Reasons to Run: No Shortcuts

This is all over every news outlet this morning, so I'm sure you all have probably heard that Skechers is paying a $40 million settlement over claims made about its Shape-Up, Tone-Up and Resistance Runner shoes. Everyone who bought a pair will be able to get their money back if they want to.

My first reaction to this news is a big "DUH." Come on now, if you were silly enough to believe that a goofy looking shoe could really tone and strengthen your muscles and lead to weight loss and better cardiovascular health, I don't think you deserve to get your money back. You ever heard the old adage, "If it's too good to be true then it probably is"? Take it to heart, folks.

Also, the fact that Kim Kardashian was shilling the things should've made you think twice.

This girl will do anything for a buck - including

selling you shoes that are bogus!

Unfortunately, a lot of people (including people I know) bought them anyway, looking for an easy out. This got me to thinking about how our instant-gratification society has really creeped into everything in our lives including, of course, the healthy living/fitness/weight loss arenas.

I myself am terribly impatient. While I stand upstairs waiting for my lunch to heat up, 2 minutes and 30 seconds feels like an eternity. If someone doesn't email me back within a half hour, I get annoyed. Heck, my mantra for running is "the faster you run the faster you're done." You get the point.

But the thing about it is, when it comes to health, weight loss and fitness, I have learned that there are no shortcuts. Although I was never obese, I did flirt with the 145 pound mark, giving me a 26.6 BMI (overweight for my height of 5'2"), for a few years. I remember sitting in the car crying after a shopping trip with my mom in the 10th grade when I had to buy a pair of size 10 jeans in the Junior's department at JC Penney.



11th grade (yep, that's BFF)



Senior prom

For most of my adult life, I have hovered right at 135 pounds. I never thought I was "fat" but I did want to lose about 10 pounds and made half hearted efforts at working out. And by half hearted I mean I would go do an elliptical trainer for 30 minutes two times a week and call it exercise. My diet didn't help much either - when I was in college and graduate school my staple meal was Velvetta Shells and Cheese and chicken tenders. When I met Jason in 2006 I was the smallest I had been in a while - 132 pounds or thereabout. 

2006

After we got engaged, like any new bride-to-be, I immediately put myself on a "Bridal Workout Plan." I joined the Y in Richmond and went 3 or 4 days a week. I did 45 minutes of elliptical. I did yoga. I stopped drinking soda. But I kept eating Velveeta, McDonald's, and cake.

I did not lose a pound...

I still looked good on our wedding day (2008)

...until I started running (unfortunately for me, AFTER our wedding). And even when I did start, the pounds did not melt off. Over the past 2 years I have lost 12 pounds... and run hundreds of miles. I also have changed my diet substantially, cutting out snacks, the majority of fast food, soda, and eating more vegetables.

April 2012

This photo would have NEVER happened before.
April 2012

Am I some paragon of health and nutrition? Hell no. You all know of my obsession with cake. And french fries. And wine. As I alluded to in one of my very first entries, I run because I like to eat, and I like to be thin. I like the size that I am now and the way that I feel. I don't want to feel guilty about eating cupcakes, so I run. It works for me.

I'm just trying to share what I've experienced and what I've learned for myself. And in my experience, if you want to lose weight and get fit, a pair of magic shoes isn't going to do it. Neither is a pill, or a 500 calorie-every-other-day-diet, or drinking shakes for breakfast, or even gastric bypass (yep, that wears off after a while too).

If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you have to change your lifestyle.

FOREVER.

I have watched countless people that I know lose weight through some fad diet or exercise plan only to regain the weight when they got tired of whatever method they were using. No matter what you say, chances are you will get tired of drinking a shake for breakfast and lunch every day of your life. Or not eating carbs... ever. It just doesn't work.

But when you slowly but surely incorporate healthier foods and exercise into your everyday life, before you know it, you will be there. And you won't really have to think about it anymore. In fact, if you try to eat stuffed crust Pizza Hut pizza, your body will rebel and you will never do it again (trust me on this one... it's not pretty). You will wonder how you ever drank an entire can of Coke on your own (I had a can-a-day habit throughout high school, college, and grad school. Now I can barely finish one!). If you don't go exercise, you will feel like crap.

Does it suck at first? Hell yes. To get off my can-a-day Coke habit, I gave it up for Lent one year. By Easter, I would've given my left arm for a can of Coke. When I first started to run, I could barely run one mile on the treadmill with the speed set to 5.5 MPH without feeling like I was going to fall over from exhaustion. But you will get through it and then it won't be a diet. It will just be life.

There is no instant gratification. But it is worth it. 

And now I'm going to eat a cupcake.

Reasons to Run: Accomplishment

A lot of things have been happening in my personal life recently that have made me think about what I've accomplished so far in my life... and how far I am from what I had ever imagined.

These deep thoughts all occurred as I was driving home from yet another great group run with the Run Like a Girl group. Last night it was hot - 83 degrees - when we gathered in front of Styles Fitness in the near West End. Before I got there I had talked myself down to running only the 3 mile route because I just didn't feel like doing the 5 in the heat.  Basically, I was being a wussy whiner. But as soon as the rest of the group showed up and I was in the presence of women (and one brave guy) who are about to run the Boston Marathon, my tune changed.

I ended up running the 5 with them in the 83 degree heat - which I NEVER would have done on my own in a million years. And of course while I was hot and sweaty, it was no where near as bad as I had imagined it would be. In fact, our route ended up registering only 4.9 miles on my Garmin, so after we had stopped inside for a drink, I waved goodbye to the rest of the group and set out to get that last tenth of a mile.

When I got into my car, I felt so accomplished.  And I realized that is a big part of why I have really grown to loving running so much.

Since becoming an adult, I find that I don't feel any high level of personal accomplishment anymore. As a child, teenager, and college student, I was an over-achiever, which was driven by an insane level of perfectionism. It wasn't healthy for me, but pushing myself to win - to be the best - produced amazing highs: high-school valedictorian, drum major of my high school band, countless all-star bands and ensembles and music awards, triumphant solo recitals. Of course this also produced crushing lows when I didn't accomplish what I wanted or get what I thought  I deserved (National Wind Ensemble, a 4.0 in college, first chair in orchestra, a position in the President's Own Marine Band).

When I entered grad school and started working full time, my perfectionism started to mellow out. I had become jaded in a sense... I wasn't going to be what I had dreamed and no, I wasn't some brilliant, amazing genius (musically or otherwise). I'm just average, and I've grown to be fine with that. In fact, I embrace my mediocrity.

In my daily life, I don't really get much of a sense of personal achievement. In a work environment, most of the accomplishments related to my job happen because of team work, not just me. There is nothing I can point to and say "I did that." When I do the laundry, clean the house, or cook dinner, Husband thanks me, but to me it's just what I do. Part of my daily tasks... no need to say anything about it.

Then I found running.

To me, every step that I run always feels like a big accomplishment. It's something that I can keep improving at (whereas you can't really get better at grocery shopping...). There's always a new race to sign up for, a new distance to strive for, a new weather condition to conquer. At the end of every run, no matter how crappy, I am always glad that I did it.

Maybe what it comes down to is that it has given me a new sense of self-worth. It is easy to feel like you are making something of yourself when you are a student. You do assignments, you get grades, you earn awards. Eventually, you graduate. I thrived and loved that environment, especially the ease with which I could see my progress. Running has given that back to me. Every week I have a plan and as the week progresses I check off each scheduled run on my Google calendar, changing it from gray (scheduled) to purple (done!). At the end of the week, I can look back and see that I ran 20 miles. Montly totals and yearly totals add to that feeling of accomplishment.

Look, you have done something this year. Something real. Something quantitative. Doesn't it feel great?

Races are the icing on the cake. Tackling a new distance, giving myself a new challenge to strive for, makes me feel like I have real purpose and I relish plotting how I will achieve it. And when I'm done, being able to say "Wow, I just did that!" makes it all worth it.

I think that maybe it has also filled a hole in my identity. Ten years ago, I was a musician. Five years ago, I became a defunct musician... and nothing ever filled that hole. A part of me is missing... even though I will always be a musician and music will always be a big part of my life, it's sadly just not the part of me that brings me the biggest feelings of self-worth anymore.

Now, I look to running to fill the hole that my failed dream of being a professional musician left. I am a runner.

And it feels good.

Reasons to Run: Food & Figure

Let's be honest with each other. People take up running for as many different reasons as there are people who run. There are many who do it for noble reasons: charity, to fight some terrible disease, in honor of someone who can't run, to change their lives.

I am not one of those noble people.

The number one reason that I run is simple: I like to eat whatever I want and I also like to be thin. If my eating habits were super healthy, maybe I wouldn't have to run as much as I do to maintain my weight. But alas, the foods that I love the most are the baddies: pasta, cheese, fried chicken, bread, ice cream, hamburgers, McDonald's french fries, wine, cupcakes, pizza.

Give up this greasy salty goodness? NEVER.

 
Don't be fooled - these things are not what I eat every day. Not by a long shot. They are my splurge foods and when I splurge, baby, I splurge.

I know that serious runners are very careful about the foods that they eat. I understand that - if you're going to push your body into running 25+ miles a week, you need to put good fuel in the tank. As I continue to push myself to become a "real" runner, I'm trying to do better on this front. I dutifully clip recipes from my Runner's World magazines with the intention of trying them (I haven't tried a single one... yet). I am becoming friends with the salad bar, smoothies, greek yogurt, and almonds. I take a second to think before eating that one of the red velvet cupcakes that my very kind co-worker took upon herself to bring in for the office. I even gave up drinking Coke.

But sometimes, you just need a big fat bowl of pasta in cream sauce.

Luckily, I am married to an Italian man who not only loves to eat pasta, but also loves to cook it. Last night we tried a new recipe that indulges my love of pasta and cream sauce - without all the guilt. I'm a seafood lover but my husband is not, so we made this with chicken. We've done the shrimp version before - it's also excellent.

Find the recipe after the jump.