The Week I gained 5 Pounds and Was Still Proud

Usually, when I gain five pounds, I feel miserable. My self talk is horrible and my sister has to listen to hour after hour of me whining about how easy it is to put on weight and how difficult it is to take it off. But this past Monday when I weighed in and saw that the scale had creeped up, I felt relieved and proud. The relief was mostly because I had a friend in town and we had eaten out pretty much every meal. And then followed up the meal with a beer. Or two. Or three. Okay, who's counting anyway?? After all of that, I only gained 5 pounds. Trust me, I felt the beer bloat and the sodium retention and had the Texas BBQ goodness on my lips, and I was extremely relieved that I had only gained 5 pounds and not the 8-10 I felt like I had gained.

But proud? I don't think most people would be proud about gaining 5 pounds. Especially someone who wants to lose 25+ pounds. And really, I don't know if I'm honestly proud to have gained 5 pounds; more like I'm just okay with it. I'm zen. But why, you ask? (Which, of course, I know you are DYING to know!)

Because I made good decisions most of the time and I exercised. I will admit that my awesome husband (who turned the big 3-1 while our friend was in town) helped remind me of my good eating intentions. Like when we went out for supper at Spoons on a kid-free night, he encouraged me to share my pimento cheese and jalapeno sandwich and (super huge, incredibly large, didn't know it was going to be 6 layers) piece of strawberry cake with strawberry frosting. This helped me get to celebrate and enjoy the yummy treats, but not completely overindulge. It felt good! Like I always tell my kids, sharing is caring!

As for exercise, I got up and did tempo runs, early morning runs through my neighborhood, and also my weekly running group run. I'm actually quite proud of that running group run. Because I ran 13.2 miles as a training (!!!!) run. By the time I finished (in just under 3 hours), it was 86* with a million percent humidity and I was literally baking in the sun. I wore a hat at least, so I don't think my face got too sunburned.

The downside of running 13.2 miles, though, is that this week my mystery leg pain started up again. I talked with some running friends, and they recommended I get new shoes. You are supposed to replace your running shoes every 200 - 300 miles (more often if you have a little more junk in your trunk - or muffin top in my case - I wish I had even a little junk in my trunk!!). I thought that there was NO WAY I had ran 200-300 miles since I got my running shoes in April. And then I looked at my marathon training schedule. In the past 4.5 weeks, I've run 87 miles. And that's not counting the indoor triathlon, 2 5k's, and half marathon and the training I've done from April to now. So I'm probably actually due for a pair. And maybe that's why my calves have started having pain again. Guess it's time for new shoes!