There Is More Of Me To Love!

Every December, after my marathon, I usually go into what I like to call a "rest phase" or "recovery phase". In this phase, I typically will use the remainder of December to let this old bag of bones heal up from all those little aches and pains I have gathered throughout the year. My S/B/R workouts become very sporadic, or really hit or miss. Mainly miss. I also quit worrying to much about my diet and what I am eating. Holiday snacks are never helpful either, and there are a lot of snacks around the Holidays at my house this year. The extra trips to McDonalds have not helped either! ($1 Egg McMuffins are hard for me to resist).

So you may want to call that a confession, or whatever, but I have added about 12 pounds since my marathon on Dec 1. I am fluffy and feeling fine. My aches and pains are healed up, but I am not happy with my gut that has taken over. I know that once I get back into my workouts, I will lose some of the weight, but it is one of the first times that I realized just how easily it went on! I want to be in under 180 for this race season, so I have some work ahead of me, but I have a plan.

Step 1: I am going to journal what I eat on a daily basis. I doubt that the actual food log will make it to the blog, but is is mainly for me to be able to look back at and see how well or how terribly I ate. I am afraid that this will be very eye opening, because you know how you tell people "Oh, I don;t eat that" or I am trying to eat healthy all the time, but then you grab a few cookies or candies, or a cheeseburger?? I think I will find that while I think I am eating pretty good, I most likely am not.This should be evident after a week or two. It also might make me self conscience enough to not eat crap because I do not want to write it down!

Step 2: I am going to read a book about healthy eating called, You Are What You Eat, The plan that will change your life. This book is not really a weight loss book as I understand it (I haven't read it yet remember) as much as it is a book about making better decisions on the foods I am putting into my body. It also at first glance seems to be a big proponent of eating raw foods. So I think this will be an interesting read and definitely something that I need to be more educated about. I will admit that I do not know about refined foods, processed foods...I know fast food is bad for you. I know that I need to fuel my body with good foods, and I know that I need to learn what foods are best for me.

So this will be a learning battle for me and I am hoping to learn a lot from the food logging I will be doing. So let me know if you have any tips for logging what I eat, or if you learned anything valuable from doing it yourself!