The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

12/5/09
It is Saturday and it has been a few days since I have posted. It's been a so-so week as far as the changes go. The exciting thing is that I have been enjoying my time on the treadmill more than I did before. I've gotten into seeing how much further I can go in the 45 minutes I'm on and though it is probably too early to tell, I could see getting into running and wanting to participate in races at some point.

I started out just wanting to walk for 45 minutes, but one of the first times I did it, I decided to jog for part of the time and then I just started jogging for a while, then walking for a while. I realized at some point that I was getting close to 3 miles so decided I would go until I reached that point, which took a minute or two more than the 45 minutes I had planned. So the next day, I tried to do enough jogging and increasing my walking speed as close to 4 mph so that I could reach the 3 mile mark at or before the 45 minutes were up. Once I did that, then I wanted to try to do a little more and then in subsequent days, a little more. Yesterday, I did a total of 3.37 miles in the 45 minutes. My goal is to hit the 4.5 mile mark some time soon.

I find that this is appealing to my desire to set and reach goals and I get the instant gratification of doing it immediately, same day. It also has the potential to open up fun on the analytical side as I can start to figure out what speed I need to maintain and for how long to reach specific goals. The last couple days, I've been thinking about how I would set up a simple spreadsheet that would allow me to put in some assumptions about the walking speed and jogging speed and what mixture I would need to have to reach certain distances. For example, I start out by walking at around 3.5 mpg until I get warmed up, then I bump it up to 3.8 or 3.9 before the first jog. After that, I try to maintain it at the 4.0 even mark and that keeps me on the 3 mile pace and then any jogging I do after that just adds to the 3 miles in 45 minutes. As it is, I'm looking at my distance in relation to time and not really paying attention to how long I'm jogging or walking at a particular speed. I've been thinking that I will want to start doing that; first because I want to use it to increase my fitness and start making those jogging intervals longer and longer. Second, it will help me to set and hit goals because I will know what I need to do in terms of speed and time to hit the goal distance.

The cool thing is that it makes the time on the treadmill go by so much quicker. It was incredibly boring just to walk for 45 minutes and the time just dragged most of the time. Listening to music helped, but only somewhat. But, and this is completely counter-intuitive for me, the more I switched from the speed readout to the time and distance readout, the faster the time went. Especially today where I was watching it really closely since I was trying to beat the previous day's 2.24 miles, the first 30 minutes really went by fast. I find that I'm actually looking forward to getting on their and that is definitely a first. I'm still doing more walking than jogging, but there isn't any reason to believe that as I get more fit, I can switch that around, and perhaps eventually stop walking altogether after the warm up. From there, it isn't too much of a leap to think about jogging, or even running a 5K or 10K. So that is what was good this week.

On the down side, my calorie intake was all over the board and I had three pretty bad days. The problem is all the eating out that I did this week. Every time that happens, I go well over my goal and I'm going to need to find some way to deal with that, especially this week as I'm traveling for work and it will all be eating out. I do think I'll buy some frozen lunches so at least I can have that going for me, but it will still be tough with that buffet breakfast every morning and then going out after work. I will also need to try and minimize alcoholic beverages since they are loaded with calories no matter how I go (beer or vodka and 7up). I still think I have a shot at good news when I get on the scale Monday, only because my pants have felt really loose the last couple days, and they haven't been feeling that way for some time. I think the 45 minutes is working out much better than the 20-30 I was doing before.

Holy crap, I just figured out what my calories were for the day and it was even worse than I thought. Over 3100 calories today and 2500 of them were during dinner or after. That isn't going to help much. I'm not going to be a nazi about eating under 1800 calories EVERY day, but I can't afford to have many days AT ALL like this one. This is what I'm trying to avoid. A little slip and going a little over 2000 is one thing, but over 3000? That just is not going to work for me. Not any more. The average for the week, and I didn't count them on one day which means that day was probably not good was 2158. Almost certainly better than I was doing before I started paying attention again, but not where I wanted to be. I've got to start saying 'no' to eating out, that is what is killing me right now. If I eat at home, I have good calorie intake, if I don't, then I am well over. It's that simple.