Successfully social

I went out for dinner and drinks at a local brewery last night. Luckily Husband and I ordered two dishes to split, and a squash salad. I love when we share things because he has no real concept of how much I actually ate. I managed to do a lot of picking and very little actual eating. I did have three beers and would be happier if I had stopped at one or even two, but we all know how terrible I am at restricting alcohol. And at least I hadn't eaten since the smoothie I had for breakfast.

After dinner/drinks our friends invited us out to a party where there would be more food and drinking, but fortunately Husband was as tired as I was so we left the bar and were home and in bed by 8:45!

Small victories, but I'll take them.

Cuppa

Today's intake:

3 cups of coffee

5 cups of tea

1 Banana

Thursday's plan for going out to eat worked pretty well except I of course had 2 beers (worst part is, this is better than the 3 I often have) and 2 cheese curds. 

Friday I only had a few bites of things here and there but then had a glass of bourbon egg nog and 3 whiskey sours at night. 

Saturday I didn't eat all day because I knew I had Husband's work Christmas party, where I ate some raw veggies, a small piece of baked chicken and a dinner roll..... And drank a double scotch and 3 beers.

My food intake is so much easier to control than my drinking. I'd be dropping weight quickly I'm sure if I could quit the booze. Or even cut it in half. 

Social eating

I need to re-work my strategies. 

Losing weight was so easy before I was married and wasn't expected to have regular meals with some one I care about. And I really don't want him to notice my lack of eating. I have to say I'm envious of those of you who want people to notice. It's hard to actually lose anything when people are watching and I don't want them to think I'm trying to lose weight. It's easier to ignore food altogether when I'm hungry than to sit down and try to eat a modest portion. I end up way over-eating. 

Some thoughts on how to handle this.

Eating more slowly/Stopping when they stop - Slowing down would be tough, as I am already a slow eater. Even at a pace that feels ravenous to me, I'm still usually the last one done eating, so I am used to having every one watch me keep eating. I think what I need to do is consciously make the effort to realize when Husband or whomever else I'm sharing a meal has finished eating and just stop there. Don't keep going. 

Make/order things that are easy to pick at - A burger gets relatively scarfed. Salad can be pushed around a plate. Even fries can be picked at and stacked and moved around while not actually being consumed. 

A good friend of mine is one of the skinniest people I know, and she's very strategic. I pay close attention. Every one thinks she eats a lot and is magically skinny, but watching her habits, she's really quite genius. 

Example: We went out to eat the other night (her, her husband, my husband, and I) and she ordered a meal called the "plowman's picnic", which comes with a bunch of options for what to order. She decided to do soup, salad, and a large pretzel. She ordered the chicken chili for her soup, and when that came she stirred it for a while, took one small bite and then gave it to her husband, remarking that it was "too spicy". He then took a bite and stated that it wasn't spicy at all. She insisted it was for her. Easy to get away with because I would also add, she's pregnant. Then when our meals came out (various sandwiches, mine being a black bean burger) her salad and pretzel were on the plate together, dressing and dipping sauce on the side. She pulled apart the pretzel and picked at her salad. Added no dressing to her salad, never saw her actually take a bite of the pretzel, didn't even finish the salad. It still looked like she ate. She's good. 

Going to make a public attempt tonight. There is a beer event tonight at a burger place (that has the best veggie burger in the area) so I'm going to try to stick to one beer (damn you alcohol!) and only eat half of the veggie burger and 5 fries. If I get in a good run today and only consume the smoothie I made this morning, I should be okay. 

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.