Willpower, Come Find Me!

The school year is about half over, and Mini-baboo has half of his senior year left. He is scheduled to ship out June 14th. He's leaving next week for 2 weeks with relatives in Dallas, and after that, there will be only 6 more months left. I took this quiz today on the "Empty Nest" syndrome at iVillage. Here are some excerpts from my results:

...Before you leave skid marks flying the coop, however, remember that you're still a mom, even if you officiate over an empty nest. It's important that your kid not feel rejected or abandoned while you cavort all over the world and savor all this new freedom (Italics mine)...So relish this fabulous new phase in your life, but don't forget to check in on your little chickadee -- even if you're calling from a cell phone as you sail down the Nile.

I don't know about you, but that seems like a mile rebuke, doesn't it? My kids all have cell phones now. I send them a text now and then, but if they need me, they can call me.

Anway.

I ran today during lunch and got in about 3 miles. For the first time since I went back to running almost 2 weeks ago I didn't have burning legs. Up to now, the first 2 miles they burned so much I almost couldn't walk. Today, there was some momentary discomfort but then after about a quarter mile, it was gone. I ran a few intervals on the magic .9 mile dirt track that Sweet Baboo and I discovered near work. In fact, it's a bit over 1/2 mile run from our offices, so that running out and back and doing 2 loops around gives us about 3 miles. I'm planning to do this for lunch 3 times a week.

I've gone back to tracking my food, and also to eating a package of oatmeal in the mornings for breakfast, which seems to make it easier for me to stick to my diet, for some reason. This morning it was someone's birthday and I allowed myself 1/2 piece of pumpkin bread. For two days in a row I've actually stuck to reasonable eating, and usually once I get this far I can get back on track. Believe it or not, to this point, I haven't been able to muster up enough willpower to get through one day of sensible eating, not since September.

So my routine now is, I have a sugar-free soy latte for breakfast, and then when I get to work I have one serving of instant oatmeal, and then around 10:30 or so I have a small BocaBurger, and the after my noon workout I have a small snack. Supper is light. I was inwardly blaming Sweet Baboo for my diet foibles, since he takes us to restaurants after our long workouts that have some of my favorite foods, but what can I say? I can get low-calorie meals there. I can't blame him for my lack of willpower!

When I'm at my fittest, I weigh about 15 pounds less than I do now, but I'm also doing a lot of hill climbing and I muscle up fast, so I can't really depend on my scale for the story of how I'm doing on my diet. Also, the scale makes me feel bad about myself because well, I don't know; 170 pounds just seems hideously heavy. So, since my scale is largely unreliable as a measure of fitness AND makes me feel bad about myself, I'll pay attention to how my clothes feel instead. I have certain clothes that fit well when I'm at my fittest, and I know what they are, and if they don't fit right they'll be no way around it because I sit a lot now, and you know how tight clothes feel when you try to sit in them for long periods of time.

This Saturday, I'm attending a meeting of the New Mexico Race-walking Association. I'm pretty excited about it. I have no illusions of being able to race-walk a half-mary in 1-1/2 hours, like the champion race-walkers but I do plan for this to provide to very excellent recover and cross-training skills, and to speed me up during my walk intervals in marathons.

So that's it, so far, I guess. Tomorrow Sweet Baboo finds out if he got the promotion he was hoping for. Cross your fingers, or whatever works for you, and send good thoughts his way. He's worked a long time for this, and of course as his completely unbiased mate I believe he is the very best qualified :-)

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