Hiking in Circles

Weekly Stats
Current: 201.6
Weekly Loss: 0.6
To Go:
26.8 Total 123.2

I have to make a disclaimer on my weight. It is still jumping around quite a bit, so I am taking my best weight loss day over a four day period (Friday - Monday). I have logged my food intake this last week and it has really helped.

I ran 10 miles on my long run on Saturday. I was concerned going into this run weather it would be tough like my eight mile run or great like my 10 mile run. It turned out to be a mixture of both. Between mile two and three, I did not feel good and thought it might last the whole time, but as soon as I hit the canyon and headed up things started getting better. By the time I hit my turn-around point and was able to go downhill from there, I felt pretty good. I even had an eye opener for me.

I had been reading some other blogs and saw how many focused on just the physical challenges of losing weight. Many challenged themselves to a certain amount of miles over a stated period of time, but not many set many dietary goals over the same period. I had a epiphany about when people get lost, they tend to travel in circles. This happens because we usually have a dominant leg. One leg is usually stronger than the other and without a sense of direction the one leg over the course of time leads us back to where we started from.

I think this is true if we dominate on either diet or exercise without setting goals in the other. We can make great headway with our health and fitness by lifting or aerobic exercise, but if we don't watch our diets, our appetites increase and it doesn't take much to undo the calories we burned while exercising. The opposite is true as well. If we just focus on dieting, we lose weight, but we suffer physically because we lose not only fat, but muscle as well. When the diet is over, we can gain the fat back, but not much muscle in the process so we are worse off than when we started. We need to stay balanced on both fronts. We need to have good physical goals and challenges, but we need to watch what is going into our bodies as well. Feed your body what it needs, in portions that are appropriate for you height and weight.

Shout out to Hillary who reached her weight goal. Great job! Bill H. completed the St. George Marathon (his 7th!) in spite of having a recent injury! Wow Bill, way to go! Thanks Mom for the great article on Drew Carey! He is inspirational in what he has done. Thanks for keeping mee motivated Mom! Hang in there and I will too!