Last Place Runner

I’ve worn my Altra running shoes to the gym for a week now. I’m glad I ordered two pairs! It was not difficult really to adjust to them, but I could tell my alignment was different as I ran. It also seemed like I was making the treadmill shake — maybe just a difference in how my feet were striking?

I’d been having some burning tightness in my outer right calf. I noticed on my first day in the Altras that wasn’t happening. The shoes are nice and roomy and so well padded on the heel. I’d like my husband to try a pair because he is never happy with any pair of shoe EVER, not since the pair he bought for our wedding and was discontinued by the time he wore them out several years later. He’s still not sold on the idea — and I know he has to think things he does are his idea alone. So I’ll enjoy my comfy new running shoes while he keeps looking for his perfect pair.

I also upgraded my fitness tracker recently. I’ve been using the Fitbit flex since last summer. And I liked it … BUT …

I wanted something with more than a line of lighted dots on the display. I was not so hot to have it that I bought a newer one. But a couple of weeks ago, Groupon had the Garmin Vivofit for $59.99. (Last I checked, Amazon had it for the same price.) It sets your daily goal for you and if you sit around too long, a red band creeps across the top of the display. It shows date, time, calories, steps, and goal. I haven’t compared it to my Fitbit (maybe I can wear them both tomorrow, if I remember) as far as tracking steps, but after having worn a Fitbit for so long, I know pretty well how much I move around on any given day. And I know, too, (sadly) about how many steps I can pack in during a trip to the gym. It seems pretty close. The Vivofit tracks sleep without having to be put to sleep (like the Fitbit, which put itself in sleep mode every time I pushed a grocery cart from the store to the car), but it usually doesn’t know I’m awake until after my shower. Which is my fault, anyway, because the Vivofit can be worn in the shower, but I take it off. And I’m not too concerned about how accurate the sleep tracking is because I usually know if I slept well or didn’t.

So, TL;DR: I like my Vivofit OK. It doesn’t have a backlight (the newer model does), and it runs on a battery with about a one-year life span, so no more charging.

My friend Lauren posted on Facebook that she and her husband had joined a six-month challenge on dietbet.com. I had heard about it before, but I didn’t know anyone who had done it, so I didn’t look into it much. But I looked over the challenge, which is to lose 10 percent of your body weight in six months. It’s $25 per month, which you can win back and then some if you hit all your goals. So I decided to go for it and rely on Lauren and her husband for moral support and good-natured taunting. Then today I decided to not go wild on holidays, but also not kill myself trying not to eat all the fresh sweet corn we bought at a roadside stand.

So that’s where I am right now.

The first phase of my challenge is over. I did not lose an ounce. But, strangely enough, I lost three inches from around my middle. I know that’s what I should care about. THE NUMBERS ON THE SCALE DON’T MATTER, they say. But kind of they do and you know it.

I was out of town last weekend, so I went with my mom to one of my very favorite places ever. It’s a drug store, but the entire store is devoted to my favorite aisles of the grocery store: health and beauty. This place carries essential oils, high-quality supplements, hard-to-find brands of shampoo and row upon row of kitschy drug store stuff. When I was itty bitty, my mother worked in a local pharmacy (that was much later used as a setting for a well-known film about a simple-minded killer), and I have always loved the way certain places like that have the deep, waxy smell of lipstick mingling with the sterile plastic scent of bandages. The place I went to last weekend does it for me. Although I hadn’t been there in 15-20 years, the place could still satisfy the itch I didn’t know I had.

One thing I couldn’t get over was the selection of protein shake powder and meal replacement shakes. I don’t know if that kind of thing has always been available in that store, because I just started using protein/meal replacement shakes (sparingly) about a year ago. They good ones can run to the expensive side and I usually make my decisions about shakes based on calories, protein, and carbs. I had never even considered that there were as many types of protein powder as I saw at that store last weekend. I ended up buying four little sample packets of a brand called Spirutein. This morning, being in the challenge phase where I can have a meal replacement shake, I tried the red velvet mix I bought last weekend.

I always make my protein shakes with unsweetened vanilla almond milk, ice and a little bit of water in the blender. The red velvet Spirutein had a very chocolaty scent and it blended up a nice red velvet color. The texture was perfect. In reviews of Spirutein I’d read online after buying my samples, I’d seen a lot of people complain about a bad aftertaste. I didn’t notice it with the red velvet shake. It tasted OK, but it was not what I would call delicious. And I think the GNC Lean Shake in Rich Chocolate is delicious. I am also a big fan of Advocare’s chocolate mocha and berry meal replacement shakes. The red velvet Spirutein was just OK, but I won’t be buying a canister.

I still have three others to try, and because I’ll be out of town much of this coming week, I will probably bring the packets with me to make a quick breakfast.

Another thing that happened this week: I have really wanted to try a pair of Altra Running Shoes for the longest time. Good running shoes, like good protein powders, are expensive. I don’t object to that at all. I just couldn’t justify a new $100+ pair of running shoes while I’ve still got two pairs of Brooks Adrenaline with plenty of miles left in them.

But this week, Altra announced a sale on their Facebook page. The Intuition 2.0 was on clearance for $49. I didn’t hesitate at all. I went to their website to order and, although I can pretty well wear any shoe in a 6 or 7, Altra’s website had a great tool for helping determine your size in the shoe you want to buy. You select the size, make and model of the shoe you have now and it tells you the size you will need in their shoe. It also tells you how their shoe will feel different compared to what you’re wearing now. So I ordered a green and white pair.

Then, a little later in the day, I talked myself into a second pair. My thinking was, well, what if I just LOVE these shoes? So I snatched up a blue pair, too, and still came out ahead if I had bought one pair at regular price. If I don’t love them for running, I will still have my two pairs of Brooks and I can wear the Altras for my workouts with my trainer.

Nothing beats a proper fitting from your local running store, though. Shoes make a big, huge difference to a runner. Without the right shoes, you could end up injured. And that concludes my public-service announcement.

Lastly, I’m a beekeeper and we have to check our hives today to make sure nobody’s honey bound. It has rained and rained so much for so long, I’m not sure how the honey production will go this year. But it’s finally drying out and warming up. We will be gone several days this week, so we have to do a hive inspection today to make sure we won’t leave our bees in a tight spot while we’re gone. I can tell by glancing out the window that the sun is already relentless and it’s only 9 in the morning. So I better get to it so I don’t die of a heat stroke in my bee suit.

As promised, I weighed myself this morning. And I wasn’t happy. And I said, “I will be better today and weigh in on Monday.”

That was the first reality check I had today and I had been out of bed like two whole minutes.

Running, HIIT with a trainer and nearly a 10-pound weight gain in 6 months. It’s not one day of eating that brought those pounds back. I must’ve been really trying to gain that kind of weight.

So here it is. I have two digital scales (and an analog scale) in my house. Maybe something is wrong with me to be so fixed weighing myself. One scale measures half-pound increments and the other one, which I just bought a few weeks ago, measures in tenths. It also differs by up to three pounds in the wrong direction over what the other scale says, so I hate it. A lot. But it showed an even 209 pounds this morning. And my nicer scale showed 207. So clearly, either way, it’s a situation that could be better.

But, feeling defeated and flustered, I got in the shower to get ready to go to the grocery store. I was standing there in the warm water, thinking hateful thoughts, being mad, basically saying FUCKIT.

Next weekend I’m going out of town for my best friend’s grandmother’s 80th birthday party. Mawmaw is one of those people who doesn’t know she’s 80. She’s smart, liberal, sass-mouthed, funny, and she loves me like I’m one of her own. There’s no way I would miss her party, to which I was invited weeks and weeks ago with a fancy invitation. It was that invitation I was thinking of as I combed knots out of my wet hair in the shower this morning. “Cake and dancing!” I thought, “The invitation said cake and dancing.” Going to Mawmaw’s party meant that would not allow myself to have cake. And not allowing myself to have cake defeats the purpose of going to a party entirely.

I mean, if I catch myself denying that I have some kind of problematic relationship with food, please refer my ass straight back to this post.

Then I realized something. I’ve been to tons of parties, millions of weddings, thousands of baby showers. I remember bits and pieces about the good time I had. But I could not recall a single crumb of cake I had eaten at any of those events. I thought about my own wedding. And while I can verify that the cakes were beautiful, I can only tell you they were delicious because my husband’s sister made them for us. I don’t remember eating any, although I have seen photographs to prove that we did feed each other a bite of each cake. But did I have more? I don’t know. That’s not what I remember about that day. And still I look back on our wedding with such sweet fondness, such tender happiness. I think of our wedding cakes as a display of love from my sister-in-law (a kick-ass baker) and never as sinful calories that were the only reason I showed up for the wedding.

To deprive myself of celebrating with Mawmaw next weekend because it will fall in one 10-day period that I simply won’t be eating cake is just really stupid. And when I realized it would never remember the cake anyway, eating cake is what seemed pointless.

I went to the grocery store. I came home and made egg muffins with turkey sausage and veggies. Then, after dinner tonight, I made a big stir fry of chicken breast, peppers, onions and lots of red pepper. I sliced up a pear and sprinkled it with cinnamon. And then I packed a little bag with what I’ll need for my cleanse while I’m away next weekend. It all fit in a sandwich-size plastic bag. It ain’t hard!

I’m still going to weigh in tomorrow and see if I like those results better. But whatever it is, I know it won’t be what it was 6 months ago. And it’s time to change that.

You in or what?

Since I’ve been gone, I haven’t given up on running! In fact, there’s a trainer at my gym who has been helping me with strength training and high-intensity interval training (HIIT).

My new job, at almost three months in, is great in a lot of ways. But sometimes it is very demanding. So writing, which is what I want to do, gets pushed off and just almost forgotten about. But I want to write here. I recently read through some old posts and saw how well I managed being without a job for a while, and what I wrote about making the most of my free time — and that I really did do the things I promised myself I would do — was kind of amazing to me.

Tuesday starts another 24-day challenge for me. And June is going to be a challenge in a lot of ways. I’ll be traveling for a big 80th birthday party next weekend. And my dad is retiring during the challenge, too. So we’ll all be going to a big old party then. But, after talking to my friend Amber and talking to myself about making my own self a priority, I’m ready. I’ve had to carry around a jar of peanut butter in my purse before. I’ll do it again!

Tomorrow will be my prep day. My goal is to go into Monday eating like I’m already on the challenge. Because my husband has type II diabetes, he’s been really focused on his health lately, too. So being on plan is a must for us, and not just for weight loss. I want my husband to be around to say, “Huh?” to everything I say for many years to come!

So stay tuned! Official weigh-in will be published tomorrow. Yep, I’m going for it.