5% incline. Then I paused the treadmill and stretched my left IT band with the foam roller (this was GREAT and one of the many advantages of using the treadmill). I got back on and started some hills: 4% incline and 5.3 mph for 1 min, then 1% incline 5.3 mph for 30 sec recovery. I repeated that until 30:30 on the timer, then cooled down until 41:00. Total of 3.53 miles or so of hills :). My IT band didn't give me any trouble, and I did stretch thoroughly afterward. Maybe it would have been OK outside, but I'm glad I played it conservatively. I do get a bit bored on the treadmill, but watching the news on TV and doing the hills keeps it from being stultifying.

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Food update: Day 2 of no-junk-until-Epiphany is going great. Day 1 was fabulous, and I felt SO MUCH BETTER. Thank you all for your helpful comments and e-mails. I appreciate each one of you for your support :). I will need it as I continue this journey, for sure. I digress. Day 2 is good so far. I have been playing around with www.sparkpeople.com, which is an awesome way to track your food intake. I usually just track Weight Watchers Points, but I decided I wanted to know how much protein, carbs, and fat I am eating. Besides, it has a neat tracker that tells you about how many calories to eat to get to a goal weight by a certain date. For me, I want to be at 140 lb by October 4, 2009 for the Portland Marathon :). It's certainly a do-able goal, if I set my mind to it. And I have.

Last night after dinner I did want to eat a snack (I always do). So I found some great non-junk choices: some air popped popcorn, a Fresca (I love Fresca!) and a baked apple (I did put in a little brown sugar Splenda, a small amount of light margarine, and a few chopped walnuts (homegrown! anyone want some?)). This is my no-junk-until-Epiphany rule, and I deemed (and still do today) that that was not a junky dessert. I do have my rules, though - no ice cream, no Fiber One bars (the chocolate is deadly...), no candy of any kind (not even mints), no chocolate. I will permit one cup of sugar-free hot chocolate per evening though, but NO marshmallows. Basically, I'm cutting out anything likely to trigger any kind of binge eating. I feel so much more in control this way, for now. Sometimes I can eat that stuff w/o any trouble, but sometimes I just can't. I guess you just have to know yourself.

This morning I weighed 148.8, FYI (oh, and I am 5'8"). Y'know what? It's really awesome to be able to post my weight and not feel embarrassed about it at all. I know I have been pretty down about my eating lately, and have felt disempowered (just made that word up; the spell checker is rejecting it!), but if I think about how far I have come, I am cheered up a lot. In February 2005 if you would have told me I'd weigh under 150 lb one day, I would have rejoiced like nobody's business. Perspective is a good thing!