The so good not so bad day..

Okay, today was my first weigh in..and with a little nudity and praying to God.. MY SCALE WAS MY FRIEND! :) I lost 4 lbs this week and hit my goal! I told myself I could cheat on Saturdays if I hit my goal on Friday morning.. but it feels too good to lose! Sooo I have decided I will have a few drinks instead.

Last night the girls and I did great. We ran a little over a block longer than we did the last time. We are supposed to take Fridays off, but we are all so damn addicted we are running tonight anyway. The knees and shins are feeling good today so I am going for it.

I'm hoping the (suddenly quite supportive ;) ) husband will allow me to get out of the house for some FUN tonight.. even just a few hours to celebrate my achievement! I wish we had baby-sitters on a regular basis.

Anyway, feeling strong and proud today. Thanks for keeping up with me, whoever is. It still really makes all the difference.

Horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day.

Well, Maybe not THAT bad... but not so good. I have been so tired all day, no one was able to go outside and run with me, I went to run on the treadmill and some really big girl was walking on the only one here, and I got home and was so mad I ate 1 and a half chicken breasts and almost a whole can of chilli. AND some green beans. I did try to do Tae Bo for 15 minutes but it hurt my knees.

 

Whatever. Tomorrow will be better.

This is really working!

GREAT day for me physically. I woke up and weighed myself... lost another pound. Tonight was supposed to be an "off night" but I felt really compelled to run. I discovered the gym here at my apartments. Great little area with a treadmill. Holy Moly. I am not sure exactly which factors played into my success but I RAN at 4.7 speed most of the time and went 1.7 miles.. running. No stopping. No walking (except the warm up and cool down.) I didn't have this kind of endurance when I was 115 lbs in high school. The other people in the gym were watching me and whispering, hopefully saying, " wow.. the fat girl can RUN" lol. It was amazing. I am so proud of myself. I told myself I can do something and it is really happening.

On a not-so happy note, I think I have runner's knee. I have all the symptoms and my knee hurts like a female dog. Ice, elevation, and ibuprofen. :) Ta ta!

Just to explain further why I am doing this

I came across this great article that explain WHY this is so great for me. This WHOLE thing is great for me. Check it out~

http://fansofbeingamom.com/?p=357&cpage=1#comment-3430

Week Three!

I can't believe I have made it to week three. I'm proud of myself. Granted, I haven't lost a HUGE amount of weight, and I can't run 10 miles straight, I still feel accomplished that I am still going and still really liking it. My knees are definetly taking a toll though. Tonight we ran ... we estimated about 1/3 of our 5k route and walked the rest. The entire time we were walking I wanted to scream from the pain but just walked it out. I'm okay now. This would be much easier if I had the kind of household where I could just lay down and put ice on my legs, ya know? Ahh well. It will be alright. We are taking the night off from running tomorrow due to plans and this week I really don't want to end up hurting again. I want to go out there Saturday morning and kick ass. I want to run that mile and then some. Eating went okay today. Too many turkey meatballs.

Sunday night

Aloha. New plan. No... not a "new plan" .. an extension to the first plan, if you will. I am not losing weight fast enough, and although I said this isn't just about weight loss, and I am not focusing on the scale, I think I will be able to run longer if I lose some poundage. I am going to tweak my diet. I am going to set a weekly weight loss goal for myself and weigh myself every Friday morning. If I don't meet the goal on Friday.. I don't get to have a "cheat meal" on Saturday! :) I am going to focus on eating mainly fruits, veggies, lean protiens and whole grains, at least those are my new food guildlines. We will see how this goes. My legs have just been suffering soooo bad. I had a good run/walk with the girls on Saturday morning. We couldn't go as far as we had hoped because my legs felt broken. We probably jogged 1/2 - 3/4 of a mile non stop and there is a lot of uphill where we were. I guess it's okay. This is going to take time. I just have to remind myself.

A week in review

Alrighty... well, this week I ran Mon, Tues, Thurs, and tonight.. Friday. I am getting up fairly early tomorrow morning to do what I call, "work my ass off run". I am going to push and push and push until I want to fall over and die. Then I'm going to take Sunday off. It is getting harder, but that is because I am pushing harder and running further.

I bought new shoes today, shoes that are supposed to be tailored to work with my body and foot type. They are pretty ugly..but they feel good on. Maybe a bit big.. but I dunno. The shoe lady says they are okay. They are also green.. so signify my first race, the St. Patty's Day Dash! :)

So Denise and Lisa are all aboard on this venture! It seems like they are as much, if not MORE excited about becoming runners than I am. I love them. It seems that no matter what crazy venture I am working on in my life, my friends are always right by my side.. no matter what. Not that anything could stop me at this point, but on my tired days, my girl friends really push me through. Husband is also getting used to this whole situation I think. He would prefer that I run in the mornings so we can spend evenings together as a family, so I may try that two days of the week. :)

My shins still hurt, my knees are throbbing, and my ankles feel broken. I love it. :) Who would ever know that I would eventually be addicted to something healthy?!

Not a lot of news...

I just took the night off to nurse my poor legs. I would be devistated if I couldn't do my first race or even if I couldn't run for a couple of days because my legs were seriously hurt. Denise and Lisa ran without me tonight which made me sooo excited! They are really on board with this whole thing, even without me. This is all very good. :) I sent the husband out for the evening again as I get tired of him mopping around complaining about how much I am "gone". whatev. For better or worse, right? It is 9:14pm and all of my kids are sleeping. I have a movie to watch and peace of mind to enjoy. Right now, at least. I'm going to ice my legs and reeeeelax. We will catch up more tomorrow!

Stay classy, Planet Earth.

So now I know

Yep. Every training program I have come across tells you to run one day, rest the next, train one day, rest the next. Well... I was trying to be an over acheiver. I ran pretty hard two days in a row and this morning, I believe I have what you might call Shin Splints. Blah. I am going to rest today and tonight, ice them and stretch a lot. I have also read that Ibuprofen helps situations such as these. It's okay. It's a learning experience. Now I know. I just really hope they go away so I don't fall off track!

Aint that the truth..

"It's supposed to be hard! If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." - A League of Their Own.

And we are back, ladies and gentlemen..

Big Big things today. I finally figured out exactly how long a 5k is. It's a little over 3 miles. Then Denise and I looked up an area in Puyallup that we could run that is 5k and found a nice little route. We tried to run it. ha ha ha ha. Okay, we made it a little bit over 11 blocks jogging but speed walked the rest. I didn't expect us to be able to jog the ENTIRE 5k, but it was much further than I thought. Lisa came with us. It was a good day. Empowering and good to see we could still get back on that horse!

Here is what is exciting. I have chosen my first race. I am going to do the St.Patrick's day Dash in Seattle. From what I can tell it is a little bit over a 5k and goes up Queen Anne Hill. It is on March 14th. Today is January 19th, I think. SO that gives us almost exactly two months to be able to jog 3 3/4 miles. We obviously understand that we are not going to win the race.. but we are going to run it. Denise and I, maybe Lisa but she is so busy with the wedding, I for one don't expect it. I called my dad to tell him about it today and he seems to think I am too large to run or something. He keeps telling me to walk. I don't want to walk. Sooo that is the end of that. :)


I surfed the internet a little bit and found other bloggers like me, some more races and a great training schedule. The baby is waking up so I gotta 'run'. ha ha ha. I'll write more tomorrow!

Thanks again for keeping up with me... whoever you are!

Okay.. so we will start over.

If I am really going to succeed, then I am going to have to be realistic. Friday night we had a big poker party with tons of guys. Food everywhere and I spent my entire day cleaning and cooking only to sit down for the first time at about 3am. Saturday I went shopping at hectic IKEA all day long and had a wedding planning party for Lisa at night. Today we went BACK to IKEA all day long, and it is Sunday so there was sooo much to do. Thursday I couldn't run because my muscles were way too fatigued. Anyway, there you have it folks. 4 days. no run. This cannot happen again. It wont. Call it temporary insanity. Tomorrow I am going to run harder than ever. I am going to eat well. I am probably going to jump off of a bridge if my kids don't quiet down. BAH

Soooo busy!!

Will update tomorrow after my run! :)

Since I'm up anyway...

I will post a few pics!


This is Andy and I with our wedding party.. obviously.. ha ha


My beautiful baby Dane! 2 months old and well worth the large arse I have now! ;)

I bought a scale.

A good, accurate, digital one. This still isn't just about weight loss but I am feeling great! I have lost 5 lbs since I started running. 5 POUNDS!!! IN 3-4 DAYS.  And that was weighing myself at night. I will do it again in the morning. Tonight Denise, Lisa and I had a rough jog. It was FREEEZING and windy and our muscles were so stiff. I hurting a bit in the legs. My endurance has improved tremendously just since Sunday. My lungs and chest don't hurt at all when I run. This whole thing is probably one of the best decisions I have ever made. I look forward to seeing how far I can go every day! Okay. I'm typing one handed. Until tomorrow!! :)

"I hear this sends endorphines to your brain!"

Wow. Talk about addicting. Tonight was awesome. So it stopped raining for the Don and me to do our run. We did amazing. I wish I had a way to properly gauge how far we are going..but I know we were active for 40 minutes or so and probably ran at least half the time. We were amazing! The entire time we were just talking about how amazed we were with ourselves and how good it felt to do it. This may be the best decision I have ever made.

On a side note, Lisa asked me to be her Matron of Honor tonight! And Denise to be her Maid of honor! She is one of the greatest people I have ever met and it really is an honor!

So there you have it. The day has ended on a good note. See you tomorrow! :)

Hello crappy, rainy Tuesday!

Well, today I am faced with a few challenges. Number one: Rain. Should I run in the rain?! I mean it IS Washington so like 75% of the days (at least) are rainy. Maybe I should just get used to it? I certainly can't let this be an excuse to NOT run. Can't.
Number two: Unsupportive husband strikes again. Before I started my mission, I specificially asked him if he would be on my side with this and understand I have to run every night. He obliged. Now here we are in our third day of this and he is complaining. He says he didn't know I would be gone every single night. I am gone for less than an hour every single night. Is it making him mad becauses he misses me? Probably not. Probably more like he doesn't want to watch the kids. So now what? Do I just back down and give up? We can't afford gym memberships with day care so if I want to keep running, I just have to go against his wishes. Really, nothing I do has ever been good enough for him so whatever. I can't stop. I have made a promise to myself and I am going to follow through.

So I am going to run in the rain. I'll let you know how it works out! :)

I think I have figured it out.. kind of

So I am sitting here over analyzing and I think I have figured something out. I have figured out a big reason why this running thing is so important to me. It's kind of symbolic. No matter what happens during my hectic days, no matter how crappy people in my life make me feel, or what mistakes I make... I can always run. I mean I can't (nor do I necessarily want to) run away from my problems but I can literally run. For one hour a day, give or take, I can just be me... running. I am alone in my thoughts. I am not hurting anyone and no one is hurting me. It's beautiful. This is becoming so much more to me than I have ever thought.

I know it sounds corny but if you know me you know. I have issues. ha ha. I might be figuring them out. It's cool.

Oh. One more thing comes to mind.
The other night I heard Paul Simon singing "Here comes the sun" a George Harrison Cover. It made me cry. I have never heard anything more touching in my life.

Maybe I actually can do this!

Okay! Just updating after today's run. I went running through downtown Puyallup with one of my best (and very thin) pals, Denise. It helped me a lot to have a partner! I honestly do not know the distance of our run today, but we were active for 35 minutes total and jogged for AT LEAST 10-15 minutes straight! Some people might think that isn't much but for me it was HUGE. I was sweating so bad I looked like I just took a shower. It was beautiful. It was empowering! I am seriously going to do this!

On another note, I tend to over analyze things quite a bit. Mostly my life. I think I may have realized that certain important people in my family have brought me down, quite a bit. I have been raised to have the belief that once you become a mother you are not important and you ONLY worry about the kids. I am important though, Damn it!
Today for instance. I talked to one of my family members who gets mad if I don't talk to her on the phone every single day. I told her about my plans to change the way I live my life and run a marathon some day. All I heard was a sigh and then a frantic, " What are you going to do with the children?!" Like I am some kind of idiot or something. Obviously Andy will watch them. She proceeded to talk down to me and ask me if he lost his job or something. Seriously? I will go running after work. etc. etc. etc.
It's this kind of talk I have had to deal with my entire life. Worse now that I am a mom. No body ever cares how I am doing.. they just want to make sure I am around to make the kids happy. Which I am. They are still and always will be my numero unos. I just can't understand why it is so hard for anyone to care about me? I have probably done it to myself in one way or another.. it is just something to complain about, I guess.

Anyway. We will see if I am sore tomorrow. If not.. I'm hitting the streets again! :) I know that probably no one is reading this but it feels good to have something to publish that I am proud of. I'm doing this. It's all happening.

Day 2

Hola. Okay so I woke up a little bit sore this morning. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I don't even know if I should try to run again or if I should just walk. I will do some online research. Feeling good overall though. Ready to face the day. I guess I will give myself a goal this week. By Sunday I hope to be able to run for 5 minutes straight. ha ha. It seems too pathetic that I can't do it but it is harder than I remember. Maybe because I had a baby 10 weeks ago and I am out of practice. I will give myself some slack. :)
I was reading over my first blog again and I am afraid I need to print a retraction. I said I get "no help at all". That isn't true. My dad and step mom help out when they can but they live an hour away so they just can't come out all the time to give mama a little time to breath. That is understandable. And by help I meant no one remembers to ask me if I need a little down time to myself and we get a baby sitter for a few hours once every three months.. maybe. So there you have it. I wasn't trying to down talk my family or anything, I was just explaining part of the reason for my feelings of depression and such.


I feel happier already. Maybe it's the idea that I am doing something for myself, maybe the little bit of exercise I have had is sending endorphines to my brain. Maybe it's that I have something to look forward to. Maybe it's that two of my best friends just got engaged this weekend? :) Anway. I feel good today. I'll post more after the run/walk today. Wish me luck!

Now that THAT is out of the way...

Okay.. some good news and some bad news. I went to Bradley Lake Park today for my "run". It is about a mile once around the trail and I made it twice around. Bad news is, I am in much worse shape than I thought. This may take a little bit more time than I had anticipated. My "run" was more of a walk/run. I could run at a slow pace for about 2 minutes until my chest and throat were burning so bad I felt like I was going to throw up. I would then slow her down to a speed walk. It's ok. It's the first day. Tomorrow (if I'm not too sore) I will try again. Increase a little bit. I had a HUGE salad for lunch. I did want to add a few things today too. In my introduction you may have noticed I haven't been talking about my diet very much. Well, I am breastfeeding. I still have to eat like a normal person. I have cut out all fast food, sweets, and junk food though. I am not eating past 7 or 8 at night depending on the circumstances of the evening and I am cutting my portions down. No seconds. I am also pounding down the water. I will update more later. Children in need. :)

Day one. Oh Boy.

Well, here it is. The first day of my big transformation.. and the gym of my apartments is locked up times 3. I would have prefered to start this whole process on a treadmill.. but I will not be defeated. I guess I'll just go run the streets. :) Wish me luck.

Well, here we are. Our first post.

This is my journey to the middle because I am tired of unintentionaly continuing my journey to the bottom with every intention of taking my journey to the top. I figure if I can shoot for the middle..I will be so satisfied once I feel like I have reached my goal (or goals) I just may feel like I am on top. Or maybe I will just stop feeling so crappy pretty much all of the time.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kristina. I am 25 years old, a wife to Andy and a mother to Emma (5), Mackenzie (3), and most recently I have become mom to Dane (2 months). We live in a suburb off of Tacoma, Washington that has small town hospitality with big city traffic. My husband works an 8 to 5 job as manager of the installation department at the biggest HVAC company in our area. We live in a three bedroom upstairs apartment that we keep as nice as we can. We do a lot of playing the cards we have been dealt and rolling with it. Too much, hense the blog here.

Okay, we can get to more of all that at another date. I am here to talk about me. I am in love with my husband and my children have always been my entire world. Since Emma was born I have obsessed myself with my kids and pretty much nothing but my kids. I do have a pretty nice circle of girlfriends that I think I am extremely close to, but as we have all come upon our quarter life.. we have drifted a bit. It's normal. Okay, so I have gained SO much weight with all the baby having.  I am not exaggerating either. I have been bouncing between the same 80 lbs of excess weight since 2004. Whoa. So, on top of that I am dealing with depression (post partum or not.. I'm unsure) and pretty terrible anxiety. I get pretty much no help with my kiddos at all (by this I mean no help from Andy or ANY of the kids' grandparents) and I am like 90% positive my husband doesn't find me even the least bit attractive. I am 100% positive he doesn't have very much respect or understanding for what I do every day. I am a stay at home mom. Believe me, if you knew me, you would never think of me as the type to be a SAHM. I have had so many dreams over the years, mostly to teach theatre in a college, maybe high school setting. Move to New York, do SOMETHING remarkable. Amazing. I have always wanted to be somebody. Well, then I had kids. Now I have to make THEM into somebodies.

More about all that later too. I am done having children. Dane was the last baby we are planning to have. Andy is going to get fixed.. if you know what I'm sayin. I have decided to give myself some ME time. Although I understand it is unrealistic to pursue a lot of the dreams I have had, I am going to start small. In the back of my head I have been telling myself I am so unhappy because I need Zoloft or Prozac or something. It JUST hit me that I need so much more than that. I need a life! Of my own! I am going to start creating my life by losing my weight once and for all. How, you ask? I am going to run a marathon. By this time next year, I will be able to say that I have run a marathon. I am out of shape. I have about 60 lbs to lose just to be in a healthy range for my height. I want to be IN shape, sexy even. I want to look in the mirror and say to myself, "At least you look good". In addition to all the running.. I have decided to go back to school. The only college I have completed is in the medical field. The boring side of the medical field at that. I am going to school for cosmetology. Damn skippy. I plan to start in the summer if the program even starts then.

I am going to blog about my journey because I need to. Not only for myself, but because I know so many other mothers are out there wondering who the hell they are every day. Other moms that need a purpose other than.. being moms. I am only 25 years old and I swear I feel like I am 40.. maybe even older. I understand that this wont be easy but it is necessary. I need to prove everyone wrong that thinks I am a flake (including my husband). Tomorrow I am going to get on the treadmill and run. I am going to run until I can't anymore just to see how long I can even go.

Wish me luck. We are in this together.... kind of.