Living Healthy: Take Two

My life has been a whirlwind lately, and not in a good way.  Since my last post, I have actually moved out on my own, and my health has dropped tremendously!  I could blame it on college, or because they way I have been living is "easier"  but in all honesty it comes down to the fact that I have just been lazy.  Its plain and simple.  To correct this, I have challenged myself to live healthy for an entire year, and hopefully at the end I will just do it naturally.  I need to start first with my diet!

Food!  In my opinion this is the easiest thing to forget about when working on improving my body.  It is easy enough to just say that what I am eating is good enough.  It becomes even worse when I am tight on time, and just decide to eat fast food.  Since August, fast food has been my diet and it has been terrible.  I am 21, I should be in the best shape of my life!  In reality I am in terrible shape, even if I don't look like it on the outside.  I guess that is one of the downsides to not putting on weight from eating junk!  

I also realized that I have set my goals to high!  I need to set reasonable goals, that I can achieve even with a busy schedule.  I will think about those goals more tonight, and post them tomorrow.  Until then, I can start researching different diets and also post about them here!  My goal for this blog is to become a resource and an inspiration to others in the same situation.  If you want to improve yourself as well, stick with me and we can do it together!  

First things first, time to cut out all alcohol and energy drinks.  Not only will that be a good start, but it will save me money too! 

Anyways, if you have any advice or tips, let me know!  

  

Back

Short post to say I finally can run again.  My knee is no longer killing me, yay!  I have been taking it super easy this time around, not even bothering myself with how fast I am going, just that I am going.  It is strange, but I kind of like it.  As long as I go the distance I want, I can take as long as I want!  I feel so free!  I can't wait to get back up to the long runs, even though it will be a while.

Just thought I would drop in and post that, but now off to studying!

Final Countdown

Life, always getting in the way am I right?

Still here, still running, still trudging through finals week.  We have all been here at one point or another.  Whether it is High School finals or College finals they all suck.  My one complaint about College finals would be the fact that I had two finals on Saturday, which threw off my long run for the week.  Darn integration and graph theory...

Anyways, this is more of a short post saying that I am in fact not disappearing like last time (ohhh 2 months or so).  Instead I am putting all of my energy into getting those A's I talked about in the last post.  I am so so close...48 hours until sweet sweet freedom!  I do hope to get in another 3 miler tomorrow though.  It looks like the rain is finally clearing up!  And it was a fantastic 60 degrees today!

And thanks to Another Mile for the tag back!  I will have to play the game as soon as I am back at home this Wednesday :)

Burrrr

We don't have snow, but its cold!

It is officially that time of year again!  Finals are quickly approaching, the winter cold is finally setting in (hey, 40 is cold here in Texas!) and the annual Polar Plunge is this Thursday!  This is going to be one heck of a busy week.  Then I throw in the first week of marathon training and it become chaos!  Although, I guess I can't fully call it chaos because I will be able to handle it... I hope!

I am just going to talk a little bit about my run today though.  It was on a treadmill sadly, but it was for the best! Or so I tell myself.  It was beneficial for two reasons.  The first is that I was able to avoid the chilly weather, and the other was that I was able to force myself to go at a nice easy pace to keep my knee from pinching and me grimacing.  It was a 3 mile run like the training plan called for, and it took roughly 30 minutes to run to make sure I took it easy!

Wednesday and Thursday will also be 3 mile runs with a 6 mile on Saturday.  I really hope that my knee is all good to go this Saturday.  It will feel good to run after my second Final!  But before Saturday, there is another challenge.  Will I accept this challenge? Probably.  There is a T-Shirt involved.  So yeah, I am totally jumping into the freezing water!  I will defiantly take a picture of the event and said T-Shirt.  And if I plan it right, I can finish my run and jump in to ice my leg that way!

I hope that running and the Polar Plunge will help relieve some stress until next Wednesday, then I will be free!  Wish me luck, starting Friday is the longest week ever.  I hope to be getting tons of these (6 to be exact)

Seriously?

I had made up my mind over the last few days that this time around, I would run just to run.  No schedule, no races, just running however long I felt that day.  Why would I do this you might ask?  Because I feel like that is where I fell through these last few months.  I would notice I didn't have time to run x miles one day, and I would feel discouraged and wouldn't run at all and thus, I became a couch potato.  So this time, I would run as often as possible, however far I could in the time I had!

Of course, that won't work...

I walked into my room today, and was promptly asked by one of my roommates and his girlfriend if I was going to run the Big D marathon in April with them.  Of course I can't say no, because I already bailed on them doing the warrior dash last weekend.  So now I am back in the training grind, this time for good.  I know I will have more than enough time to run this next semester, because I scheduled it to give me more time between classes.  So now I have a new countdown clock, 140 days, and my first marathon.

Today's Run
I ran a solid 2.5 miles today, mostly into wind.  Its odd, even though I am coming back from a lengthy break I have started better than I ever have before.  Usually with wind I move pretty slow, but today I was cutting through it and it felt great!  My face became slightly numb, but hey, its defrosted now and I can feel it so no trip to the emergency room!

So there you have it, another marathon in sights, maybe this time I will be able to do it!

Brett

Food Fight

Ah, the Food Pyramid

Is it just me, or does it seem that food guidelines are always changing?  If you live a busy life, it is extremely difficult to keep up with what is healthy and what will harm your body in the long run.  On top of that, it is difficult to eat healthy with our quickly moving lifestyle.

Lifestyle, I think that is a factor that a lot of people leave out when considering eating healthy, exercising and dieting.  I know that I forget to think about it.  The perfect lifestyle would include multiple hours a day to run, lift weights, prepare fresh food from a garden and eating REAL food.  Sadly, we don't all have that, and if you do consider yourself lucky!  I have the issue of living in a dorm with no stove and I am at the whim of the cafeteria for what my meals will be.   Let me tell you they don't pick the healthiest food, they pick the quickest food.

Going back to the Food Pyramid I see that I usually am missing out on a couple servings in each category, which is unacceptable.  The funny thing is that my school had an Academic Symposium on food and healthy lifestyles last year, yet it is still difficult to live the way they recommended.  So I decided that I am going to attempt to come up with a "cookbook" of sorts to help out anyone interested, but mostly college students.  It will take a while, and any additions will be added to the list with the contributor cited, but I want to find a way for money and time strapped people have healthier foods.

Before I end this post, I wanted to link to a book that I did read last year that got me more interested in health and food.  In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.  I would recommend picking up this book if interested in how food has become unhealthier, and the western lifestyle has made food not really food.  It is a quick read, and you won't regret it!

Brett

Persistence

No, I am not giving up.  Running is one of the few things that I truly enjoy doing no matter what, so I am always looking for time to do it.  College on the other hand is making the time limited with classes, but that's okay.  Where there is a will there is a way right?

I was able to run two days in a row!  Believe it or not, that is the first time in well over a month that I was able to accomplish such a feat, but I do think that I will be able to keep this trend up.  I am starting to realize that I need to have an outlet, a stress reliever from all the work I get assigned.  I do hope I will be able to keep blogging about running topics, but if I start throwing in some random computer science type posts feel free to ignore them, I might just find it super interesting and want to share it!

Today's run was another 3 mile, in about 25:30.  I really want to break the cycle of 3 mile runs this upcoming week though, I need to start pushing back up to that 8 mile long run.  If I can do that in the next three weeks, there still may be hope for me to run the half marathon(I know my goal was the marathon, but that will need to be tackled at a later date).

Just to make sure I don't have really short posts like this one I might only blog 2-3 times a week unless there is something I can substantially talk about.  But again, if any company sees this blog and would like to review some products for them, I would defiantly have time to do that.  Until next time!

Brett

Late Night Posting!

I have been neglecting the blog, and I feel terrible about it!  I really want to find and set a time to blog, even if its only 3 times a week.  I do want it to be consistent though.  Sadly I probably won't have to much running goodies to post about, but I will talk about training while going to school full time and having a (sort-of) job.  The one class I am taking this semester that is even slightly related to running is Contemporary Wellness, so maybe I will learn some cool health facts to improve my running.

In other news, I finally "fully" moved into my dorm, in other words I was able to put all my clothes away and get clean and organized.  But outside of that, its been insanely hot this week (105+ everyday) so I haven't ran as much.  But in order to fix that I am wearing my running shorts to bed so when my alarm goes off tomorrow I have no reason not to hop out of bed and strap on my shoes!

I really need to get out there.  I feel so off not running, it helps me clear my head and get my day going.  With as much math and analysis as I am doing, I really can't afford being off.  Well, this is a short post, but at least I was able to hop on tonight(this morning?).  And I am officially posting that I am running in 7 hours!

Brett

First day of classes!

This should add an interesting twist into training.  When I first started training to be a "serious" runner, I only had to deal with work and running.  Now it is 7 classes, friends, homework, and running!  I don't think it will be too much of a problem to fit an hour into the mix to get in a good running workout at least 5 times a week, I am just afraid I will be too tired some days.

I will just need to make sure I cut back on the late 2...3...4am nights!  But I guess that's all part of the college experience.  Maybe that is why it goes by so fast, because it seems like one long day!  Sadly my meal options are a little more limited now, yay cafeteria food?  I will need to get to Walmart stat to get some bread and peanut butter just in case.

I just finished my first day today, 3 classes and a 3 mile run.  Not a bad day in my opinion!  I ran it in 27:02 so I defiantly have room to improve, but I didn't feel like I was going to die today so that gives me some hope.  I need to think of another "article" post to write for this weekend.  Until then, happy running!

Brett

Week 1 Redux

I know I said I was back last week, but I had the feeling I wouldn't be doing too much running with all the new job/orientation training I had in store.  With 8am-10pm days and one 5am-11 pm  all I had time for was sleep!  Now that all the new students are moved in and oriented I will be able to start a real running schedule!  I did 2.4 miles so far, and the plan is to do another 3 tonight after the sun goes down so I don't get too much heat exhaustion.

I am really excited to get it going again, and its a new year(in college atleast!)

Brett

I am back!

You may have noticed I have had a lengthy gap between posts, and I feel terrible about it!  Who am I kidding, nobody noticed!  But in the slight chance that you did, I have returned!

The reason I was gone for oh...around 27 days is because about 27 days ago I fell ill.  For a week.  I was miserable!  Sadly, as all sicknesses do, even once the worst is over it still persists for a little while, so goodbye 3 more days.  Then I had to travel, and clean/move into my new dorm room.  But now...I am back and more ready than ever!

I was able to run with my roommate today.  We did 3 miles at a steady pace (~8:50).  But because I missed so much time, I am pulling a switch and now I am planning to do the half instead of the full marathon.  I am a little bummed, but I will just have to find another marathon to shoot for.  Who know, maybe I will fall in love with the half and commit to that full time.

I do still plan on doing a 10k next month, is it crazy? Probably, but I am going to do it.  My mind is made up.  Case closed.

Anyways, now that I have everyone else up to speed, how have you all been?  Any big changes this last month? And new milestones?  I would love to hear it!

Until next time,
Brett