A new chapter for Outrunning My Fork:
I've started weighing myself every morning just after I wake up and do my business.
I record my weight in a journal that I keep right in the bathroom beside the scales.
I also write down, in general, what I ate the day before. This is teaching me how my weight fluctuates and in general, what agrees with my body and what does not. It makes me more conscious of my body and how I am treating it. It doesn't discourage me like everyone warms that it does, but instead, interests me, makes me curious to see how I actually work. I am a junior scientist studying myself.
I started recording my weight a month or so ago. My mother, 84 years old, and my step-son, 30 years old, and my younger sister, a year younger, do that. My mother doesn't record what she eats, just her weight. My step son not only records his weight but tracks his daily food intake very seriously and has learned that some things work better for his body than others. My younger sister makes sure she stays between 134 and 138 and has done so since high school. She is in her fifties. She has learned what she can and can't eat and how much and how often. She has it down pat. I can do that. I am changing my lifestyle. Habits.
This is not a diet. It is a lifestyle change.
Between these three people that I respect and admire, I am inspired.
My husband and I bought a yoga DVD at a thrift store. We've had it several months. Finally one morning, I said to him that we should watch it and do it or donate it to another thrift store. We did it. So far, it is just the beginning stuff where you stretch your spine and work on breathing and meditation.
We are in our second week now of doing it every weekday morning first thing after we are both up and have had tea/coffee but before eating anything. Just a half hour, maybe, is all it takes.
I like it. It is centering me. Balancing me. Making me more peaceful and strong.
My cold is gone. At first, some of the deep and steady breathing caused us both to start coughing. We had colds going on three weeks. Now our colds are gone. I am not claiming the yoga cured it. I am just claiming our colds are gone and I am breathing better, feeling taller and stronger.
We volunteered at the Donna Marathon, the Marathon to finish breast cancer, held in JAX each February and this year in it's tenth year, and Donna Deegan a three time breast cancer survivor, just two years younger than me. Did I mention that my mother is a two time breast cancer survivor and my younger sister, the one who weighs between 134-138, is a brain cancer survivor. My older sister, I haven't mentioned her until now, is dead two years now, from lung cancer that was first diagnosed as Stage Four. She lived two years after that diagnosis and I took care of her during her last ten months.
We worked at the Donna Marathon Expo, handing out packets that included Donna's second memoir, Through Rose Colored Glasses. As volunteers, after the Expo closed down, we were given the latitude to take extra Donna memoirs that were in stock. I took about five and mailed them out media mail to family and friends who I thought would appreciate them. They were either lady runners or lady friends battling breast cancer or other kinds of cancer, or survivors of cancer, or like Donna, all of the above.
One of my runner friends who has a streak going on ten years of running at least one mile every day but also runs many many more miles on many days but has never run a marathon, nor had cancer, felt like it was an omen that I had sent her the book. She has flirted with the idea of a marathon challenge but has never taken it up. I have run a few marathons but am not as fast or serious about the craft of running as this friend is. I am a hit and miss kind of gal who, like an old horse, always comes home when I set my sights on it. I have run five or six marathons and many halves plus a few fifteens and one 50K which I am very proud of.
That night after the Expo volunteering, trading emails with my running friend, we decided to commit to a marathon together, next fall in the Baltimore area, the NCR Marathon in north Baltimore County. It is a smallish marathon. It is on the old North Central Rail Trail, now called the Torry C. Brown Trail. It is a soft surface, and goes one way 13.1 and back again. It is in a tunnel of nature. It is usually held the weekend after Thanksgiving. That is significant to me. We Americans need to refocus. Pharmaceuticals, medicine in general, they make too much money off of our ignorance, our sloth, our materialistic bullshit.
I have considered doing the NCR Marathon race for years. We used to be members of the Baltimore Road Runners Club, who hosts it, when we lived in Baltimore. We never really did runs with them, though I connected with them and discussed it, asking if our young daughter could ride her bike along side us as we ran. Yes, they said, as long as she doesn't run over any of us. I liked their attitude. We never did connect with them though, but we did get out on the NCR Trail on our own schedule. In years later, my husband and I hiked parts of it, and just this last year, we bicycled the entire route and then some - it continues on across the border into Pennsylvania.
So I know it now and I like it. The soft surface is not so soft that is will be like running in sand or mud. But it will be friendly to my body, the giving surface of the earth. Better than cement or even asphalt.
And I hope to be around the same weight as my younger sister by then. I have 25 more pounds to lose, and am down 20 from where I was last Spring. It sounds so nuts to me that I have carried this much weight on me so long. I am an Appalachian Trail section hiker, have run many races though none fast, and am always active. But my poor frame has been lugging 55 pounds around for 30-some years.
With this next marathon, I will be back to my weight where I ran my very first marathon at the age of 23. Actually, I don't really know what I weighed then. I am supposing I weighed around what my younger sister weighs - 25 pounds less than I weigh now.
I've never weighed myself regularly like I do now.
So we are talking 134-138 pounds.
Here we go.
I've started weighing myself every morning just after I wake up and do my business.
I record my weight in a journal that I keep right in the bathroom beside the scales.
I also write down, in general, what I ate the day before. This is teaching me how my weight fluctuates and in general, what agrees with my body and what does not. It makes me more conscious of my body and how I am treating it. It doesn't discourage me like everyone warms that it does, but instead, interests me, makes me curious to see how I actually work. I am a junior scientist studying myself.
I started recording my weight a month or so ago. My mother, 84 years old, and my step-son, 30 years old, and my younger sister, a year younger, do that. My mother doesn't record what she eats, just her weight. My step son not only records his weight but tracks his daily food intake very seriously and has learned that some things work better for his body than others. My younger sister makes sure she stays between 134 and 138 and has done so since high school. She is in her fifties. She has learned what she can and can't eat and how much and how often. She has it down pat. I can do that. I am changing my lifestyle. Habits.
This is not a diet. It is a lifestyle change.
Between these three people that I respect and admire, I am inspired.
My husband and I bought a yoga DVD at a thrift store. We've had it several months. Finally one morning, I said to him that we should watch it and do it or donate it to another thrift store. We did it. So far, it is just the beginning stuff where you stretch your spine and work on breathing and meditation.
We are in our second week now of doing it every weekday morning first thing after we are both up and have had tea/coffee but before eating anything. Just a half hour, maybe, is all it takes.
I like it. It is centering me. Balancing me. Making me more peaceful and strong.
My cold is gone. At first, some of the deep and steady breathing caused us both to start coughing. We had colds going on three weeks. Now our colds are gone. I am not claiming the yoga cured it. I am just claiming our colds are gone and I am breathing better, feeling taller and stronger.
We volunteered at the Donna Marathon, the Marathon to finish breast cancer, held in JAX each February and this year in it's tenth year, and Donna Deegan a three time breast cancer survivor, just two years younger than me. Did I mention that my mother is a two time breast cancer survivor and my younger sister, the one who weighs between 134-138, is a brain cancer survivor. My older sister, I haven't mentioned her until now, is dead two years now, from lung cancer that was first diagnosed as Stage Four. She lived two years after that diagnosis and I took care of her during her last ten months.
We worked at the Donna Marathon Expo, handing out packets that included Donna's second memoir, Through Rose Colored Glasses. As volunteers, after the Expo closed down, we were given the latitude to take extra Donna memoirs that were in stock. I took about five and mailed them out media mail to family and friends who I thought would appreciate them. They were either lady runners or lady friends battling breast cancer or other kinds of cancer, or survivors of cancer, or like Donna, all of the above.
One of my runner friends who has a streak going on ten years of running at least one mile every day but also runs many many more miles on many days but has never run a marathon, nor had cancer, felt like it was an omen that I had sent her the book. She has flirted with the idea of a marathon challenge but has never taken it up. I have run a few marathons but am not as fast or serious about the craft of running as this friend is. I am a hit and miss kind of gal who, like an old horse, always comes home when I set my sights on it. I have run five or six marathons and many halves plus a few fifteens and one 50K which I am very proud of.
That night after the Expo volunteering, trading emails with my running friend, we decided to commit to a marathon together, next fall in the Baltimore area, the NCR Marathon in north Baltimore County. It is a smallish marathon. It is on the old North Central Rail Trail, now called the Torry C. Brown Trail. It is a soft surface, and goes one way 13.1 and back again. It is in a tunnel of nature. It is usually held the weekend after Thanksgiving. That is significant to me. We Americans need to refocus. Pharmaceuticals, medicine in general, they make too much money off of our ignorance, our sloth, our materialistic bullshit.
I have considered doing the NCR Marathon race for years. We used to be members of the Baltimore Road Runners Club, who hosts it, when we lived in Baltimore. We never really did runs with them, though I connected with them and discussed it, asking if our young daughter could ride her bike along side us as we ran. Yes, they said, as long as she doesn't run over any of us. I liked their attitude. We never did connect with them though, but we did get out on the NCR Trail on our own schedule. In years later, my husband and I hiked parts of it, and just this last year, we bicycled the entire route and then some - it continues on across the border into Pennsylvania.
So I know it now and I like it. The soft surface is not so soft that is will be like running in sand or mud. But it will be friendly to my body, the giving surface of the earth. Better than cement or even asphalt.
And I hope to be around the same weight as my younger sister by then. I have 25 more pounds to lose, and am down 20 from where I was last Spring. It sounds so nuts to me that I have carried this much weight on me so long. I am an Appalachian Trail section hiker, have run many races though none fast, and am always active. But my poor frame has been lugging 55 pounds around for 30-some years.
With this next marathon, I will be back to my weight where I ran my very first marathon at the age of 23. Actually, I don't really know what I weighed then. I am supposing I weighed around what my younger sister weighs - 25 pounds less than I weigh now.
I've never weighed myself regularly like I do now.
So we are talking 134-138 pounds.
Here we go.
