Thursday, September 22, 2011

Giant slab of beef

Carolina John over at Smoke Training has been doing a series about how he got fast.  You can read part 1 & 2  here.  Part 1 is all about trimming down so you can speed up.  It makes total sense and had actually been somewhat on my mind since shortly before his first post.

You may remember that I recently ran the Greek Fest 5k averaging 9 minute miles.  I ran the first mile in just over 8 minutes!  It was so exciting to see that potential, but I was 100% tapped out at the end.  I had nothing left to give.

This is what I looked like pre race.

And here is what crossed the finish line.

I could blow this up and doodle all over the problem areas, but I think it's clear that this is MY wide ass bouncing in the wind, cottage cheese in tow.

I don't want you to think that I'm being really hard on myself.  Or that I compare this photo to magazines in search of the perfectly sculpted ass.  Truth be told, this ass doesn't look all that terrible in a pair of jeans.  But I've begun to feel this ass weighing me down more and more when I run, along with the love handles.  I really wonder how much extra energy I'm using to lug around these extra pounds.

It won't be easy at all to trim up and I want to go about in the right way.  I purchased Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald, and I'm trying to learn all I can about proper nutrition.
Also not very easy because a book about nutrition isn't exactly a page turner.  I'm going to have to start a food log and count calories which doesn't excite me at all.  I don't have to do that forever, but I do agree that I need to be me more conscious of what I'm consuming right now.

A major obstacle that I face is my culinary counterpart.  For example, my husband just smoked a giant piece of brisket.  A huge slab of seasoned, falls apart, beef currently sits in the fridge wrapped in plastic and someone has to eat it.  It's delicious and I love/hate it.  I mentioned to my husband that maybe we should cut meat out of our diet except for a couple times a week.  The idea was not well received.


After the brisket is all gone I shall begin a grand master plan for trimming up my thighs and hopefully our out of control grocery bill.  Yay, for meal planning spread sheets!

As I typed "after the brisket is all gone" it made think of this song



9 comments:

  1. Way to go on the race! It's a constant battle. And I'm afraid will be to infinity, ha! It's not funny, just harder for us girls!!! hang in there, you're not alone!

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  2. I love brisket! It's so good! Too bad eating all the tasty good stuff isn't healthy!

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  3. I'm with you...I can stand to lose some junk in my trunk. I'm just too lazy to actually eat well. I'll let you try it out first and see what you think!

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  4. @Angie, Thanks! Your right, it is hard. Running alone will only do so much.

    @S&R, Brisket is my husbands specialty and it is sooooo amazing. He puts so much time and care into it's preparation. He only does it once in a while.

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  5. Ha! Tara, we'll see how that goes. I waiting to see how you did with morning running before I "decided" not to do it ;)

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  6. Thanks for the link love! Head on over to trainingpeaks.com and sign up for a free account. It's all I ever used.

    Get the account today and poke around the software some. Under "settings" you can play around with the calculators to find out how many calories you burn throughout the day naturally. It will calculate your resting metabolism. Enter a meal or two if you want, just to see how easy it is to use their food database. Then tomorrow log everything that goes into your body. No restrictions on intake yet, just log it to see how your current eating structure adds up to a typical day. It will also show you where you need to make cuts.

    again, the software is easy to use. I love the graphs on the home page that show the last 30 days of over/under calorie burn and macronutrient breakdown. Eventually it gets to be a pain remembering to log everything, but for the first few months it's quite easy.

    and most husbands fight the "less meat" concept, including me. Took me a while to come around to the idea too. Offer him a BJ for a vegetarian dinner, then give him the money you saved by not buying meat and tell him to go downtown Charlotte to find a tranny to give it to him for that price. He'll come around soon enough.

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  7. Baahahahahaha! John you kill me! Great info and a great laugh. I'm anxious to finish the book and get started!

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  8. Okay, first time visitor. Not gonna lie, your header pic made me pee a little from laughter!

    Congrats on the race too!

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