Shred (Day 2) and Weigh-In

Hoping to run today after work, I woke up this morning at 5:30am to squeeze in the second day of this whole "shred" business. I completed it, but let's just say my quads weren't (and aren't) too happy about it.

You'd think that with all the running I've been doing, they'd be stronger, but apparently not. I actually read an article today on the importance of lifting for runners, and, after seeing the effects of Level 1 of the shred on my poor, innocent quads, I completely understand.

That said, I had every intention of hitting the treadmill tonight after work to crank out a 6-miler... That delusion actually hung on until I got home and went to lace up my shoes and tried to run a few steps... and couldn't do more than a few yards without cringing. Instead, I took my ridiculously sore quads on a walk around the neighborhood with my mom. Here's hoping they'll be ready for tomorrow AM's shred experience and then tomorrow evening's yoga/jogging date with Paige!

Finally, as expected, this week brought about a gain:

Weekly weigh-in: 171.0
Loss: +2.4
Total loss: -22.6
Emotion: Unsurprised, but still not thrilled
LBS to go to 164 mini-goal: 7.0

I actually gained back all of the weight I'd been down last week. I'm kind of bummed since 7lbs in a week and a half seems a bit much to reach my pre-France mini-goal, but how was I supposed to know that I'd be allergic to medication and require serious steroids? In any case, I'm tracking my food like mad, and, as per a friend's suggestion, I manually went down on my WW daily points in an effort to break this plateau. Hopefully those measures in addition to exercise and getting off these meds will help me to see a loss next week!

On that note, I close with a question: Have any of you done the Shred and experienced this intense quad pain? What did you do? Honestly, I can hardly move, so I'm kind of skeptical about tomorrow morning's impending performance...

30-Day Shred (Day 1)

So, tonight was Day 1 of the 30-day Shred, as per Syl @ Live, Smile, Run's challenge, even if I'm joining late!

Here are my "before" photos, taken (begrudgingly) by my younger sister, who is currently deep into packing for tomorrow's move into her first apartment ever (she starts college at UC next week), as you can see from the packed boxes all over the photos:


I know I have a long way to go, and I'm looking forward to seeing the changes, but just let me say that I am really proud of how far I've come. I know I've been plateaued for almost a year now in my weight-loss journey, but that's not to say that this past year hasn't been full of many new, exciting things and many stresses that could have led me to regain the weight and go back on the progress I'd made. While I haven't lost a lot more weight, I did go from being a "Couch" to a 5k to a more than 5k runner (jogger), and I went from a single, college undergrad who still needed to write a thesis and get a plan to a college grad, who is preparing for exciting possibilities both this coming year in France and next year in grad school and who is in a supportive, awesome relationship with a fabulous guy. Not really at a plateau in the rest-of-life department, I don't think. That said, here's to the rest of the Shred, something I think I can keep up in France! Woo! I'll admit that Day One was harder than I'd thought, but that means I can only get better from here! Stay tuned for tomorrow's weigh-in...