I went for a bike ride yesterday and the only thing remarkable about that bike ride is that I went on a bike ride. I am fairly certain that yesterday was the first time that I did not take a rest day the day after a big brick, and now I know why!! When I got on my bike my legs did not want to cooperate at all, they were so tired from the 24 mile bike/5 mile run brick on Saturday. It was all I could do yesterday to crank out 12 relatively slow, kind of hilly miles, but crank them out I did. I decided that it probably made me a stronger cyclist to ride for an hour on tired legs. Whether it did or not, that is what I will choose to believe.
I also went to the gym yesterday to do upper body strength training. Jack came with me, which he often does on weekends, but yesterday we did the upper body routine together, which was fun. He has gotten a lot stronger since he has started to go to the gym regularly!! There is no doubt that it is paying off for both of us. I am taking a rest day, today. My body is tired and needs time to recover. I'm beginning to think that it might make sense to make Monday my regular rest day, since my workouts are always longer and more intense on the weekends. I have to give that some thought and think about changing my strength training schedule to accommodate for that.
Yesterday I ate 2024 calories and 102 grams of protein. Total calories were a little more than I normally eat, but the amount of exercise I do on the weekend is more than I do during the week and I think the extra calories were important yesterday, particularly since I couldn't really eat after my brick on Saturday. I didn't do any unintentional eating, yesterday, so that seems fine. This morning I weighed 156.2 pounds which is a slight gain from Sunday morning, but I'm still under my line and I'm OK with that.
My commitment to my eating plan remains strong. In fact, food commercials on TV are really starting to annoy me. Jack had football on TV most of the day yesterday and when I sat in the family room with him I felt like I was being inundated with demands to eat every kind of unhealthy food imaginable. Every commercial featured food that was either fried or loaded with simple carbs, even the milk commercials felt misleading. I wanted to shout at the TV to stop with the horrible food commercials, perhaps I actually did shout at the TV. Yelling at the TV didn't do any good, though I did find that the commercials strengthened my resolve to eat good food, rather than weakened it. When I see advertisements for crappy food I automatically think about how those foods contribute to being overweight and all of the ailments associated with poor diet and being fat and I am relieved that I don't eat that kind of food. On the other hand, I worry about how much crap people, in general, eat, and I wish there was something I could do to stop it. I wish there was a health announcement for every crap food commercial, or at least a surgeon general's warning message at the end of the commercial that said that the dish being advertised contains 1200 calories and almost none of the necessary nutrients needed to maintain good health. I get frustrated by how commonplace crap food is and how seldom you see good food in public spaces. I get frustrated that there is so little attention given to the health risks of eating foods that are high in calories and void in nutrients. I feel like there should be a lot more public discussion about the dangers of crappy food and how crap foods contribute to things like heart disease and diabetes. We are hearing more and more about the "obesity epidemic," which I believe is a real problem, but there still is not a huge public conversation about food that isn't really food at all. *Sigh* Perhaps this is something I need to give some more thought to. Perhaps this is a cause I can put some energy behind and help some people in some meaningful way, rather than just rant about it on my blog. Hmmm...I definitely need to think about this...
In the meantime, I am focused on my health and my husband's health and I feel very good about the progress we are making with our food and our exercise. Training to become a triathlete is time consuming and bleeds into just about every aspect of my life, but I kind of like it. It gives everything focus and clarity in a way that I didn't have before. This is an incredibly gradual process with barely distinguishable progress, but I feel good and that's about 90% of what I am looking for from this. I have no idea what kind of shape I'll be in when the tri rolls around next year, except that I know I will be in better shape than I am today. What more can I ask for?
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