Monthly check-in

It's been a month since I embarked on this journey, and as of this morning, I am down 9 pounds. I didn't think to do a waist measurement, and after dinner, popcorn and 3 glasses of water, I'm not so sure I'd post an impressive number!

9 pounds is good, and it would be fine if I lost 9 pounds every month. But we know that it doesn't work that way. Usually you start out strong, and your body starts adapting, conserving more calories and making it harder to burn them. 

This is part of the reason I take in 1600 calories a day. I know I could go lower. I think I've read that it's safe to go as low as 1200 a day. But if anything has to give, I'd like it to be the exercise. Basically, I'd rather do more exercise to burn more calories, than to eat less, but have less energy for more exercise. I know that at 1200 a day, I'm not going to be able to work out at the intensity that I want to, and as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather put my focus into building a body that's a fuel burning machine. And if, as expected, I plateau, I'd rather have some leeway to lower the calories down the road. Whereas, if I start at 1200, there's nowhere else to go, except to start starving myself (which I can assure you, ain't happening anytime soon). 

Oh! Today I started back on the couch-to-5k program. Week 1, day 1! This was infinitely easier than the first time I started this program, which was around September of 2010. When I started it back then, I thought I was going to die. I also wasn't doing much in the way of exercise at all at the time. I think I made it through like 3 of the intervals and then walked the rest of the way. I eventually "finished" the program in February of 2011, and ran/walked a 5k. (I had forgotten until 2 weeks before the race that I neglected to take a few things into account. One was the fact that I had done the last 2/3 of the program indoors on a treadmill, and the other was that it was much colder than I had ever run in by the time race day rolled around. So, even though I would have liked to have run the whole thing, I walked a good part of it, and my time was something like 42 minutes.)

Today's set of intervals was great, until about the 5th one, when I began feeling a twinge in my hip. By the last interval, it was feeling really bad. When I got home, I took some Advil and bumped up the glucosamine (yeah, I'm getting old!) I'm hoping it's something temporary, otherwise I'll shelve the running for another time. Ideally, I'd like to be able to run this entire race in May. I mean, come on, running, dogs and wine. What could be better?