Visitors!!

First up, today's Wednesday weigh-in was 131lbs - not too bad considering all the eating I did this weekend!!

And speaking of the weekend, we had a really awesome time with Sam's parents while they were here. It was Sam's mom's first time to Beaumont, and Sam's dad's first time since Sam & I starting dating and Sam moved into the house. They flew in to Houston on friday afternoon after spending a few days skiing in New Mexico (a bit of a downgrade to come to Beaumont after that!) and were sweet enough to rent a car so we didn't have to drive all the way back and forth to the airport twice in one weekend.

Friday night Sam made ribs, which were awesome! We also had some dips and hummus beforehand. Then we watched the movie Joyful Noise, which was really cute (although predictable!). Saturday morning Sam's parents joined him in his Saturday morning ritual of getting up early and watching a movie over coffee. Call me crazy, but I prefer to stay in bed! Although they did watch 'Flight' which I had kind of been wanting to see, but not enough to get up before 7 for no real reason :)

We set out for a day our and about Beaumont around 10 and first stop was the Kolache Factory for breakfast. I had never heard of kolaches before I came to Beaumont, but basically they are sweet dough stuffed with various fillings (bacon, egg and cheese for example). The most traditional form has polish sausage inside. Anyway, they are delicious.

Then we made a few stops around Beaumont before lunch:

Fancy old car at the McFaddin Ward House

Downtown Beaumont - in front of Julie Rogers Theatre

Huge fire hydrant near the Texas Fire Museum.

For lunch we ate a Fuzzy's Tacos and then headed to a matinee performance of "The Importance of Being Ernest" put on by the Beaumont Community Players. I knew I had seen or read the play before, but I didn't really remember what is was about. It ended up being pretty funny and the quality of the acting was great considering it is local theatre in a relatively small city! We go there fairly often and we are usually impressed with the production quality.

After the play, we played hearts and hung out around the house. I got thoroughly beat by the end, although it was definitely one of the most competitive games of hearts I have played. (I got my revenge on Sunday though!)

Kind of holding my own for the first half!?!

We went to Pappadeaux for dinner and stuffed our faces with seafood, and then went to Dairy Queen afterwards (because we just hadn't eaten enough). We were all pretty pooped after that and just watched a bit of tv before bed.

Sunday we had planned a more relaxing day since Saturday was pretty busy. I did get up and fit in a 10 mile run, which was much needed after everything we had been eating! Then I made a pancake breakfast and we mostly hung out around the house. We had originally planned on going bowling, but we ended up having a Wii bowling tournament that was really fun (and much cheaper) so we decided to pass. We played hearts again and a few other games also. For dinner, Sam made pizza - so much that we are still eating it!! It has definitely been nice not to cook this week though!

We did take one outing to Rao's Bakery to pick out desserts and enjoyed them later on in the evening. It was also a bit of a late birthday celebration for Sam's dad, whose birthday was a few weeks ago (same day as my brother's, small world!).

Singing Happy Birthday!

We had such a nice time with them and I think they really enjoyed visiting us too! I think they were definitely impressed that Sam is 'all grown up' - he's more responsible than me around the house and a great cook to boot!! (he's a keeper I think!).

And to top it all off, we  got a special delivery of Wisconsin cheese! Icing on the cake if you ask me.

No one tell Kelly that we are supposed to share some with her, okay?

Anyone else want to come visit? I promise Sam will cook you something delicious! :)

Final Guest Room Prep

We had a great time with Sam's parents over the weekend! I'll work on a recap for tomorrow, but first I wanted to share the final touches I put on the guest room. Nothing like visitors to finally give me some motivation to tackle a few overdue projects!

I worked on the frame collage for awhile last week, but I finally decided to give it up for the time being since it wouldn't be ready in time. I had originally picked things out for most of the frames, but they just didn't look right once the frames were painted white. Maybe I was being too much of a perfectionist, but anything dark just looked too dark and anything slightly off-white just didn't look nice in the crisp white frame. So sadly, the frame collage continues to be on hold...

But the good news is, I might not even need it. I did get a chance to work on my corkboard map project, and I had forgotten how big it was! I originally intended to put it above the bed, but it was so big that it actually fit better on the opposite wall. This was a late night project and I didn't take any pictures of the process, but the short story is: cork board + map + staple gun = corkboard map!

I was quite excited with the end result! I want to get some of the long skinny vintage-y push pins, but the ones I have will do for now. Sam parent's got to put in a purple pin next to the green one I had already added. (Purple = visitors. Green = places Sam & I have been together.)

I also hung up a mirror next to the door that I bought at Home Goods forever ago and hadn't done anything with. Felt good to finally hang it up! Annnnnd all of the doors finally got painted!! Both the bedroom and the long forgotten hallway doors finally match the trim for once. I couldn't get a good picture of the hallways doors since the lighting is bad in there and I take terrible iPhone pictures anyway, but you can imagine :)

And finally, we changed out the bedding! I already had this comforter set form Target, but we hadn't been using it. The other bedspread we have is actually a higher quality, but since we let the dogs hang out on the bed fairly often it had gotten a little beat up. Plus this one is light and fluffy, which I think is nice for guests!

All together I was happy with how the guest room turned out. Altogether we painted, bought new lamps, changed out the bedding and added some wall decor. A decent amount of effort, but not too bad and mostly things I had been wanted to do anyway. I would still like to find something to put over the bed, but in general I was just glad that I got anything on the walls at all!

Now we have my brother coming this weekend and then Sam's sister Kelly and a few friends coming through next week on their way to New Orleans for spring break. So at least the room will get some use!

Interval Training

Today was another Wednesday weigh-in and I am happy to say that my weight was 130.2 this morning after a couple of weeks closer to 132. I'm still sticking with the calorie counting, and although I was over several days last week, I was under on the weekend due to my long run, so I was on plan for the week.

Speaking of the weekend, it has been a couple of days since my last post! Not too much has been going on, we spent most of the weekend working on the yard. I didn't take any before and after pictures because the before was pretty shameful and the after is just average! Not that we didn't work hard, but at this point it was mostly clean up, getting rid of fire ants and the spreading fertilizer/weed killer so hopefully things will grow well in the spring!

I had planned to run 10 miles on Sunday, but I got a bit of a late start so it was pretty warm out (TX winter does not exist, it has been 75 for the past week or so!) and then my left ankle and knee still had some nagging pain so I headed home early and just did 8.5 miles, which I still thought was pretty good the week after the marathon! My right hamstring had also been bothering me, but I think that has mostly worked itself out now.

In addition to working towards my goal of 1200 miles before by birthday in June, I'm also trying to work on my speed ahead of the 5k I am running next weekend. I haven't been trying to run fast for awhile now, so I'm hoping to gain some speed back over the next few weeks! One thing I learned last summer is that interval training is key to getting faster.

Before I started running intervals I had a really hard time running any faster than 10 min/mile - maybe sometimes 9:30 min/mile if I really focused on maintaining my pace, but my body's natural rhythm was at 10:00 it seemed.

When I started my 5k training plan last summer it included interval runs every Wednesday so instead of running the prescribed distance at a consistent pace, I would run as fast as I could for 0.25mi and then recover at a slow jog or walk for 0.15mi. Nothing special about those distances, but the training plan called for 400m (which is about 0.25mi) and the loop in my neighborhood is 0.40mi, so I figured I'd recover for the rest of the loop and then start again. You can also do time based intervals (fast  run for 2 mins, recover for 1 min, for example).

Either way, the whole point is to force your body to do something uncomfortable and get away from its 'default pace'. Once I started doing intervals my other runs got faster too because my body no longer thought that running was only one speed! If that makes any sense :)

Anyway, for today's workout I did 12 repeats of the 0.25/0.15 intervals, with a 0.2 mile warm up for a total of 5 miles. That was the most repeats I have ever done, so I figured the last ones would be tough, but I was hoping to be under 7 min/mi for at least the first half! I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to do them all under 7 min/mi! I always think the charts look fun after I upload the data from my Garmin:

You can see I also wore my heart rate strap. It is not the most comfortable thing for sprints since it straps across my rib cage and makes it a bit harder to catch my breath, but I like to have the data so I can see how fast I might be able to run the 5k. Since my heart rate got up to 190 after a quarter of a mile at a 6:30 pace, I definitely can't run that fast for 3 miles! But hopefully a little slower (near 7:15 maybe?) will do the trick!

Tomorrow I need to do 5 miles again and I am not sure what my plan is for the run. I will probably try to make it a fast run since I'll take a couple of days off before running again on Sunday. Might as well wear myself out!

In Other News...

I feel like all I have posted about recently is running! And although that's been pretty all consuming, there have been a few other things going on in my life in the past few weeks.

For starters, we've been sprucing up the house a bit since we have a string of visitors coming in March. I started by painting the guest room a nice, boring tan color to go with the rest of the house. The big change is painting the trim a nice crisp white - before both the walls and the trim were the same off white color (which you can still see on the door.... I swear all those doors are getting painted this week!)

I am working on a couple of projects for the walls, since as you can see they are quite empty. First up was the frame collage that I have been 'planning' for about 2 years now. Those frames are getting a nice coat of paint, and at some point I just have to find time to hang them.

Sam says I always talk about spray painting but never do - proof!

I'm also hoping to work on a pinboard map, but we'll see if that happens - don't want to get too optimistic since we also have a lot of yard work to get to this weekend!

We also decided to finally replace the fans in both the guest room and the master bedroom. I don't know why I didn't think to take any before pictures, since the fan in the master was especially atrocious, but oh well. Replacing the fans was definitely a two person job and took a lot longer than we expected (at least 1.5 hours each) - although I'm sure we were not the most efficient since we really didn't know what we were doing!

New master bedroom fan - the guest room fan is similar.

Other than the housework, we went out for sushi on Valentine's Day, which after 2 years in a row I suppose is officially a tradition! We started off taking a few normal pictures, which quickly digressed when they brought out long stemmed roses to all the women in the restaurant. I was laughing so hard at all of Sam's faces:

I was also too hungry by the time the food got there to take any pictures before eating apparently!

We had a nice night, ate too much sushi and mostly bought each other candy. We are serious candy lovers around here! Sam also got me an entire box of Madagascar 3 valentine's rather than just a normal card and scattered them around the house with silly things written on them like "To: Will Smith, From: Aliens" and "To: Tootsie, From: Roll" - it made me laugh a lot and kept me entertained as I kept finding them!

Other than that, I did make this lasagna this week that was really good and only 350 calories for a fairly large serving. I increased the recipe to make 8 servings and we have been eating on it for several days.

Recipe from Cooking Light March 2013, you can find the recipe online here. I realized I haven't been posting many recipes lately, and since we typically try 3-4 new recipes each week around here, I definitely have a lot to pull from! So I'll try to start including that more often.

Hope you guys are having a good weekend! Are you watching the Oscar's tonight? We developing a voting ballot and scoring system to make it a little competition, and Sam is making mushroom risotto so dinner so that sounds fancy and Oscar-like right?

No More "I Could Never..."

Yesterday I alluded to the 'one big takeway' I had from the marathon. The major realization basically boils down to this: if you want to, you can. Now obviously there are limits to this (having x-ray vision, growing money on trees, turning water into cookie dough, etc.) but I have spent a good portion of my life thinking that "I could never...." - fill in the blank with any fitness or weight loss accomplishment. What I have learned is that if you want it bad enough, you can make it happen.

So my charge to you is to stop saying to yourself "I'm not the type of person who could ever run a marathon" or "I could never have the discipline to cut/count calories and lose weight" because it is not true! It might not be easy or convenient, but (unless you have a legitimate medical concern) you can lose weight and you can exercise (and even finish a marathon!) if you really want it. It might take 3 months or 5 years  but you can do it. The question is not whether you can, but whether you want it enough to work for it and make sacrifices if needed along the way.

I hope that is encouraging for some of you! Sometimes it is also a harsh realization - usually it is only you who is standing in your own way. You'll have to sort out discipline and scheduling and motivation and sacrifice along the way and those are hard things too. But don't let fear of failure or low self confidence stop you from even starting! Because if I can do it, so can you.

Here's my thoughts on how to get from where you are now to finishing a marathon (or any other goal you have - if you are at all sane, you probably aren't interested in 26.2 miles!)

Decide What You Want (And Prioritize!)

To ever get started you need to have a goal. And you need to be realistic in what you are willing to give  up to get there. If your goal is to go to an exercise class three times/week, are you willing to give up two dinners out to eat a month to pay for a gym membership? Yes sounds like the obvious answer, but it might not be the right one for you. Be realistic with yourself on your priorities. Maybe you need that time out with friends to decompress from stress at work and you would be better off not joining a gym at all. You can always exercise for free at home just by walking or jogging. It might be less fun than the exercise class, but you don't have to give up your nights out.

The same thing goes for weight loss - would you rather go all out and cut back to 1200-1300 daily calories and lose the weight fairly quickly just to get it over with? Or would you rather not suffer through those 3-6 months of not eating out, no dessert, etc. (it is pretty rough)? Maybe you would be better off cutting back your calories slightly and losing weight over 1-2 years. Do what will work best for you.

Weight loss and exercise are not the only things in our lives for sure! Don't set a goal of working out five times a week if you know that your family schedule won't allow it - constantly failing at your goal will not make you feel good. Instead start with two dedicated times a week and move heaven and earth to meet that commitment to yourself. It will be far more effective in the long run than trying to fit in five and constantly having to skip workouts.

You have to start somewhere, so make sure your goal is manageable and fits with your priorities.

Set Small Goals Along the Way

If your ultimate goal is a long way off from your starting point, then set milestones along the way. Way back in 2010 when I started exercising I didn't have a goal of running a marathon 3 years later, but if I had, 3 years probably would have been the right time frame from my couch potato starting point!

Setting smaller goals not only helps you stay motivated since the payoff is more immediate, but it also helps you build confidence along the way. Start with something small like "I will walk a 5k by the end of June" or "I will run a mile without stopping within 8 weeks" and go from there. Each success will make you more excited for the next milestone.

This applies to weight loss too - if you want to lose 50 lbs, make sure to celebrate every 10 pounds with a reward or at least an conscious acknowledgment of how far you have come. Always focus on how well you have done so far, and it makes how far you have left to go much less scary!

Move at Your Own Pace

It is easy to go look up a training plan online and think "perfect, I can be marathon ready in 18 weeks"! But in reality, everyone improves at their own rate and there is no cookie cutter training plan for everyone. When I trained for my first half marathon last year I (luckily) left a few extra weeks in my training plan because I knew that I had always had a hard time building distance quickly - I ended up repeating an 8 mile long run three times before I felt ready to move on to 9 miles. Don't feel pressure to meet a certain timeframe - if you sign up for a 5k and you have never run one before, then start your 8 week training plan 12 weeks before the race. That will allow you to repeat weeks if needed, and there's no downside to being over prepared!

Lose Weight (If You Need To)

Running/exercise may or may not help you lose weight. If you keep your eating habits the same, then adding exercise will definitely burn off the pounds. But if you eat more because you treat yourself for exercising, or just because you are more hungry from working out, you may not lose any weight at all. That happened to me with triathlon training in 2010.

BUT, losing weight will definitely help you run. I can hardly think of a running or exercise goal where losing weight would not help (sumo wrestling?). Not only will you likely have more energy, but it is much less of a strain on your joints! I do not think I could have completed marathon training injury-free while I was overweight. Everyone is different, but my joints don't seem extremely strong as is! And I definitely noticed an increase in speed after I lost about 30 pounds. I was consistently running 10 minute miles and struggling to run even a single mile faster than that, but over the summer after about 30 pounds lost, I was really able to pick up the pace.

So, if you have an exercise goal, particularly with running or walking, consider losing weight to help you meet it! And if you goal is losing weight, don't count on just exercising to get you there without also paying attention to what you are eating.

Don't Expect It To Be Fun (At First)

Exercising is generally not fun. Especially when you are first starting out and your body is screaming "WHYYYY!!" Continually remind yourself that you are doing it because it is good for your health. Do you brush your teeth because it is fun? Probably not. Exercising is a part of taking good care of your body too. The minutes or hours you spend working out might not feel fun, but the satisfaction you get from the results will be worth it.

Plus, there are lots of ways to make exercise more fun. Do it with a friend, join a class that you love, buy bright, fun workout clothes, make awesome playlists on your iPod that you only listen to while working out, etc. You may or may not get the "endorphin high" people talk about while running, but always keep in mind - most people don't work out because they love it, they work out because the love the results and it is good for them. That can be you too!

If you want to, you can. That was my big takeaway and I hope you will take some time to think about it. Lifestyle changes can be really difficult, but they are one of the only things in life that we have complete control over! Don't stand in your own way due to fear or self-doubt. If you want something bad enough, make a plan and make it happen!!