My Journey With Weight Loss – I Don’t Do Easy Anymore

Tonight we are hosting a dinner party with a couple close friends to celebrate my husband’s retirement. For reasons that I cannot explain I decided not only would I make lasagna, I would make everything from scratch including the noodles. Top that off with a cheesecake, no sugar blueberry sauce and my own dressing for the caesar salad and I have spent hours prepping food. Now I remember why I don’t make lasagna very often.

Because I knew I was going to be tight on time today I decided instead of my usual Saturday 1 1/2 hour walk I would do an easy 1 hour run. I figured that would get me to 6k and at least get me a bit of a cardio workout. I hit the treadmill before 6am and had the most recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy to watch. I thought it would be a great way to get myself moving so that I could face the challenges of the day.

Things were going along well. I felt comfortable and was doing a gentle run. However, I hit the 1/2 hour mark and thought, crap, this isn’t hard enough. I sighed and upped the speed and kept going. Then I hit the last 10 minutes and still felt I wasn’t working as hard as I could so I upped the speed again. The last 2 minutes I said screw it and bumped my speed up to what I do for my sprint training.

Much to my surprise by time I was done I felt awesome. Checking my Fitbit I saw that in 57 minutes I had actually run 7k. My heart rate was in the cardio zone for the first half of the workout and then hit peak for the 2nd half. My pace in each of those segments was strong and steady. Looking at my stats I felt pretty proud of myself.

I realized that I don’t like easy anymore, I want the challenge. I want at the end to be drenched in sweat and feeling like I had accomplished something. I want my body to tell me, great workout. Who knew that training for a 1/2 marathon would change my mindset so dramatically. Now I can’t wait for whatever challenges coach is going to give me next week because I know I can successfully accomplish them.