Run, run, run

Kauai, August 2009

I turned 30 this year. So I decided I would lose 10 lbs and get in shape.

Instead I gained 7.

What? seriously?

I didn't change anything I ate or did or didn't do. In fact, even when I wasn't active in an exercise-y way, I considered myself pretty physical. I spent most of my winter running up and down ladders, painting, lifting, moving all my crap around the house. And more recently, I've spent a lot of time outside, mowing the lawn, weeding.

One recent Saturday I spent about 3 hours out in the backyard, hauling big pieces of flagstone from one side of the yard to the other, using only my own brute strength! If you could have seen me! You would have thought "that girl can lift some rocks!" I proceeded to build an entire step out of said rocks. I was landscaping!

I started jogging in the mornings! I ate nothing but fruit and vegetables some days! Amy's Vegetarian dinners! Never had dessert (ok, maybe a little something once a week?). Salad everyday! No pasta! No rice or carbs! I already don't eat meat and there's nothing else I can possibly cut out of my diet. I must have lost a few pounds by now?

No.

I recently stepped it up a bit and twice this week went to the track.

I've been clocking in at 11-12 minute miles. This may seem slow (it is). But it is a crazy miracle that:
1) I choose to spend time running
2) I do get some sort of enjoyment from it. If I can get into a groove, it feels like I can run forever. But more recently the humidity has made this hard to achieve.
3) (and this one goes out to anyone who might remember me from gym class) that I can run a mile in under 16 minutes. I was the girl who was walk-running with a stitch in my side the whole way. I was a tortured soul, who dreaded running "the mile" (required by school rules to be run twice a year). I learned in the last years of high school how to rearrange my entire year's class schedule to have to only run it once instead of twice. Yes, this was what I cared about back then.

So I do consider it a minor victory to run a couple of miles, even if no weight has been lost.

But seriously - can a girl lose a pound?