A Constant Struggle

Once upon a time ago someone told me that you never ever really beat an eating disorder. I thought they were wrong or at least I hoped they were wrong. However, I have been finding out that maybe they were right.

This week has been really hard for me. I live to workout. I love the endorphin's that I get in my body when I workout and I love knowing that I am doing something good for my body. Not being able to run or do NTC this week has been really hard for me. I have thought about lifting weights with just my arms however, I am at a loss of what to do in the gym when it comes to just weight lifting and I think going to the gym just to life weights with no cardio is a waste of my time.

When I lifted in the past when I swam I had a trainer coaching me on what to do and helping me with form and this made it easy on me. Now I would be walking into the weights section of the gym and looking like a lost little girl, something I DO NOT want to do. I also struggle with my shoulders and I am scared to injure them again. That is all I need is an injured knee and injured shoulders.

Last night I had a doctor’s appointment and when we left I wasn’t really in the mood to make supper. Meho and I went to Co-op to pick up supper but as I walked around the grocery store looking for something quick and easy I got overwhelmed by all the food in the grocery store and I panicked. All I could think about was how this food was going to affect my body, was it going to turn to fat because I am not working out at the moment. I literally had a break down in the grocery store. Something I haven’t done in a very long time.

When things like this happen I realize that I am not over this issue and I may never be over this. I worry about having too much muscle on me. When I was in high school I built muscle pretty quick and the guys I hung out with would call me Arnold, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, by no means was I that big but hearing it from peers made me very self conscious. Sometimes when I think about how I want to look I think of looking like Allie Crandall rather than Hope Solo even though I know what body type is better I don’t want to be made fun of because I have muscle rather than looking feminine and dainty. Other times I want to strong, it is always such a constant internal struggle with myself.

I can’t wait to get back in the gym and hopefully I will hear a definite date today when I go in to the physio again.

December Accountability

I need to hold my self accountable in the month of December. With lots of holiday parties and yummy food around I need to make sure that I am staying on my target for food and exercise. 

I have come up with a system for myself. It is a calendar of December with the following guidelines. 

• Workout and Eat Clean
• Workout but don’t Eat Clean
• No Workout and No Clean Eating
• Clean Eating No Workout 

This will help me hold myself accountable. Each day I will fill it in and at the end of every week I will post it. Mainly because I can get a picture of if I need to workout more or if I can allow myself a little snack here and there for the holidays. 

I want to continue with my no sugar, however once the holidays roll in I always find it a little hard. If I know I have something to be accountable too I will do much better.

Another Injury Setback

Remember that little injury I blogged about last yesterday?!?! Yeah, it is not the little injury like I thought.

Sunday I went to the gym and did an 8 mile run. Into my run I was starting to feel a pain in my left knee cap, but I thought nothing of it because seriously if I stopped every time I got a little bit of a pain I would always be stopping my workouts. I continued through, but that night I noticed that my knee was still sore and little pains I get from running never really last that long, but my biggest concern came that night when I was having trouble sleeping due to the pain in my knee.

Yesterday I went for a 5 mile run and things felt ok until I stopped running and all of a sudden the pain that was in the top of my knee cap was now on the interior side and bottom, at that point I knew something wasn't right.

I made an appointment with my physio. While sitting on his table I couldn’t get my to lay flat and my the top of my patella was popped up and over on the side of my knee. He iced it with some machine that made my knee vibrate and then he tapped my knee cap into place. It looks like I am back at the physio’s office.

I went home and cried for about 20 minutes after because he told me no running, jumping, lunging, or squatting for at least a week. That is what I do. I lunge, jump, run, squat in all my workouts. I took a moment to be sad and then wiped my tears and thought to myself you can modify your workouts. Instead of running you can elliptical, I would have biked but I am not allowed the motion of it can pop my knee cap. This morning I did NTC and instead of lunging I planked, and if I was supposed to do sumo squats with lateral rise I just did the rise but increased my weight.

Just because I have an injury it doesn’t mean I am going to give up! It just means I am going to have to push harder in different areas.

I know right now I have to keep my eating tight. I can’t slip at this point as I cannot workout as hard as I was. I am also trying to lower my calories right now. I currently eat 1,700 – 2,000 calories on average. I need to take that down to about 1,400 calories. It is really hard because my body doesn’t want to do that, it is used to eating a certain way, but until I am back in the running game I need to watch my food intake.

Better believe I am going to come back stronger than I was before. I always do.

Pushing to Hit my November Goal.

Last week did not go as planned, at all. The whole week I felt tired and beat up. The only day I actually got out of bed was on Friday morning. I am kind of very disappointed with myself because  I should have been at my NTC goal by now and just working on my running goal and now I am not sure if I am going to make either.

I am sitting at 1,095 NTC minutes for the month of November. Not bad but not the best. I am still 305 minutes short. With 4 days left in the month I need to push big time!! 76 minutes each day for the next 4 days, doable if I can get my butt out of bed. Who wants to hold me accountable?!?!?! I know I can do it, I just need to push myself. I should have gotten out of bed this morning, but I was being a baby because my knee was sore, but I need to suck it up and get out there or I won’t make my goal.

As far as running goes, I am in the same boat as NTC. I have 74.4 miles covered right now but that still leaves me with 25.4 miles to cover in 5 days. So that is 5.08 miles each day. It is 100% doable, but again I have an issue with my knee and I am really worried to push it, but I keep telling myself to get through this month and you can rest for a few days in December. I might have to run twice on Friday to make my goal, since my half hour at lunch only allows me a 4 hour run, but we shall see what happens. Maybe I can make both my goals.

I am doing well with my Nike Kinect. I just finished my first round of my program. I love the Nike kinect system and I am so happy I got it. I was at a TRX class on Saturday and realized why I love Kinect training so much, I can’t cheat. When I am at TRX my form can get lazy, when I do NTC I can skip out on a few reps, nobody is watching I need water it is ok. But with Nike Kinect you can’t do that. Your body is being tracked and the program knows what your personal best are and it is pushing you to hit those personal best and break them. It tells you when your form needs to be corrected. You are always getting better and better. I love this training platform and I don’t think there is anything out there like it. If you haven’t tried it yet you need to because it is honestly the greatest program you can use. Every 4 weeks it has you re-do your fuel print and as you can see I have improved. I can’t wait to see what other improvements will happen in this next round and what changes my body will go through during these next 4 weeks.

The no sugar challenge it a pothole this week, but it was a small one and I am back on track. I had three cookies by George. Nothing serious but I felt kind of guilty. I am back on the no sugar train. I know I said for the month of November but I am bringing this into December. What I am realizing is that I don’t need that refined sugar in my body. I am happy without it. Day 3 was the hardest and after that it just got easier and easier, with the expectation of a friend coming to visit me. Lucky for me this friend only arrives once every 2-3 months.

Holidays are around the corner and the parties start so I am going to need lots of will power to make it through my no sugar challenge, but I am up for it. 

November Challenge is not going the way I would have hoped.

 My challenge isn’t going the way I wanted it to be going. I was hoping I would have racked up way more mileage buy this point and be over 1,000 NTC minutes right now, but sadly I am not.

Right now I am sitting at 870 Nike Training Club minutes. I mean that isn’t horrible and I will still hit my goal if I can do 49 minutes a day but I really wanted to be closing in on 1,000 minutes at this point. I have been putting a lot of focus on the Nike Kinect Training.

Nike Kinect is amazing. I only ever came this close to pushing myself this hard when I swam. The Nike Kinect platform is a platform like no other. You are constantly pushing yourself to be your best. I am in the last week of my Get Lean training plan and I have lost 6.6 pounds and a total of 3 inches off my waist. My torso is my trouble area and weight doesn’t come off easy there. This is making me really happy. I think I might do another 4 weeks of the Get Lean and then try out the Get Toned section of the program. Are you using the Nike Kinect? How do you like it?

Changes that are happening from month to month.

My running is slacking in a big way!!! I am only at 49.4miles. I have been working on my speed rather than my distance as of late. I have been doing a lot of HIIT Training and I have been pushing my pace. Right now I have an average pace of 7’11”/mile as opposed to last month when I had an average pace of 8’04”/mile. If I can keep pushing my pace and doing HIIT I will be happy. I am not in training mode for a marathon or anything right now and I am happy to be working on my speed. I am constantly running intervals whether I am on a treadmill or I am running in the trails. I will start at an comfortably hard pace and at the beginning of a new song I will look for a marker and I will sprint full out until I hit that marker and I will go back to my comfortably hard pace again. If I am on the treadmill I will put the treadmill to an incline of 2 and a pace of 7.5mp, I will run at that pace for 1 minute and a half and then I will put the treadmill up to 10mph for a minute. This gives me a good burn and really goods the blood pumping. I am enjoying doing this and it really helps me get my speed up. What do you do to change up your running?

Remember how people say squats gives you a nice bum, well I am starting to lose my bum. Maybe I am squatting wrong. I sure hope so because I really liked my bum in October, my November bum is getting too small.

Happy Training!!

My Issue with Calorie Tracking Apps

I am using a calorie tracking app right now to make sure I am eating enough. There is a fine line between eating for fuel and over eating or under eating, both under and over eating can cause you to gain weight. Over eating because your body will store it as fat and under because your body enters into starvation mode and starts to hold onto everything you put into it. I  want to make sure I am not sabotaging my body. Because I generally eat the same thing most days (creature of habit) I know if I do this for a full week I can understand what I am eating.

Yesterday I did Nike Training Club in the morning, 95 minutes worth, at lunch I ran 4 miles and after work I did a quick Nike Kinect training. I ate a total of 2,640 calories!! Yep I apparently ate a lot. It was all clean food. However, My Fitness Pal doesn't account for your Resting Metabolic Rate and it doesn't properly track calories burned.

Last January I had my RMR tested by my dietitian. She came to my house in the morning, I had to fast for 12 hours before I did this and she plugged my nose and had me breath into this machine for 10 minutes. It told me that I have a RMR of 2,300. At rest, if I stayed in bed all day I would burn 2,300 calories doing absolutely nothing. 

Also I did a lot of activity yesterday and needed to refeed my muscles after my workouts therefore needed more food. I looked at the workout tracker on my fitness pal and I feel that is grossly over estimates how much you actually are burning. The only proper way to know exactly what you are burning calorie wise is to get your V02 max tested and wear a heart rate monitor. I refuse to use the workout tracker on there.

At the end of the night I clicked the button to end my day and it told me if I continued to eat like this every day in 5 weeks I would weight 165 pounds. I am lucky that I am at a pretty secure place with myself because if I read that before I would have freaked out and attempted to purge myself. 

People remember these are generalized trackers. They do not understand your body, your RMR or how much you are burning. No calorie tracker can tell you what to eat. Please if you eat over your calories one day, look at what you ate. Is it clean and healthy? Do you feel satisfied? Ignore what it says.

Week 2 of My November Challenge

Last week was week 2 of my November 1400 NTC minute challenge and my 100 miles of Nike Running.

Two weeks into my challenge and I am 510 NTC minutes into my challenge. This makes me happy as usually I am only like 300 minutes into a challenge at this point. NTC is going really great and I have found my love for it once again. I find if a do something too much I get tired of it, but while I was training for my marathon I did very little NTC so now I love it all over again. This makes me happy. Nike Women has created a few more workouts. I am loving the new Alex Morgan workout, it really works me. Also the one that comes in the reward section of 5,500 NTC minutes, if you try it out let me know what you think of it, I love it.

The running side of things isn’t going as well as planned. I am only 32.45 miles into my 100 mile challenge and was really hoping to be at or over the 40 mile mark by this point. However, I still have tons of month left to get myself back on track. It shouldn’t be a problem to make my goal. The only thing holding me back is it has been so dang cold!! Like seriously all weekend was -20 and a wind chill, like what the heck is up with that, it isn’t even December yet.

If you have yet to go out and purchase your Nike Kinect game you are missing out big time. It is seriously awesome. I am heading into week 3 of using the game and I am down 6 pounds and 1 ½ inches in my waist section. This program incorporates cardio with strength skills. It is much like NTC but will give you feedback as you are doing it. So if your body is not in proper form while doing the plank it will tell you this. I really like this feature because it is helping me correct my form and in turn is helping me correct my form in everything I do.

How is your November month coming along?

My Rant About American Politics

Yesterday was voting day for America. I am a duel citizen and love America so I was playing very close attention to the polls and what was going on.

I jumped for joy when I heard that Barack Obama beat out Mitt Romney!!

I am a huge Obama supporter and I LOVE him. I think he is wonderful and Michele and Barack have raised two beautiful girls. When I think how I would want to model a family after I think of them. Michele is huge into health and fitness and I believe this rubs off on her girls and Barack is an adoring father.

Aside from his amazing family I believe the social issues he is bringing to play are important and crucial. I believe that two people should be allowed to get married regardless if they are man and women, women and women or man and man. If you love someone and you want to legally marry them I believe you should be able to do so. I don't think it is fair that only man and women can get married, marriage is for people regardless of their sexual preference. There are people in the world who get married for 72 days and get divorced and there are people who wan to marry their same sex partner, have a family and are happy together; so please tell me who is in violation of the sanctity of marriage if that is what you are worried about. For those people out there who believe that this is an abomination, please, I think marrying and divorcing in 72 days is an abomination.

Also Barack believes in the women in the work force, dear Mitt Romney, you lost the majority of  the women vote because women now are in the work force. I know you probably raised your daughters to grow up find a husband who can support them, have them stay home and cook, clean and raise the family but news flash we no longer live in the 1950's. This is 2012 and women are CEO's and Presidents of companies. We no longer live in the shadow of our husbands. We no longer want sexual relations for procreation, we want to have sex and not have a child. So talking about getting rid of birth control is not away to gain the vote. Respect the women in the work force and not just the mother because women does not equal mother. I am a women, but I am not a mother. I have a full time job, I pay taxes, I volunteer. When you spoke at the your rally you only used the word mother. I commend you Mr. Obama for the respect you have for the working women, a mother or not. 

I have respect for Barack and his party for making birth control readily available. It is called Planned Parenthood because parenthood should be planned and this planning should be available for all women, not just the wealthy women. As far as certain Congressman's view on rape, it is just so outdated and preposterous. I read a quote from one State Congressman that said "As long as it is happening you should just lay back and enjoy it" well I hope someone walks up and slaps you across the face because that is downright rude to every women out there including your wife and daughter because I am sure if that happened to one of them your tone would change pretty quickly. Rape is a violation of a human, a living human. If a pregnancy resulted from that rape that women has every right to do what she views is right and no person in this world should be able to tell her that is right or wrong. No President, Prime Minster, King should have any say on a women's body whatsoever. 

Today I woke up scared about the fate of the country, but I woke up to find out that Mr. Barack Obama had won the American election. I can rest easy for the next four years knowing our country is in good hands.

I saw a lot of twitter statuses yesterday that stated "Whatever happens I know, it is God's will" than this morning those same people were saying "God Save Us" If you truly believed it is God's will that Mr. Obama made it into office why would he save you? As for myself I am happy America chose Mr. Obama for a fourth term because remember it took more than 4 years to mess up the state of America it is going to take more than 4 years to put it back together. Obama came into a mess created by Bush, not created by Obama.

My political rant is over, I will go back to blogging about running and fitness.

November Challenge Start

My November challenge began on Thursday and the first week, I must say went pretty well.

Thursday morning I accidently slept in and only had a chance to do Better Butt at lunch, but I also did a 4.35 miles run with an average pace of 7’07”/mile, I am managing to keep me speed up and that is important to me, after my run I did the sculpted arms workout on NTC. When I got home I did my Nike+ Kinect, however, to my sadness I wasn’t using Xbox live and therefore needed to re-do my assessment. I managed to do better this time so I was happy about that.

Friday morning Meho and I rolled out of bed at 4:15am and went to Goodlife and I started my day off with NTC, Endurance Master and Slim Effect. I find when I do a workout in the morning I make better food choices throughout the day. I tend to reach for fruit and veggies rather than salty or sweet snacks, so this also motivates me to get up when my first alarm goes off. At lunch I did a 4.78mile run with an average pace of 7’25”/mile and finished my workout off with Sculpted Arms and Leaner Legs also from NTC. When I got home that night, I did a Nike Kinect cardio workout with Marie. She is killing me and I love it!! Seriously, this game is the best investment I have ever made. Marie pushes you and forces you to want to work harder.

Saturday I had a really hard time getting out of bed, but I was involved in the Twitter Road Race and knew I had to get lace up my running shoes sooner or later or I would spend my day in my cozy bed. I looked at my twitter Nike Running had tweeted me and sent me a picture with a person running in Calgary in the cold, so I knew even though it was cold I couldn’t let it beat me. This pushed me to get out of the door. I started my day off at the gym doing NTC, Worth the Weight and Fighter Fit than I hit the pavement. I ran 6.22 miles in 6’47”.mile finishing my 10km in my best time yet of 42:09. I was so happy about my pace I wanted to cry. Maries training plan for my marathon has really helped me push myself to limits I never knew I had in me. I got home from my run and did my cardio session with Marie. Doing the most burpess I have done yet. If you don’t have this game you need to get it ASAP, believe me you won’t regret getting it, but you will regret not getting it.

To round up week one that was three days I ran 15.3miles with an average pace of 7’04”/mile and did 195 NTC minutes. Leaving me with 84.7 miles left to run in November and 1205 NTC minutes left to get. Totally doable!!

The month is still young so if you would leave to join me in this challenge drop me a tweet or leave me a comment. Hash tags your runs/NTC with #NTC1400Nov and #Run100.

How was your weekend of working out?

October was an Great Month

October was an incredible month!! I mean incredible. I don’t think I could have asked or gotten a better birth month.

First off I boarded a plane to San Fran and I got to spend the weekend with Lydia from Nike Women and meet my twitter besties, Elizabeth and Karen. I seriously love these girls, they are amazing and we had such a fun time hanging out and running the Nike Women’s Marathon.

I ran my first marathon, the Nike Women’s Marathon. It is seriously the best marathon out there. I mean I am biased since it is my first but Nike makes an incredible experience out of it and I was a Nike Ambassador. I didn't finish in the time I wanted to, but I did finish and that is the most important thing. It has made me realize how much I really do love running. I have already started planning my next marathon and it is a Boston Qualifier.

After NWM my birthday came around and Meho made it such an amazing event. I had supper with my friends and had the opportunity to spend time with my family and Mike’s family. I think it is important to have that family and friend time. Sometimes our lives get so busy we neglect those that matter most to us and we need to remember to take time out of our lives to spend time with them.

Last weekend we spent some us time in Canmore. With me preparing for my marathon and going to San Fran we haven’t spent as much time together as we normally do. We spent the weekend with just us in an incredible condo in Canmore, seriously this place was bigger than my apartment. It was really nice to be alone with no interruption.

Shortly after getting home from NWM I started running again. I know people say a day more each mile you ran, but I knew I was at my peak performance level and didn't want to disrupt my training. I began running again almost right away. Much to my surprise my pace picked up in a huge way!!! This makes me so happy, I am hoping it isn't a fluke and I am really getting faster.

I also purchased the Nike Kinect game. I had a Kinect when they first came out and I wasn’t impressed. I purchased the Women’s Health game and was like this is kind of dumb. I ended up selling my Kinect and getting more Wii stuff, I have a Mario Kart obsession and Mario Party is an awesome game. I watched the Youtube video for this game and was like I want that, it will help me achieve my goals in a healthy matter. I tried it out last night and I LOVED it!! Seriously it is the best game for health and fitness out there. Marie Purvis kicks your ass in a good way, she will also prompt you when you are not in perfect form, so this is really going to help me perfect my form and get into athlete fit shape. This morning I woke up and I was so sore!! My whole lower body hurts. I can’t wait to get home connect it with my Nike Plus site and start racking up the fuel points. My only advice is don’t do a crazy workout before doing your fitness assessment I think this kind of skewed my results a little bit and made me look less fit than I really am. I know once you get it you will love it.

I have also been running the elements and the first month of it has been great, I likely will not get the chance to run in the heat, but have been doing a lot of cold, wind, snow runs so at least I can try and top those leader boards. I am not doing so bad right now either in 208th place!! Whoo-hoo , but I would like to get out of the 200's and into the 100's!!!

As you can see my October was an incredible month. I really pushed myself and my year is turning out to be a good year. Today is November 1, 2012 and it starts my challenge of 1,400 NTC minutes plus 100 Nike Running Miles along with keeping my training plan with Nike Kinect. I think I might have my abs my Christmas.

Happy Training .