Results:
Weekly Total: –  0.2 pounds
30 in 30 Total:  - 7.6 pounds
Five Year Total: – 76.2 pounds

Eh.

On the plus side, I lost a little bit of weight and I didn’t gain any but -0.2 isn’t really super impressive.  Overall, last week was pretty good, especially in terms of working out. Last week did involve 4 days in Yosemite so maybe -0.2 isn’t so bad.

Food:
I think I did pretty good with my food intake during the week and I did OK in Yosemite.  We brought a lot of our own food with us, which really helped.  I think I had a large salad with my dinner every night we were there.  I didn’t even eat any energy bars during our hikes – I simply didn’t bring any with us.  And I didn’t eat any of the trail mix my friend brought along.  I’m coming to realize that when I’m walking and hiking all day (or when I’ve spent a few hours running), it is really really easy for me to overestimate my energy output.  If I were trying to maintain my weight, this behavior might be OK but it is pretty self-defeating when I’m trying to lose weight.  So that’s why I didn’t bring any Luna or Cliff bars (or even GU) with us and I passed on the trail mix.  With the exception of our Cathedral Lakes hike, my hikes didn’t feel strenuous enough to warrant eating energy bars or trail mix.

Yosemite Valley was stunning last weekend

Here’s where I think I could have done better.  We had pizza for dinner one night.  It wasn’t even any good.  I really should have stopped eating it and just had some of the food that I had brought along.  In retrospect, I think part of the issue here was that we were eating dinner so late (around 9 I think) and I was super tired.  We also went to the Ahwahnee one afternoon for dessert.  Again, I should have passed – I wasn’t hungry and my pecan pie was OK.  And I ended up feeling physically blah afterwards.  But it is out of my system for the next six months or year.  Finally, I had brought some crackers and cheese with us and I probably shouldn’t have.  I know I did better with those than I usually do (I even counted out my crackers when I packed them for my trail lunches) but I know I overdid it one night during dinner.  So overall, I think I did better than usual at Yosemite but not as good as I’d like.  I know I’ll do even better next time.

chocolate pecan pie at the Ahwahnee - looked better than it tasted

Exercise:

• Monday – 30 min resistance/strength training at home, awesome 5K run
• Tuesday – 1 hour elliptical
• Wednesday – 1 hour personal training
• Thursday – awesome 12 mile run (last long run in this training cycle)
• Friday – Cathedral Lakes hike (about 7 miles + some elevation gain)
• Saturday – a couple of hours of low-impact hiking and walking in Yosemite Valley
• Sunday – a couple of hours walking in Yosemite Valley

I had an awesome week of workouts and two ***awesome*** runs.  I had an all out effort 5K run on Monday night, which I ran in 32:30 – that’s almost as fast as my fastest 5K race!  On Thursday morning before leaving for Yosemite, we ran 12 miles in 2:24:31.  I ran the same exact run during my last training cycle in 2:41!  Aside from my time, I just felt really strong during the entire 12 miles (OK – maybe not so much during the last mile).  It just feels so incredible to see that I’m making so much progress with my running.  YAY.

In retrospect, I could have used a rest day and some more stretching and foam rolling.

Plan for week 7 How week 7 has been going:
This past week has been unexpectedly crazy for some odd reason.  I didn’t get to blog about week 6 earlier in the week so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to write a plan for a week that has already almost passed.  This week is taper week in my running plan so I’ve been running less but I’ve also missed more cardio workouts than I’d like (but maybe that’s OK given how much activity I had during week 6).  My food intake has been OK – for some odd reason I’ve been hungrier than usual.

I’m not really sure where I’m at weight-wise either.  Some days it looks like I’ve gained weight and some days it looks like I’ve lost weight.  Yes, I weigh myself everyday.  People love to argue with me about how unhealthy that is but it works for me.  I’ve experimented enough with the scale over the past few years to realize that when I don’t weight myself everyday, I tend to backslide.  And yes I realize that there are enough variations on a daily basis (salt, water, etc.) that it can be deceptive to weigh myself everyday.  But that’s why I don’t actually track my weight on a daily basis – I just use my daily weight as a gauge of how things are going (and I think it serves as a bit of accountability).

One thing that is a bit tricky about this week (well just today) is that Ramadan started on Friday.  I absolutely love Ramadan and all of its traditions.  For Muslims, Ramadan is kind of like Christmas – you get presents under a tree, we fast all day for a month. ;)  I’ve never been able to fast during work days so I usually try to find a few weekends during the month to fast.  Fasting means not eating or drinking anything (not even water) from sunrise to sunset (today that means a little before 5 am to around 8:30 pm).  I would have liked to fast yesterday but I had a run and workout with my trainer scheduled so that would have been pretty painful.  I am fasting today (I’m mostly just really really thirsty right now, although hunger is starting to kick in too).  The problem with fasting is that it kind of messes up with your metabolism and I’ll only be eating dinner around 8:30 pm.  I’m a bit worried about what that might do for my weekly weigh-in tomorrow morning.  If it looks screwy, I might just postpone it until Tuesday morning.