Cookies and Salad

Yesterday, I finally received the care package my mom put in the mail 2.5 weeks ago. I say "finally" because I started to get worried, if it's ever going to get here. It mostly consisted of homemade Christmas cookies. A little late, but still very tasty and destructive to any "eating better" vows one might have made... I am speaking just in general here, since I avoided resolutions like the plague 2012! ;-)

Since my cold takes it's dear time to clear up, decided against a cookie lunch and opted for salad instead... And then maybe just have a cookie or three as dessert!

So happy, that it's already Thursday!

You Win, You Lose!

After having a glorious first game at the 2010 World Cup last Sunday, things didn't go too well yesterday for Germany against Serbia.

While the game sucked on more than one level, at least we got in a really good breakfast. You win some, you lose some!

A bunch of us met up at the Bavarian Pretzel Factory on Woodruff Road to watch the game. They have a HUGE screen set-up and of course they are already open at 7AM. Perfect! The place filled up good with tons of people about to watch the game.

It was my first time there and I thought that they did a great job with the interior design. It looks really nice and cozy with big tables... Great to sit together and socialize.

The menu is mostly Bavarian snacks (Brotzeit) items and they have a wide selection of cakes and pies and then of course the breads... Everything looked so good, it was hard to make a choice.

I ended up having the Leberkaes (a little like a meat loaf, just different! ;-) with a Pretzel and sweet mustard. The food was very good. My only complaint would be the sweet mustard. Not my favorite and normally I can eat sweet mustard with a pretzel and don't even need anything else.

I will sure be back... the Obatzda (cheese spread) just looked way too good to be passed!

So long! ;-)

Food Strategy until Turkey Day

I LOVE FOOD. I REALLY LIKE TO EAT.

There is a reason for the weight struggle that I had for most parts of my adult life. Only since I refocused on sports to offset this food love, I am able to stay at a healthy weight and sustain a healthier lifestyle. That also meant that at one point, I had to stop breaking a sweat, whenever the scale went up a little. It is an often quoted phrase in this context: As long as you stand up more times than you fall down, you are fine. For me that means to monitor my weight and whenever I indulged in food, there also must be a time when I stick to a stricter regiment.

This week was supposed to be one of those stricter regiment weeks, since it's Turkey Day on Thursday. So my original food strategy for the week was being good on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Eat whatever I want on Thursday and hop right back on the band wagon for the rest of the week. Yeah, right... It's Tuesday and it's already not working out!

Why, oh why? Gingerbread... Not the American kind... the German kind. I am defenseless and we have a big supply of original German gingerbread sitting on top of the office cabinet laughing at me. I really don't care for Christmas that much, especially if people start decorating and carolling before Thanksgiving, but I also don't classify gingerbread as Christmas food (as well as my Mom's homemade x-mas cookies)... Those are all-rounders, to be consumed and enjoyed all year round. So my food strategy until Turkey Day was bagged around 9AM yesterday morning.

Oh well... I still have Friday, Saturday and Sunday to even things out a little, but the weekend seems to be dietary bear trap lately. This mission is doomed!

Counter actions have to be defined and executed! Well, they are already defined thanks to Coach Katie and I will ensure to execute as planned, otherwise I really will break into some serious sweat stepping on the scale Monday morning... But I'll be fine... Once again, I will get up!

In addition to my regular scheduled workouts, I am planning on doing a Turkey Day hiking tour with the puppy in Paris Mountain State Park in the morning. Most likely, it's just going to be the two of us and I am planning on doing pretty much the route, I did a couple of weeks ago, but this time hiking not running. There are several Turkey Trots in the area Thanksgiving Day and also a bike ride, but I passed on all of those options, because it either means to get up really early or that I won't be back in on time to drive over to see the family. It also has the side effect, that I will wear out the puppy some, so she will be sleeping most of the remainders of the day and not even notice, that her favorite humans are not at home... Right, like that's going to happen! ;-)

Today At A Convenience Store Close By

Look what I discovered:



You can get tons of German beers here, but I never even heard of "St Pauli Girl"... After some research on Wikipedia, I found out, that it's only getting distributed to the U.S. ... I guess that's why I never heard of it before.

Zum Wohl sein! ;-)

I Don't Have A Sweet Tooth...

… I DO have a whole SET OF SWEET TEETH!


This is not good news, besides it is not really NEW but rather a development that I have noticed for a while now. Fortunately, this development hasn't shown any influence on the scale so far. I am still hoovering between my usual 125lbs and 128lbs. Which basically tells me, that I still work out enough to balance it out and cut calories somewhere else. So instead of fueling my body with good nutrition, I go the junk calorie route. No wonder, I felt like crap 20 minutes into yesterday morning's spin class. Even though my total daily calories might not change a lot, the quality of the food really impacts my workouts…. Crap in, crap out…


In my head, I have all the nutrition know-how one needs. I know that I have to hydrate properly, to eat my five servings of fruits and veggies a day etc. I do make conscious decisions every day to cut out easy calories in meals (no condiments) or substitute them with better quality calories (white bread vs whole grain pita). But some days I am just constantly hungry and on some days, I am constantly hungry and do have easy access to donuts and cake… The evil combination… I told you before, sometimes we go a little overboard around here. So this morning, I got up at 5 AM and was in the pool by 6.15 AM… I did a nice one hour swim and covered 2,500 yards and was really pleased with this. The downside though, early morning swims just seem to set me up for a whole day of being hungry (I blame the cold water for it), even though I had a small breakfast (whole grain pita, couple of slices of roasted turkey breast, one slice of fat free cheese and two slices of tomato) on my way to the pool. After the workout I had an apple and a banana and by the time my co-worker got in the office bearing the gifts to celebrate his son's birth, my stomach was hungry and my brain was yelling SUGAR, SUGAR, SUGAR. If I don't have easy access to junk then, I fool my brain by consuming a diet soda (I know, not good for you… There will be a post sometime in the future about that), but if I have access to donuts and homemade black forest cherry cake…. Guess what is going to win?? ;-)




TA-DAH!


Source: Mishmash!

Yup… You guessed right and yes, it was worth it! :-)

Tomorrow is another day and with the 5-miler coming up on Saturday, I have to get more diligent for the rest of the week in order to prevent nasty stomach upsets that I am prone to on runs… Which proves once again, that racing really is my top motivation for not falling of the healthy-lifestyle-bandwagon for too long.

Training - It's not about weight loss anymore.

This morning we had another food get-together in the office. As previously mentioned, we never seem to have a shortage of occasions to eat. Nice side effect of it is, that they brought in so much stuff that lunch is taken care of too. We had a nice Germany style brunch thing going on including homemade bread, Leberkäse, lunch cut style cheeses and sausage... Very yummy. Of course I couldn't resist. I really don't get homesick a lot, but I certainly miss German food. Since a co-worker discovered this Chicago-based sausage company, the pain has been eased a little. No one can replace my Mum's cooking though! Anyways, I am drifting off.

While we were standing around having our late breakfast, a co worker asked me how the move went over the weekend and stuff. I said that everything was a little stressful, but went alright... Only on the workout front, I was slacking some, but planning on getting back on track this week. Then she said something, that took me little bit by surprise. Sorry, can't remember the exact words, but it was something like: it's not like you need to loose weight anymore...

It's true that last year, when I started my weight loss journey, my workouts were a key ingredient of the road map to loose these 60 lbs, I ended up loosing in the course of 2008. Since then, I have been pretty stable with my weight and sure enough my regular exercise is a key ingredient for that as well. But really, my training is not about the weight loss anymore. Of course, sometimes I think, if I loose another 5 lbs, that hill would be easier to run up. But on the other hand, I already was at that weight (-5 of current) sometime end of last year, after having a bad case of stomach flu and I do have a handful of pictures from that time and it's not pretty.

Everyone that looses weight is afraid to gain it back. Research and news articles (one example here) show over and over again, that only a fraction of people that lost weight are actually able to keep it off for one year or more. According to this, I am not quite out of the woods yet, but I am positive that I will keep it up. I think I have accepted the changes that I made last year as permanent lifestyle changes rather than a temporary fix.

My strategy for long term success is to keep on having fitness goals. I did my first race last year in November and since then, I did several 5Ks, 8Ks, and 10Ks, one sprint triathlon and a metric century ride. For next year, I want to take a shot at an Olympic distance triathlon and a half marathon.

In the next couple of weeks the race schedule looks like this with the hope that my knee is back to normal soon:

9/10-11 Blue Ridge Relay with the team "Do Not Resuscitate"
9/19 American Warrior Triathlon (sprint distance)
9/26 Race for the Cure 5K, raising money to find a cure, pls visit my donation site here
10/10 Ache Around The Lake 8K

September is pretty busy. Normally, I try to race once a month. That keeps me on my toes, dedicated to my workouts and away from the cookie jar (not all the time, but a lot)... And most importantly, it keeps me on track for my larger goals.

Update on my knee: I am fine as long as I am not running. The tape arrived yesterday and I have to try it out soon. Today I did an hour on the elliptical and felt great, no pain at all. Keep your fingers crossed for me.