running

My Best Race Ever

/ leslietoldo.com / 13 Comments

Warning: some of the information contained in this post will be considered TMI by some readers. But, this is me… what else would you expect?
Today was my 5th running of the mile Crim in Flint. It is I really where, why and how my running life began at the age of 41. I think I am far more tortoise than hare, to begin with, but today’s finish was by far my slowest. It was also the best damn Crim I’ve run.
I waited at the start line with my running posse. Susan and I stuck together until about mile 4. I told her I needed to do the earbuds- and “focus”, instead of talking because this was going to be my year to not come in LAST place in my age group. I had big dreams of a personal record.
At mile 4.5, I had the mortifying sensation that I was going to pee my cute little running skirt. I carefully “pulled over” and sat on someone’s lawn, as if taking a little break and just peed. What are you going to do? It’s one of the many things that happens in your 40’s that NO ONE warns you about. (You can thank me later).
At about mile six- heck yes, I kept going- the sensation hit again. I was right by a frat house and straight up told the guy, who looked like the life of the party, about my imminent crisis. He brought me inside and let me have at least a shred of dignity in their facilities.
At this point, I knew I was probably out of contention for the top three finishers in my age group- I was actually never in contention for that, but I built up my expectations. After two full marathons and nearly a dozen half’s, I had to bang out a big finish at some point, right? The most likely result of most of our expectations is disappointment. There are some things we just can’t predict or plan for.
Suddenly, at mile 7, I stopped sweating and was covered in goosebumps. I felt really dizzy. There were some paramedics. They invited me to sit down and they checked out my vitals. They were calling over an EKG cart. All I could think was, “oh, hell no. I am finishing this thing. Just about then, my friend, a nurse, named Debbie, appeared out of nowhere. We walked the rest of the race. According to my Garmin, I finished in 2:24. I haven’t looked up my official Crim time because, who cares, really?
At the end of the race, all that mattered was all that ever has truly mattered I finished. Things did not go the way I wanted them to. I did not break a personal record. I did not finish with a dry running skirt. I did finish.
I think the biggest mistake I make in life is building up expectations. I don’t want to bum out the Dale Carnegie crowd- setting goals and achieving dreams are important to our growth. But, I’ve come to find that it’s often the things that don’t quite go as planned or hoped bring about the greatest rewards. Sometimes, you are going to pee your pants and plans change, but that will only ruin the experience if you let it.
My spirit expands every time I accept that I really don’t have control over the universe, life- and sometimes now, not even my bladder.

Thanks to all of the 11,000 plus participants in the Crim today. Each of you inspire me, every single year.

No Does Not Mean Yes!

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fries

Do you ever wonder what would happen if some new research came out and definitively proved that broccoli is really bad for you? I wonder if I would suddenly get insatiable cravings for it. What is it about the word “no” that makes my psyche want to say, “yes, yes, YES, God, yes”?

I actually did research. Okay, so I Googled “why do we want what we can’t have”. That is the modern equivalent of research, isn’t it? To think, I spent hours learning how to use the card catalogue at libraries, and I have not stepped foot in one for a good 15 years. Thank you, Google.

My “research” led me to the expected answers. I looked at several sites, but honed in on selfgrowth.com. That is where I found the following explanation.

“When something is hard to get (or forbidden) you immediately pay more attention to it. Notice that when you are on a restricted diet, you sometimes get too focused on what you “can’t” eat. This heightened attention — which can escalate into obsession — makes the forbidden food seem very important. Your inner brat takes advantage of this, and tries to convince you that you MUST have that chocolate or pizza.”

Ummmm… pizza. See? There I go. Just the though of not having it makes me want to turn this car around and get my pepperoni-hand-tossed on. (No, mom, I am not really driving and typing.) But why? Because, just as I was reading the word “pizza”, my brain said, “oh, no, girl. Pizza has gluten, you can’t have that.”

My next internal response was, “yes you can. You are an American! You can eat what you want.” My sick mind wants to turn my desire to binge-eat pizza into a patriotic event. At the end of the day, it goes back to the point the writer was making: I want what I can’t have because my focus is on what I can’t have.

Last night, I had baked chicken with green beans and brown rice. I know… control yourself. There is no such thing as McChicken with green beans. I think it probably would be hard to fit on a drive thru menu. That may really be the only reason. As I was eating, I thought, “this is good. This is better than a cheeseburger and fries.”

In my heart, I really meant that, too. I don’t know about anyone else, but I know that I have a knack for hitting the drive through during some sort of french fry vat shift change. I always get that order of fries that has some that are black on one end and still soggy on the other. Or, they are an order of fries someone brought back, and some tree-hugging kid working the drive through doesn’t want to waste food, so I reap the benefits.

My point is, when I allow myself to focus on what I can have, while trying to be healthy, it is amazing how much I do not want the things I can’t have. (I think I broke about 36 grammar rules with that sentence.)

If I can only remind myself, in those moments when I am coming up with excuses to skip a workout, or to justify eating bad food, of how good I feel when I do the healthy thing. I never get a jolt of “hell yeah” from not working out. I never feel like a super badass when I skip a run.

Can we train our brains to focus on, “yay, look what I get to do”, instead of “dang, I can’t have this”?

There is no question in my mind that going off gluten has made a major shift in my overall health. I can not even begin to describe how much healthier I feel. I have it in me to shift my focus. I know that I do.

Becoming a runner at the age of 41 took a lot of focus shifting techniques. The greatest attitude adjusting tool I have used in my short running career has been to remind myself how blessed I am to be in good enough physical health to run in the first place. I have to remember, that I quit smoking because I wanted to be a healthy person. Ultimately, that is what this is all about for me. I mean, I am relatively sure that my shot at the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit Edition is up. I can’t just be after some weight loss and hot body goal.

So here I am, reminding myself that I get to eat my own home cooking instead of crappy, soggy fries and re-heated-in-the-microwave cheeseburgers. Oh, yeah, they do sometimes heat burgers up in the microwave. I am probably violating some sort of fast food privacy act provision, but who cares? Burger King fired me. It’s payback time, y’all.

Ultimately, this all points back to one thing: self-pity (or feeling deprived in some way) cannot coexist with gratitude. The two are mutually exclusive. In all areas of my life- not just when it comes to my goofy old health, I must focus on all of the legitimate “yes’s” around me, let all of the “no’s” be “no’s”.

When Lazy is Good

/ leslietoldo.com / 2 Comments

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(This is a photo of me and my dog, Otis, who turned 13 today. It fits the theme, and he is pretty darn cute, after all)
I cannot lie. My own laziness may be helping me succeed in ways I had never imagined possible when I started this whole not-eating-gluten experiment.  Here is the thing, and I am really only giving you a watered down version of said “thing” because I am not completely clear myself on what the “thing” is when it comes to gluten. Oh, yeah, the watered down thing:  you have to look up ingredients of ingredients in a lot of foods to make sure they do not contain gluten. Who has time for that? I probably do, but I am not going to do that. I will have a nervous break down (as if not eating gluteny foods isn’t going to make me snap in the first place). 

I am just getting acclimated to reading ingredients on labels for the obvious, “hey, this is loaded with gut bloating gluten” information. I do not need to worry about whether percolated hypochondrial starch isolate has some kind of gluten festering within. You know? So, how does this help me succeed beyond just avoiding gluten? Well, because silly, I am eating less processed food. The fewer things on the label, the easier to understand, the more likely I am to eat them. 

How cool, right?! I must be losing all kinds of weight and have an arse like Jillian Michaels and ….(insert needle scratch on record). No. I do see a difference in my shape. My tummy is less bloated. I feel better. I mean, I really feel better overall. My joints are not aching. I am sleeping better. My tummy isn’t as tumultuous. I also have more energy- just not enough more energy to read labels with more than 5 ingredients on them- that I can pronounce. 

The truth is still the truth: a calorie is a calorie. They all add up the same way. If your daily pile of calories exceeds what your body needs to make it through, those calories sort of loiter around and you don’t lose weight- well, I don’t, anyway.  But, I am exercising a lot more. I am trying not to get too crazy and put a specific number of pounds I want to lose out there- not today, anyway. 

I was actually not tested for gluten intolerance. I read the symptoms and thought I might be. A few times, while researching gluten as a topic for my day job- ace medical reporter- I read and heard that if you go off of gluten and you feel better, chances are you have an intolerance. The real test is to then eat gluten and see what happens. Well, what happened for me was pretty icky. I felt hung over. I was very nauseated. It was not good.  By “not good” I mean, kind of miraculous. I ate truffles- you know, chocolatey ones- and felt horrible and vowed never to do that again. Say what? I am still sort of in shock. My mother, who found a way to make Atkins Diet shakes higher in carbohydrate content than the ones sold at most malt shops around the nation, would be really disappointed. I did not give her any grandkids, and she is a Saints fan, so she is used to disappointment. 

So, I have been on the wagon, headed away from the gluten fields for a few weeks. It really is not as bad as I thought. I can have potatoes. I can also have any number of “gluten-free” labeled products. I am trying not to get into that, because I like eating kind of clean.  I feel good. Yes, I wish I could report some crazy thing about how my body is transformed and my skin glows and Tom Brady keeps calling and I have to remind him we are both married, etc. My body is getting more toned. I am feeling better. Guess what? That is because I am weight training and running. 

I have been a medical reporter for roughly 20 years. I have talked to some of the great minds of medicine, diet and fitness. It all comes back to one thing, well, actually two things- diet and exercise. If you want to lose weight, what you eat is probably 80-percent of the equation. But, there is still that other 20-percent. Exercise is so good for you. I have never regretted a workout. I always feel better afterwards not because I look like the chicks in my Shape magazine, but because I did something good for myself. 

I really hope I make myself read this again in the morning, when I try to talk myself out of going to the gym. I am sure if I leave myself a note, I will read this again- if I am not too lazy, you know, and hit the snooze button. Oh, wait, I have dogs, they really do not honor the whole “snooze” philosophy. 

So, let’s keep fighting the good fight. 

(are ya happy, Kim? This is your update.)

Inspirational lies

/ leslietoldo.com / 3 Comments

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The really awesome thing about having your own words in print- especially on the internet, where they will be around forever- is that you can always go back and review your past musings and get a good laugh. I could cry, but I choose to laugh.

The month was August. The title:  “C’s Get Degrees”.  I wrote the following:

“So, when I finished weight training and a run this morning, and thought, ‘I am just going to give this everything and see what this does for me when I do that full marathon in February’, I got this twingey, awesome feeling. I am not going to let fear stand in my way. I am just going to do this- and give it my best effort.”

Hmmm. I wonder when I was planning to give it my best effort? Seems life got away from me. I thought I had not written in a couple of weeks. turns out it is going on a couple of months. Wow. So, how are things? Are you on some inspired high, accomplishing great things? I sure hope someone is.

So, I think I gained weight back. I have been “busy”. I love that word. It is so short, tidy and “busy”. It even sounds like, “I just don’t have time for anything longer than a four letter word– so much happening.”  I guess I have been working. I have had some stuff going on at home.

Nope, I think the four letter word I am grasping for is lazy.

I am being hard on myself. I have not been lazy at the grocery store, while visiting TJ Maxx specifically to buy chocolate (they have great stuff, by the way), or when going out for ridiculous lunches. Oh, sure I start the day logging in my Livestrong food journal. I go to the gym and bang out runs. I most certainly have not given my best effort to this whole marathon training/being healthy thing. I haven’t been getting on the scale either. My psyche views it as some sort of Kryptonite.

I decided to come back here for some inspiration. What went wrong the past two months? Why do I keep going on food “benders”.  There has to be a reason. I keep hearing all of the great voices of trainers past saying things like, “you either want this or your don’t. You aren’t going to mess up my life if you don’t stick with this.”  I read my own snarky, enlightened words and it is as if someone else wrote them. Maybe I have an evil twin- wait, maybe I am the evil twin.

Why would I write such truthful and un-motivational crap in my positive-life-changes blog? Because it is the truth.  I am not going to spew unicorns and rainbows out of my arse just because it is what I should be doing. I will never understand why I have such a struggle with food. In order for me to lie in this little blog-  to you- I have to lie to me first. Why do that?

So, what happens next? Well, I am taking a first step now. I have some thinking to do. I am making some changes. They involve sugar and gluten. I am really not trying to jump on a nutty bandwagon with the gluten thing. I have been diagnosed with chronic fatigue. I have arthritis. I have some stomach issues that I don’t need to go into here. Use your imagination- just don’t be really gross, because it isn’t “really” gross.  I have learned that gluten can do all of the above to your system.

The good news is, if I ditch the gluten, and I am not diagnosed with a disorder, the change will not hurt me. I guess Gluten is not something we humans really need in our bodies. I do feel crappy a lot. I guess I will try this. This whole thing could get really fun. Maybe I will diagnose myself with something else in a couple of months. Who knows. I am just going at this thing a day at a time- even a month at a time.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers- but I sure do have a lot of questions. I am not giving up hope. I just hope the “twingey” feeling I had in the previously above mentioned exert from a past blog will come back. It took me a good 7 attempts to quit smoking. I guess this food crap started way before I started smoking. Maybe it will just be harder to make these changes.

Anyway, I am going to attempt to get back on track- guess I need to make sure I can find the track.

So, till we meet again, my friends.