Source 

Emotional
Stress
Boredom

You could basically fit any of those words (and probably a few more) into the title of this post, and you’ll have my eating habits for the past two months.

Now, I’m not trying to dwell on what I’ve done wrong before, but I sorta have to acknowledge it if I want to be able to move forward.

Things started going to crap when I began working from home.  I was suddenly thrown into a situation with no structure, and while I didn’t have alot of food in the house, I’d get bored and eat anything I could, or I would order delivery or hop in the car and head over to McDonalds or Wendys.  If these were my meals, it probably wouldn’t have been so bad, but this was a fairly constant thing throughout the day.  I also grew less interested in cooking, so almost every meal was eaten out, with little regard to healthy choices.

I resolved to do better in June, but that was a joke.  I housesat for my aunt for two weeks, in a house FILLED TO THE BRIM with all sorts of food, and I basically had at it.  I wasn’t eating out as much, but I was making up for it by eating all sorts of shit otherwise.

At the end of June I was on vacation in Winnipeg, Canada.  Again, lots and lots of eating out.  My only real saving grace there was that most of the eating was at actual meal times, there was very little snacking in between.

I don’t know why I get like that.  If I get upset at anything, I eat.  If I am stressed or bored, I eat.  If I have a craving for the slightest little thing, I eat.  If I try to allow myself one cheat meal, that basically gives way to a cheat day, which can give way to a cheat week, etc…

It sucks, and it sucks worse in that after I’ve eaten, I have very little motivation to do much else.  I just want to veg, so my workouts go out the window.  I workout a lot better on an empty, or near empty stomach, and over these past couple months having a empty or near empty stomach was a rarity.

But…hopefully that is all in the past, and I will get back on track.  Hopefully maybe even better than before, because the diet is something I’ve always struggled with to an extent.  I’m just not sure as to the best way to go about it.  I’ve tried counting calories before, and that lasted maybe a week.  I’ve tried meal tracking on Sparkpeople and Diet.com too, but quickly lost interest there as well.  Hell, the only reason I set up a twitter account was to tweet my meals, but that didn’t last long either.  I don’t know why it gets like that, especially I have no problem tracking each and every workout on Dailymile.

Blarg…I don’t know.  I was thinking about Weight Watchers for Men, but I don’t want to pay for something I’m going to end up not using.  I could just strive to eat healthy and not keep track of anything, too.  I know that works for alot of people, but I’ve been surprised in the past at how bad my “healthy” eating could be.

I’m rambling, so I’m going to shut up now.  I know something needs to be done, so it will, even if it means revisiting some old tools I tried to use in the past.  In the meantime, any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated  

Have a great day!

Quick check in, just wanted to say hi. 

So, um, yeah…Hi!

I’ve been trying to hang around more on Twitter, but my blogging is still a bit lackluster.

My “being back” is a little slow going, admittedly, but it’s happening.  I had my first real workout in a while (besides the half) on Wednesday, and it felt nice to be back at it.  Hopefully with summer around the corner (and unofficially starting this weekend, WooT!) that will provide even more push for me.

Anywho, I’ll be spending my Memorial Day weekend in Cleveland, visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other nifty stuff.

Do you have any plans?  Whether you do or not, I hope you have an awesome weekend.

It started simply enough…

Mary of A Merry Life had made a comment on Twitter yesterday about maybe wanting to do a workout pledge.  She was considering doing 30 seconds on the treadmill per comment.  I told her to be careful, because she tends to get A LOT of comments, but then nonchalantly said I’d match whatever the pledge was in a workout.

And so it began…

By the time commenting closed at 2:30pm CST, there were 180 comments, which equates to 90 minutes on the treadmill.  Holy shit!  But that isn’t even the best part!  What I thought was going to be a small challenge involving Mary and I, became SO MUCH MORE.

As of this writing, there were at a TON of other people doing the pledge as well!

• Mary
• Jen
• Lauren
• Josie
• Tina
• Tania
• Meegan
• Kepa
• DCKate
• Beej
• Jodi
• Andrew
• Shelli
• Amber
• Jess
• Sean
• Karen
• Kat
• Lynne
• Michelle
• Lynn
• Gina
• Rachel
• Mary’s Mom

The coolest part about that is that I don’t even think that is a complete list!  That is what I pulled from Mary’s posting, but more and more people are joining the fold in the post comments!  I find it absolutely fascinating that this pledge became just as much a community exercise as it did actual, well, exercise!!  This blogging community truly is awesome, there is just no other way to say it.

Anywho, so about the run.

Ninety minutes on the treadmill, right?  Easy peasy.  Oh wait, I want to actually try to run all of that?  That may be a different story…

…or maybe not…kinda…

7.91 miles in 90 minutes!!!!  BOOYAH!

The longest I’ve spent on the treadmill in one session, and the farther I’ve ran in one sitting.  WooHoo!  Now, I did have to walk for a few brief moments (sidestitch sucks), but whatever.  I also tried to maintain a slower running pace than usual.  Generally, speaking, I don’t really like  to go below 6.0mph, but I’ve never tried running for this long before, and I wanted to conserve my energy, so for the most part was running was kept at about 5.5mph.  I did run one full mile at 6.0mph though, and I even had a couple of brief flirtations with 7.0mph, so WooT!

Once I got an idea of how my pace was, I told myself, and the tweeps, that I wanted to get at least 7.5mph under my belt.  Seeing as how I got .41miles over that, I’d say I did okay. 

ALSO, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been running my treadmill runs on a 1% incline…this was true today…mostly.  For the last 10 minutes I ran at 2%.  It actually wasn’t that bad.

And check this out…I even got a shout out on YouTube!  Thanks Kepa!

Haha..yeah…I don’t think he REALLY hates me though…hehe

Last but not least…Beej suggested we post pics of ourselves after the workout, so here you go, me in all my sweaty, grody, glory:

Sexy, right?

That’s all I got for now.  Be sure to follow the progress of the fellow runners.  Most are livetweeting the run, and you can track ‘em with the hastag #amerryworkoutpledge.

Have a great evening, everyone!