Thanksgiving. Every year.

Well, Thanksgiving was a total shit show. In terms of food, that is. Visiting with family was nice, but I came home at 164 lbs. Jeez. It was just 5 straight days of food. GOt home late Sunday night. I had nothing but black coffee and raw ACV in warm water yesterday until dinner (would've loved to have skipped that but ah, the perils of being married), which was simple as I had zero appetite from stuffing my face for so many days. I plan to do the same today. I already woke up today at 160 so I know a lot of the weight gain was just bloating, but that's really not much better than fat gain except that it's easier to lose. I'm excited we aren't traveling for Christmas. We have no family in the area so there will not be nearly as much face stuffing as occurs when we are "in from out of town". I've basically been the same weight since May, which is not okay.

I also didn't run while I was gone. Too many food/drinking events and late nights. I thought this would mean I would come back and have all kinds of energy to run off what I consumed, but my left IT band is screaming tight from sitting in the car for 30 hours of traveling and when I tried to run yesterday I wound up with horrific knee pain after about 1 mile. So that was a bust. So instead I have been trying to burn calories by cleaning my house and decorating for Christmas.

Good ending to a disaster day.

I made beer yesterday at my brewery job. I thought I would be in the clear as it's a busy job and I was on my own so I could keep moving and eat little to none. I made a smoothie in the morning and packed a small salad for lunch. Shortly after getting there however, my friend who works upstairs brought in a box of fucking Krispy Kreme doughnuts (not even delicious. ugh.) and left them in my work area. He said "here, these are for any one". Had it been just a single doughnut for me, I would've tried to wait until he left, and thrown it in the trash, but since they were for "every one" I tried to leave them on the counter. I tried to ignore them. As long as I didn't open the box, I was in the clear. I ended up eating TWO doughnuts later in the day when a co-worker showed up and started eating them. Shortly thereafter, one of the guys from the pizza place next door brought me a slice of pizza. Fuck. In an effort to be polite, I ate the majority of it, but he had to leave and go back to work before I finished the whole thing so I threw the rest in the trash. This was still significantly more garbage than I had anticipated eating. 

I was dreading whatever our Friday night plans might be so when I got home I went for a 4 mile run and then took the dog to the park to run around for a bit, even though I hadn't sat down all day and my legs were a little tired, I needed to do at least a little damage control especially because Friday nights usually involve a lot of food and beer. 

But then, lucky me! Husband had plans that didn't involve me, so I was able to skip dinner and go to bed at 8pm! So if I figure I ran off the doughnuts and the rest of my intake for the day was the smoothie, two-thirds of a slice of pizza and a few bites of salad, it's not as terrible of a day as it could have been. 

Husband is working this morning, so that gets me out of breakfast and possibly lunch but I do have two social events tonight that involve food. If Husband wasn't going with, that would make it easy: Not eat at the first event to "save room" for the second one, and then lie claim I already ate at the first one to get out of eating at the second one. But it won't be that simple. 

My body is stressed.

I need to take a break from running. Not a large break. But maybe a week.

My body is so sore. I did a shit job of recovering from that race. Too much running, not enough food. As a consequence, I'm retaining something. I stepped on the scale today (ugh, mid-month) and was 157.5. I'm not losing anything, which really is to be expected. I'm still running close to 50 miles every week, not eating enough (and the food I do eat is garbage), only sleeping a couple of hours every night, work is incredibly stressful right now, I drink too much. My cortisone is likely through the roof and my body is holding on to everything. I have an event to go to tomorrow night and Saturday night so I neeeed to be running the next couple of days. The event tomorrow is the opening of a friend's bakery/brewery and the event is terrifyingly titled "Carbs Gone Wild" because it's all bread and beer. There is no way in hell I'm not running off those carbs. And of course next week is Thanksgiving. Yikes!

But I think starting after Thanksgiving, for one week I am going to not run and try very hard to not drink alcohol. Hopefully cutting out the alcohol for a week will give my body a chance to hydrate and keep my calories down to offset the lack of running. Not that I'm going to be stagnant. I'll still do some yoga and at least walk the dog to the park. I'll keep moving. I have to. But let my running muscles have a little breather because it's damn near impossible to lose any weight when my body is this stressed.

Fifty kilometers

I finished the 50k. It took me more than 8 hours, but I finished it. The trails were very steep, and I knocked out the first 20k in under two and a half hours but I slowed quite a bit after that. I wasn't really properly conditioned for it, but I finished and that's what counts I guess.

I managed to eat a lot Friday night through Saturday. I felt disgusting. I can't remember the last time I was so full. I haven't had a true binge in a while, but I have had some large meals here and there, though those large meals are only ever one meal. It's not 36 hours of basically stuffing my face.

The other challenge has been eating for a couple of days after the race. My legs are still a little sore and I know it's important to keep carb and protein intake up post-race in order to recover, but that has been even more challenging than eating beforehand. At least I knew I was going into a major calorie burn. Eating now feels like a waste. I've been walking since but have been a little too sore for running the past couple of days (though I know a short little run the day after can help soothe muscles) but I think I am up for a few miles today. I don't have to work today so I have some time to do things.