Monday, February 20, 2012

How important are goals?

Running is something I toyed with for about a year, maybe more, before I committed to actually running last summer.  I would be reading Facebook and see all sorts of friends running in races or organizing races and think, "I should try that."  The I would remember that I hate running and it makes me feel like I am dying and think about doing it "someday".  Well last school year I started back to work and I gained weight so I tried out running for a few weeks, talked enough about it to have a friend at work suggest I enter an upcoming race, then stopped running for over a month.  Obviously I took it back up, entered the race and completed it and have gone from there.  But here is the thing, the real reason i took up running was to lose weight.  In the seven months that I have been running I have lost 15 pounds.  In my head when I started I was going to lose five pounds a month and by now I would have reached my goal.  Why hasn't that happened?  I added calorie counting in, most of the time at least, in October.  I use My Fitness Pal most days to track both calories in and those used by exercise.  Do I need to run more?  Eat less?  Relax more?  Get rid of some stress?  I am at a loss as to what goal to set next.  I can keep going as I have been and enjoy slow weight loss, but I would love to see it go faster.  Starting on Wednesday I am giving up potato chips and french fries for Lent and, as those are two of my high calorie fun foods, that usually helps a bit.  Plus my training should be upping my miles soon so that may help too.  I want to do this smart, and keep running as a healthy pursuit, but I am ready to feel like  me again and that still hasn't totally happened.

1 comment:

  1. While running can easily maintain weight, you need to be extra alert when trying to lose weight. The more you run, the hungrier you are! I think it takes extra effort just to eat the same 1600 calories once you are running, than eating 1200 calories before running.

    But you lost 15 lbs! Excellent...so why focus on what you didn't do...instead focus on what great strides you made! The goal should be to get healthy....not simply lose weight and you are doing just that :)

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