So, it's been a little while. I was blogging pretty regularly for a while and then, as usual, life got in the way. I think I got really burnt out at work and was starting to get sick. Whether or not I was actually sick or just feeling under the weather from being stressed out doesn't really matter. I took a few days off from running and went into maintenance mode. On Wednesday we had a really good staff meeting and I have started to get back on track at work. It's like a little switch got switched back to where it was supposed to be, because the job doesn't have to be that hard. I just have to do the work. I got a little bit of my confidence back. So the last part of my week went really well.
Nate has been asking to go hiking for the past few weekends which is awesome. It's fun to go hiking with him, he's a riot. Last weekend I twisted my ankle a little, so I walked with Helen on Tuesday evening instead of running and then ran on Thursday. I was the only one who showed up on Thursday, so it felt really difficult. I ran three miles. On Saturday morning Ananda suggested 6 miles and I said okay, we ran the first three and then I needed to walk for a little while. We walked for a little bit, and then ran the rest. I hurt bad. I think it's because I took some time off and haven't really been cross training. Anyway, I got cramps in my stomach and kept having to slow down a lot. Ananda was great, she slowed down with me, and I ended up doing all of the rest of it at a run instead of walking like I wanted to. We ended up finishing in 1:02, so it wasn't bad at all even though we walked some and I felt like I was running really slowly. Hopefully the next time I run it won't be so hard. Then we went to Pilates today, I nice stretching Pilates class.
Of all of the running, hiking and other stuff I've been doing, of course I would hurt myself walking the dog. Last night I was walking Titus, who wanted to walk fast and then we started running. I was wearing my slippers and jeans and tripped over a root and almost faceplanted. Luckily I was wearing those jeans, so I just lightly scraped my right knee. I also somehow ended up hurting both of my pinkies. I guess I must have landed weird on my hands. I had huge smears of black dirt all across my pants and on my feet and hands. Luckily Nate was there so I could laugh it off and I don't think anyone else saw me.
One of the reasons I may be seeing results on the scale this week is because it is one of those months when Nate and I have spent every penny and can't even go to the grocery store. We have food, but we have to really plan it out so we have something to eat until Friday, which is payday. We're broke because I finally paid off my car (Yay!) and we paid off the wedding loan. With those extra payments we went into our savings accounts and had to use our credit cards for Christmas. We didn't spend a whole lot, but still more than we really could afford at the time. Luckily we two less payments this upcoming months which will go toward Nate's car, the credit cards and building our savings back up. We're also going to switch banks so we don't get charged for having not enough money. The reason this has helped me see results is that I don't have the option of over eating or splurging on McDonald's or going out to eat. We have enough to eat and not much more than that.
Ananda was really cute this morning, I was telling her that I didn't have any eggs, so I had skipped breakfast (meaning I just didn't want the waffles or bagels we had) and she offered her own eggs. I assured her that Nate and I are not, in fact, going to die of starvation this week, we just don't get to eat everything we want to eat. It was very nice of her though, to try to save our lives by offering us her own food.
Ultimately this has given Nate and I the opportunity to really decide what food is important to have around and to take a look at what we eat. We planned out two entire weeks of dinner meals ahead of time and have surprisingly wonderful dinners recently. We had tomatoes with basil and mozzarella cheese with olive oil and balsamic vinagrette, and we had some salad and pasta with a pancetta sauce. So we're definitely not starving. We did make the mistake of not having enough food for Titus, but a bag of that can go on my credit card. It's not that expensive. We are really down to the wire, but it's cool how much we planned and are still in control even though it was so close. Anyway, can't wait til payday and am looking forward to see the scale drop one more pound! I was at 134 today!
I ended up going to Crossfit on an empty stomach this morning, which was a good idea, cause I probably would have barfed. For lunch I had some of my delicious slow cooked chicken stew. I really need to practice getting the bones out of it though, cause I thought I did a good job, but I keep finding little pieces. There's nothing grosser than chomping on a bone in your soup. Also, today I added some Red Hot hot sauce and Primo Taglio Cheddar Cheese. Quite delicious. 
