Marathon #13 Race Report. Bad weather, Secret #71, and Personal Record.

Race Headquaters

What a marathon experience this was.  To me, it was like the beast that brought the runners together.  With the weather being so horrible, it seemed to bring the runners to a place where we understood, “We are a unique bunch of crazy people”  Twelve of us toed the starting line for the early start as we laughed about the 2-3 inches of snow on the ground and the pouring down snow/rain mix.  Despite the weather we were an energetic group ready to take part in the rare adversity of this marathon.  At 9:33 a.m. we took off together not knowing how things would end up.

The Leprechaun Marathon was filled with what seemed like a lifetime of weather.  For the first ten miles the snow/mix was coming down hard.  Since the course was not closed to traffic, every car that passed was spraying me with slush that was on the road.  Now that was cold and dirty stuff.  After awhile I tried to jump over the spraying slush so instead of hitting me from the waist down is was just soaking my feet.  Took three potty breaks in the first ten miles. HAHA 

From the half marathon point to mile 18 it just plain rained.  The snow had pretty much melted away so no more car splashing.  My clothes were so heavy from the wetness that they we rubbing me raw in many places.  Just part of the fun I guess.  Nothing I could do about it so I ended up just laughing at the adversity.  I could not change anything so I just had to do my best and try and keep my pace in line.  I was also alone for the entire race.  I never for even one minute ran with someone.  Since there was so few people, we were all spread out.  Then the most amazing thing happened………..

Weight watchers. Opinionated ramblings about getting real with health and weight loss.

How is it that we are to lose weight and keep it off.  I am going to randomly vent some theory out today about various aspects of the weight loss journey.  It is a little long winded but it feels good to let it out.  It’s all hyped up into something spectacular when in reality it is just normal, this journey.  It is the same as every other journey we partake in.   Only the results are life changing.  This is why we make it into the impossible when it really is not impossible at all.

Is food bad?               

Food.  Why is food such a problem?  It is crazy that a relationship with food can be so distorted and unhealthy.  Weight Watchers has really helped me with my relationship with food.  Blogging has helped with this also. I am learning and becoming comfortable with not using food in an unhealthy way.  I mean what is food anyway.  Food is energy.  Food is survival.  But also food is emotional.  Food is relational.  Food is attached to memories.  I am  rambling here but food is not the center of the universe even though I think it is sometimes. 

Weight loss efforts BETTER HELP ME eat in a real world

This means no avoidant behavior.  Sure in the beginning of the journey it is good to avoid lots of things, but in the long run I have to learn to ease back into life in a healthy way.  On weight watchers, you can eat whatever you want as long as you count the points and follow the good health guidelines set up by the government.  You know, the food pyramid people.  They devised good health guidelines that people should follow.  It is a baseline of healthy living basically.  It is odd because for me just to read even in my own blog that the government (USDA) is telling me what healthy eating is almost makes me not want to eat that way.  I won’t go into that though.  I say all this because it is so important to take advantage of the variety that weight watchers offers.  Even if you don’t do weight watchers it is important to get variety.  It is essential to eat the things that you like, even the things that are special to you because of some memory and such.  To deprive yourself and become super strict with your eating seems to be one of the main behaviors that bring people to failure in life long health.  Look at skinny people, they monitor what they eat for the most part but they don’t refuse to eat a donut for years on end either.  They eat donuts but they don’t eat 4 or 8 or 12.  They just eat one and move on in life.  To them a donut is a donut.  It is a tasty treat that is ok to eat.  This is what I want for myself.  I want to learn and become more effective at eating many foods.  I want to learn how to eat 1 donut and move on.  I want to learn how not to be afraid of going out to eat or walking into a See’s Candy and losing control.  I have to learn how to do this.  It is just not realistic to think I am never going to eat a particular food again or be in a particular food situation again.  I am tired of hiding from the situations that scare me.  I am going to avoid any diet/eating program that is too strict as if it were a life threatening disease.

Glad I was fat. Learning to live healthy

It may shock you that I am glad that I was over weight and obese.  Where would I be today if I never had been fat.  I would be a skinny sick person who was living an unhealthy lifestyle.  Not to say that all naturally thin people live like this, but I know that I would have.  If I just had the natural metabolism to keep me looking thin I would be eating much less healthy food and other stuff like that. 

I think that being in the position that I would die if I didn’t lose the weight really turned my life around health wise.  My cholesterol went from 305 or so to 151 in just one year.  I never would have changed that if I didn’t have to lose weight.  I never would have finished a marathon if I didn’t first start running to burn some calories.  Who knows, if I was thin I wouldn’t have even thought it necessary to burn a few extra calories.

So maybe all the horror and sadness that went with being obese helped me out in a way.  Now I am on my way to living so much healthier in all aspects of life.  I am in great shape now.  I am looking lean.  The doctor says everything is A-OK.  The chewing thing is becoming a thing of the past.  I don’t drink anymore.  I exercise regularly and make it a part of my life that I partake with my wife.

So for today at least, I am looking at my past as a blessing in disguise.

The secret page was updated today. #59’s victory and one new secret. Don’t miss out!

UPDATED ON 2/15/2009:  THERE ARE NOW 64  LIBERATING SECRETS ON THE PAGE

Also, #59 has sent in the big final victory for us to rejoice about.

Subscribe HERE for your own special secret updates!

Ok everyone.  The liberating page called Secret Confessions: Get Liberated!  is working out very well.  This is a special place to get those secrets about our journey that are sitting in the dark into the light so that we can  move towards health.  I really encourage you to use this page because it will help tremendously in difficult times.  There are specific instructions on how to leave an anonymous comment on the secret page itself.  Check it out

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

Win a run4change T-shirt. Why I felt amazing here, contest!!!

 

 

 

So many of you mentioned that you loved one of the most popular posts here at run4change.  Some of you thought that the post theme would make a great T-shirt.  Then, one of you mentioned that the cool T-shirt should be the prize for the winner of a contest held here at the blog.  So I did a contest to see who could come up with a great contest idea and you all voted on the one that you thought I should use for this contest.  Here is the idea that you voted for me to use for this T-shirt contest:

How about submitting a pic with a short description: “Why I felt amazing here.” It could be a way to focus on times when we FELT great regardless of size/appearance.

You loved the idea and so did I.  So now it is time for the contest.  Read on to find out how you can participate and win a run4change T-shirt (I will be getting the shirt made after the contest is over so I know what sizes to get).

Long road ahead? Simple ways to shorten the weight loss road!

Image credit: photos.anthonyordille.org

In the beginning, the road to my weight loss goal seemed impossibly loooooong.  In my minds eye, I saw it as a straight road that I could not see the end of.  It slowly climbed upward and yet it had hills and valleys throughout.  Looking back, maybe it was the Strolling Jim 40 mile course, HAHA, just kidding.  It was a hilly course though, very much so.  Here are a couple of pics for the fun of it

img. credit: http://www.tynesweb.com

img. credit:www.tynesweb.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, the road that I was about to start walking (weight loss journey road) seemed longer than imaginable.  The vast amount of weight that I needed to lose coupled with the large number of bad habits that had to be replaced was it’s own discouraging weight.  “Can I do this?” I asked myself.  In fact, I asked myself for years before I even got to the starting line.  Finally I was there at the start, 307.6 lbs.  I had a long way to go.

Now that I am at goal and able to look back, I realize that breaking up the journey into bite sized, achievable pieces was very valuable.  I think I would have lost heart had I not broken it up into smaller chunks.  I mean heck, I just about lost heart even with the smaller pieces.

So no matter how much weight you have to lose and no matter how many habits you feel you need to change, it is possible.  You will end up at goal if you just keep plugging along.  Here are a couple of ways that I broke my journey to goal into smaller pieces.

• I made my weight loss goal 5 lbs.  I knew I had a lot to lose, but WW hands out these stars for every five pounds lost.  Those stars meant a lot to me and I made that my primary weight loss goal, collecting stars.  Just 5 more lbs, come on baby!
• I set a small goal of increasing my activity by 5 minutes.  This doesn’t seem like much, but I couldn’t do much in the beginning.  Knowing that I could do 5 more minutes was really meaningful to me.  It slowly increased my fitness and I felt less threatened by it.  Kicking it up 30 minutes may have discouraged me.
• I made it a goal to slowly add more veggies and healthy food.  In the beginning, I ate more “junky” food.  I thank God for that because it allowed me to not feel deprived in my journey.  As I began to like healthier things, I added them in.  I did not just make a huge change and start eating all perfectly healthy and clean.  I did stay in my points, but you get what I mean.  I had done the drastic changes before and hated the deprivation that I felt.
• I made it a goal to slowly become more accountable and talk about my weight loss journey and what it meant to me.  I figured from the start that I would have to come clean and talk about the travels down the long road.  I just couldn’t come clean all at once.  Slowly but surely I shared a little more at my WW meetings and with my family.

Breaking up that loooooooooooooong road to goal was so important to my success I think.  It can really be such an unbearable weight to have to make life changes like this.  It is so possible by putting one foot in front of the other minute by minute, day by day.  Now my life is totally different.  It is funny though, because now that I hit goal, I still see a long road in front of me. HAHA (Maintenance)

What kind of weight loss post would you like to see in my blog.

I thought it would be fun and participatory for the wonderful visitors of this blog to share what they would like me to post about.  So, what would you like me to post about?  Do have a particular weight loss question for me?  Is there a weight loss topic you’re interested in?  Do you want to hear more about my journey, running, weight loss, struggles, etc?  LET ME KNOW BY LEAVING A COMMENT WITH YOUR SUGGESTION.  I will check out the comments and after I write the post, I will email you so that you can look for it in the new posts.

Getting to the starting line! What a victory.

 

Getting to the starting line is the greatest victory of all.  It does not matter what the goal, just starting to move towards the attainment of that goal is the hugest step.  For me, I was always going to start my weight loss, exercise, quitting bad habits, etc. on Monday.  Well, Monday just never seemed to come around.  It is funny and sick to think that I went for YEARS waiting for that Monday to come around.

After I lost about 60lbs, I started to train for a marathon.  Since then, I have finished many marathons.  During this whole process of becoming healthy and fit, I learned that making it to the starting line of a marathon is so much bigger than people realize.  It takes a lot of preparation to get to the starting line.  It is the same for weight loss.  I needed to overcome many hurdles just to get started.  Nobody wants to start because that is where they have to face the demons that hold them back.  The things that they fear will prevent them from finishing or reaching their goal weight.  The things that they fear they won’t be able to change.  Thoughts like “Maybe I can lose the weight, but I probably won’t keep it off, so why start.”  In my 50 mile race that I finished in around 12 hours, I was scared to death at the starting line, but I was there.  I could never have finished running 50 miles if I hadn’t been at the starting line.  Now I understand that a 50 miler is extreme, but the lesson is the same.  You have to overcome to get to the starting line, and then you take one step after another until you reach the goal.  For Weight Watchers, my sister talked me into going for the first time.  I did not want to start on a Wednesday, I wanted to start on Monday.  We both knew that Monday would not come though, so we started on Wednesday.  Thank God for that.  I was afraid, I was embarrased to get my fat self on the scale in front of  people, I thought I was too fat to go, I had all kinds of hurdles that I had to get over.  I did make it to that first weigh in.  After that I just kept taking one step at a time until I lost 133lbs and totally changed my health and body.

I know it can be scary to start a new life when you have so many doubts about making it to the finish line.  I want to encourage everyone that is starting a new life of health that the place you are right now is such a big win for you.  You have overcome so much junk in order to finally start.  Hey, just deciding not to wait until Monday is huge. Keep it up, even if you doubt making it to goal, just keep it up.  Don’t think too far ahead.  Make the small choice today and put one foot in front of the other.  You are on the road to a new life.