Shelly: Week 4 & 5

Total Weight Lost: 10.8 pounds through 9/12/11.
Week 1 Miles: 56
Week 2 Miles: 80

Week 3 Miles: 62

Week 4 Miles: 63

Week 5 Miles: 47

Total Miles Ridden: 308 

I truly can’t believe that next week will mark the half way point for this session of WFMH.  It seems like it just started.  So much has happened in the last five weeks, and time has flown.  Since my last journal, I have been out of town in Washington, DC speaking at the US House of Representatives in support of HR2746, which is a drug parity bill that would benefit cancer patients.  Being away from home, staying in a hotel and eating in restaurants makes this more difficult during the challenge, but is definitely something that is part of life so it’s good to learn some strategies for staying healthy away from home.  I haven’t actually been to a weigh in since I got back, so it remains to be seen how well my strategies worked, but I’ll let you know next time.  It’s been two weeks since I’ve been to a weigh in, so I’m definitely interested in seeing what the scale says tonight.

Here is a brief rundown of how things went:

Exercise:  The absolute first thing I saw after getting off the metro from the airport in DC was a bank of rental bikes.  I was so excited!  There were places EVERYWHERE that you could rent and return rental bikes.  I spent some time riding, although it was a little intimidating to ride in DC traffic since I’m not used to that sort of thing.  I did ride about 21 miles while I was out there, and it was a super fun experience.  I had my son with me, and he didn’t ride, but he spent one afternoon in Manassas, VA visiting his grandmother so I took advantage of some of that time to bike around with my camera taking pictures of some of the monuments.  For the most part, my time there was very busy, so I didn’t have a ton of time for organized workouts.  DC involves A LOT of walking in general though, so I just tried to make a thoughtful effort to use the stairs, avoid taxis, walk wherever possible and use the metro stations when I couldn’t walk the whole way.  The metro is actually a bit of a workout, since there are a lot of stairs involved and you spend some amount of time walking between stations.

Nutrition:  This was more difficult away from home.  I didn’t have a lot of control over where I would be eating, so I just did my best to make good choices.  I ate a lot of fruit and vegetables whenever possible, and I also ate a few things that probably weren’t that good for me.  Honestly, I just tried to keep the least healthy options to a minimum, and fill up as much as possible when there were fruits and vegetables available.  I completely eliminated food logging while I was gone.  I’m not sure if this was the best choice, but it was too stressful and time consuming to try and figure out how to log what I ate and try to remember it all day.  The trip was pretty emotional overall, and speaking in Congress is pretty intimidating, so I tried to eliminate additional anxiety where I could.  As much as possible, I just looked at each meal as a separate entity, and made the best choices I could out of what was available.

Extras:  This week was incredibly emotional.  The trip to Washington was very important to me, and I needed to focus my energy there.  I did the best I could to make healthy choices and I feel good about how it went.  Overall, I feel like making good decisions about exercise and food is becoming a more natural part of my everyday life.  It doesn’t feel so much like a competition any more, and I think that’s the point.  I hope that by the time this is over it just becomes a part of who I am, and I feel like I’m starting to get there.