Eat to Live - Checkpoint #4 + Half Marathon Training

Just finished Week #2 of my Half Marathon Training, and a long-slow distance (7.0 mi). I did my first two weeks on a track, to minimize the impact on my achilles tendon, which is still a little tweaky. I've survived the first two weeks well enough to sign up for the Half Marathon in early October, so now I'm committed. I'm still running slow, compared to last year and two years ago, but I'm not worried about it too much.

As for the "Eat To Live" experiment, I'm at Checkpoint #4 now. And compared to last week, I dropped another TWO AND HALF POUNDS. Man, I'm telling you, for me, this is major. It is so freaking hard for me to lose even a half a pound. To put this into perspective, I'm 1 lb. less than my two year low, which took me 3 months+ of hard and intense training to achieve. I'm 7 lbs. away from my 10 year low, which took me 2 years of extreme training to achieve. I'm 14 lbs. from my high school weight, and 19 lbs from my ultimate goal. I'm thinking it's gonna take 2 years to hit, but at this rate, who knows?

Scoping out the way I feel, I feel really strong, very alert, very clean. I don't feel any different in terms of weight, per se, my muscles in my legs, back, shoulders, and arms still feel the same, fairly dense. And my clothes don't really feel any different. My abs do feel a little less "spongy" as my youngest daughter calls it, and I can pinch a lot less than before.

Again, I've stuck pretty much to the plan. Green smoothies for breakfast, love 'em. I'm adding some other greens to the mix (beet, collard, watercress -- in addition to the staples: kale, spinach, romaine, bok choy). Some of them are "challenging" to take a sushi term, but I don't really care much about the taste or texture per se, I'm more concerned with the energy and nutriets and how I feel afterwards. After one or two times, they taste quite good and refreshing. Lots of green salads for lunch and dinner, some more cruciferous raw veggies with some yummy vegan dips my wife was so kind to procure. And some inventive dishes that my wife cooked up for us, like brown rice sushi, with crunchy nori, tofutti cream cheese (a little), carrots and zucchini. Too die for stuff. We even mixed in a vegan pizza (no cheese, no meat), as well as some Tofurkey (trying to see if can we have a vegan Thanksgiving!). All in all, not a bad change of pace.

Next week, I'm gonna talk more about food again, focusing on portions, calories, etc. I was wondering during my run today, why I gained weight these past few months, even though I was quasi-vegetarian, and doing some intense strength training. Maybe the answer lies in the food I ate? We'll see... Half a great rest of the weekend! Health and Happiness to you all!