Food, Family, Success!

So before I get into what happened with my day, I wanted to talk about a few things.  First of all, I decided to check how far I had walked yesterday and how long it had taken me.  I figured I had walked maybe a mile and it had taken probably about thirty minutes.  When I checked I discovered that I had actually walked almost TWO miles in about thirty minutes!  I was stoked!  I had no idea it was quite that far, so I felt even more accomplished.

The second thing I wanted to talk about is just a little bit about my relationship with food and how that contributed to where I'm at now.  Growing up I spent a lot of time with my grandparents on my dad's side.  My grandmother did not like to cook, but she would cook for me because I'm her only granddaughter.  The problem was that since she didn't like to cook, she would fix a lot of foods mostly out of a box or can and they were very unhealthy and fatty.  If she fixed a vegetable, it was generally smothered in cheese.  My grandparents on my mother's side both liked to cook and it seemed they were under the impression that people who came over to eat were going to starve.  My grandfather is from Italy, my grandmother from Venezuela.  They cooked a lot of Italian food which means a lot of pasta which was positively divine because it was homemade and it was very easy to eat a lot of it.  They fixed healthier meals than my other grandmother in that they usually made a large salad and some other vegetable.  My parents generally cooked slightly healthier food, but it wasn't as much of a priority.  As I mentioned before, I was at a healthy weight as a child so it wasn't such a big deal.

With my family, primarily with me, my mom, and her parents, food is the way we show our family and friends that we love them.  My mom's parents were never very open and expressive about their love.  It just wasn't their way.  They showed their love by fixing amazing food and encouraging us to eat helping after helping.  My mom likes to cook for our family because the time and effort she puts into it shows how much she loves us.  I'm the same.  When my friends come over to my house on Monday nights when I host, I have a tendency to fix something more elaborate and complicated because, as I've also mentioned, I'm not good at communicating and that's how I show them how much I love them and how much their friendship means to me.

For me, today was a bit of a challenge.  When I woke up this morning I was sure I was going to be incredibly sore, but found that other than my feet hurting, I actually felt fine which was really exciting!  I had essentially the same breakfast as I had yesterday, 1/4 cup of steel cut oats with a little bit of half and half, a small spoonful of honey peanut butter, half a banana, and this time, some strawberries.  Again it was perfect for keeping me feeling full until I went to lunch.  I didn't sleep well last night because I'm learning so much at work and having so much information crammed into my head that my brain would not shut down.  So I slept in later than I meant to and ended up running out the door which means I didn't have time to fix a lunch again.  Oy!  So since I had to pick up some Worcestershire sauce for dinner tonight, I headed over to Smith's to get that and ended up checking out their sandwiches.  It was a pretty fancy place for a Smith's and found a turkey wrap that tasted amazing.  I also got a small dish of a healthier potato salad that was also quite good and a tea.  On my way out, I saw they had this container of chocolate mints.  Almost like Junior Mints but better.  I went ahead and got a container because after dinner a lot of times I want something sweet, but generally I don't need a whole lot.  I figured have two or three of them would satisfy my sweet tooth and prevent me from bingeing like I would often do.  Like I said, the wrap and potato salad were really good and just the right amount of food for me.  I got the tea because it just sounded good and I figured it was healthier than soda.  As I was drinking it, I ended up looking at the information on the side that shows calories and what not.  While it was low on calories, it had a ton of sugar in it.  Whoops!  Lesson learned there.  I'm figuring I'll probably just stick to water and real tea that I make myself.

When I got off work and got home I found the weather was pretty awful.  It was really windy and dusty and it looked like it was going to rain.  I had to get dinner started so while I did that I kept glancing outside and started wondering if I wanted to try to exercise in that kind of weather.  Basically I told myself that it was just a little bit of wind and a little bit of wind never hurt anyone.  Actually it was a LOT of wind and looked quite nasty out.  But as I got ready to head out, it started clearing up a bit which was nice.  I made sure to stretch this time then started up my theme song and started out.  Within about two minutes I was ready to stop.  The muscle along the front of my right leg was burning, the muscle along the inside of my left knee was hurting, and my feet were screaming.  I wasn't on my feet much today at work and I hoped that my feet would do better but it almost made it worse because I hadn't dealt with the pain that day.  I do wear special shoes for my feet and have arch supports in them that are supposed to help my feet and I think they do to an extent, but I think my weight causes a lot of problems with that.  So like I said within a few minutes I thought I was dying and was so ready to stop.  I felt frustrated because I was breathing fine and I didn't feel bad aside from legs and feet.  So I told myself, "You did this yesterday, you can do it again, don't stop before you've even begun."  So I kept pushing myself and focusing on my music to get my mind off the pain.  By the time I got to the lower area where I almost stopped yesterday, I was still struggling and again seriously considered stopping there.  But just like yesterday I could see the stop sign at the street I wanted to get to and I just had to keep going.  As I walked the last little bit to the sign, I started to feel a bit better.  My muscles seemed to have loosened up and weren't hurting so much and even my feet seemed to be doing better, though I figured again that could be me just getting used to the pain.

Part of the reason I was struggling is because of the way I walk.  My right ankle is fairly weak and so when I walk it tends to kind of bend so I end up walking more on the outside of my foot instead of on the entire foot.  That issue is the reason I don't wear heels because you can't really walk on just the outside of your foot in heels without falling.  So when I'm out walking, I'm walking on the side of my foot which causes my muscles to really hurt because I'm not walking right.  If I try to correct it, then the muscles that should be working start to hurt as well.  So it's a bit of a battle.  I'm thinking of starting to wear my ankle brace when I walk to see if that might help.  In any case, I made it to my goal and turned around and started heading back home.  The more I walked, the better I felt to the point that I thought I might try "jogging" again.  I had to tell myself not to jump the gun and see how I felt when I got the point I'd started at yesterday and go from there.  When I got to that point, I decided that I thought I felt well enough and I wanted to do it.  I managed to jog the same distance as I had yesterday, so only about 30-45 seconds.  It was harder to make it this time and by the time I got I got to the point where I had to cross the street to get into the circle where I live, I was sure I wasn't going to be able to jog all the way to my house.  I figured it wouldn't hurt to try and once the coast was clear, I started jogging across the street.  Within a few seconds my legs were begging me to stop, but I kept thinking, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."  Ever read the children's book The Little Engine That Could?  It was my inspiration for that last push.  And sure enough I made it back to the garage and once again I broke down crying.  I was just overwhelmed at the fact that I had done it again, two days in a row.  That is just so huge for me.  Like a lot of things, its been years since I've worked out for almost three days in a row.

My parents and I fixed chicken fajitas for dinner which was really good.  To try to be healthier we used corn tortillas instead of flour and my mom and I use plain yogurt instead of sour cream.  It tasted amazing.  My mom and I each had two corn tortillas but once we were done I was still feeling hungry.  I didn't want to fix another tortilla so what I ended up doing instead was getting some of the vegetables and chicken and mixing it with a little bit of the yogurt, guacamole, and cheese.  It wasn't a huge amount, wasn't terrible unhealthy and it was enough to fill me up.  I had four of the mints I'd gotten for dessert and sure enough they satisfied my sweet tooth.

So while it was not exactly an easy day, I am proud of what I accomplished.  I actually made sure to pack a lunch for tomorrow so I have left over fajitas minus the tortilla all packed up and ready to go so I won't have to buy anything and there will be fewer temptations there.  Yay!  Tomorrow is going to be my rest day for this week since I'm going to see a play with some friends and there simply won't be time for me to work out between when I get home from work and when the play starts.  Friday is back to it!  As I get more used to this I want to set one day as my primary rest day, probably Mondays, but I'll see as I go along.  Once I start up the program I have next week, I'll also be including about twenty minutes of strength training to my routine, so I'm excited about that.  Since I won't work out tomorrow, if I have time I might explain a little more about this program.  For today though, like I said, I'm proud of how I'm doing so far and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all continues!