Well, Friday's are always my Dooms Day, in more ways than one. They're weigh-in day and the inescapable moment of truth for the week, and they're the start of a new week of tracking, which for some reason always leads me to be far more lenient with myself that I should be.
The scales said "up" yesterday. Not terribly surprising really, but ok when I consider that I didn't take control of my eating until mid-week. Actually though, Thursday was a good day for eats, meaning I've probably took back at least half of the week as mine, and the scales weren't as high as they'd been earlier in the week.
As always, the first few days of trying to get back on track are hard, and then it starts to feel a little more familiar. Yesterday could have been a total and utter disaster, as I had lunch with colleagues at a local Chinese restaurant (buffet-style if you please) and dinner with Hannah and her family, which meant very late takeaway by the time they arrived, we ordered and it finally got delivered. That has the makings of a dieter's horror story, but actually it wasn't
Firstly, I curbed my usual Friday breakfast (bacon and mushroom roll and maybe some hash browns), and stuck to porridge with banana, a little bit of cinnamon sugar and a swirl of maple syrup. Less calories and fat and lasts a heck of a lot longer. Also much less salt since there'd be plenty of that coming later on.
That kept me completely full til lunchtime, so there was no need to snack and at lunch I kept my head. Whilst the others seemed to be ramming down food and running back to the buffet as fast as they could (well, the boys were anyway), I consciously took my time and enjoyed what I had. I also tried to make sure that I either had only my favourites, or things I wouldn't normally get. A few starters on a plate (but only one of each thing), a medium plate of mains, a small bowl of chicken and sweetcorn soup (my favourite!) and two teeny shot-glass sized desserts of mousse (chocolate and strawberry).
I did the same at dinner time, try a few little bits of starters, but with definite white space left on my plate and just one bit of each, and a few spoonfuls of the mains I was interested in, a small portion of mushroom rice and half a naan. The evening was finished off with a couple of glasses of wine, although I switched to squash when dinner arrived, because I knew the spicier food would make me drink quicker.
Although there was a lot of rich food floating around yesterday, I'm happy with how I treated it. I trimmed down my other meals and banished the snacks, and just concentrated on samplings things I was interested in. I was never over-full or uncomfortable.
From a Weightwatchers perspective, it's obviously a difficult day to point up, so I've guessed to a certain extent, but I think that while I've used most of my weekly flex it wasn't all of it. Win.
On Thursday night I went back to the running shop and sorted my trainers out. God bless 'em but they were lovely. The miunte I walked in with one of their carrier bags, they told me to have a seat and they'd be right with me. The guy I spoke to was interested, attentive and informative. They've refitted me with a different pair of Asics Gels, more neutral this time than supportive, as they said the shoe's shape suits my foot, but the last pair were obviously too aggressively supportive when coupled with my orthotics. Considering I was trying all the new pairs of shoes with unhealed blisters, these definitely came up as more comfortable.
The shop staff were lovely: not only did they not even blink at exchanging the shoes after I'd run outside in them, but they spent quite a while chatting to me about general running, offering advice on training for my first HM (including finding a magazine article for me that might be relevant while I waited for shoes to be bought up from the stock room), asked for feedback on my original shoe-fitting experience on Sunday, encouraged me to join their intermediate running club (errrr, scary, since when was I not a beginner anymore?) and told me to pop in and grab back issues of any of their running magazines to take away and read whenever. How nice? So glad this will very soon be my (extremely) local new running shop!
I've actually been itching to get back out and run, but they advised me against it for a few days to let the blisters heal a bit. Then they said to just take a short 20 min run to bed the new shoes in / try them out. So this morning, I headed out for a short run in the lovely chilly sunny Winter's morning. These shoes definitely feel much better than either of the previous pairs, although I'm glad I didn't push it too far - I went a bit over 20 mins and at about 25 mins I could feel the blister just starting to sensitise again, so I ran a few mins longer then walked the rest of the way home. It's in no worse a state than it was before though, so I think it just needs to heal and these shoes should be good to go. Even better, I didn't realise until I was nearly home again that my nagging ache in my right foot, which prompted me to get new trainers in the first place, was absent - hooray!!!
So that's today. I've been in the office since then hammering out a few hours work, and then I'm off to see Chris for the rest of the weekend - I'm hoping for a nice walk tomorrow to shake off the cobwebs and make up for my lack of a 75 min run. I've eaten well today, and I'm planning on making this week, one day at a time, a good one. Easy enough hopefully for tomorrow, as Chris eats pretty healthily, so I just have to follow along.
I was also having a look back through my post archives earlier, and out of interest I flipped to drafts to see what posts I'd started but never published. There were a few interesting ones in there, so expect to see some of them dusted off and popping up on here over the next couple of days :o)
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