Eat to Live - Checkpoint #2 + Half Marathon Training

We're at Week #2 of the 6-week "Eat-to-Live" program, or our modified version of it, with green smoothies in the morning, instead of just fruit. I'm doing great! We decided to celebrate my new job (starting tomorrow) with a nice family dinner at our favorite French Restaurant. Now, French Cuisine is not known for being whole-foods, plant-based. On the contrary, lots of meat, lots of dairy ... very hard to avoid. But, we agreed that this was a "free-day" and we could have whatever we wanted for this one meal. Think about it. If you did one meal per week like this, that would be 1/21 or less than 5%, which is no problem.

Here's the kicker. I looked at the menu, and I ordered:

1.) Asparagus Soup (I always get the soup at a fancy restaurant, it's just how I roll!)
2.) Romaine Salad
3.) Vegetarian Pasta
4.) Souffle, Grand Marnier

Okay, so I caved on dessert. I'm not a sweet-tooth at all, but my wife loves the souffle there, and it's a minimum order of two! I must say the meal was great, and I didn't miss any of the animal protein (save the egg-whites in the souffle). It was impossible to go non-dairy here, with the slight cream in the soup and pasta. But, I didn't crave anything I used to before, at all. In fact, the best part of the meal was the broccoli in the pasta! Funny how that goes.

As far as weight goes, I'm 5 lbs. above my low-point just 2 years ago, so I'm very close. My long term goal is get to my high-school weight, which is 20 lbs. from now. I haven't been there...since high school. :)

And as far as half-marathon training goes, I just ran a week's worth of "tune-up" runs to get myself ready for the 10-week training program. It's all in an effort to test my bum achilles tendon, which has been giving me problems for a while now. So far, so good. I just finished up 7.0 miles (slow pace) and I was fine. For the next few days, I'm going to focus on the half-marathon training, to give you an idea of what's involved.