Eating and exercising

If you know me, you've watched me blossom from about 195 lbs at the beginning of 2012 to 217 (!!!) at the end of tax season this year. I went from bumbling through my 8th marathon, to not being capable of running a mile without stopping. I went from eating like I was going to run a marathon to, well, eating like I was going to run a marathon (minus the exercise).

Anyhow, nowadays I go to work in my only pair of sweatpants that still fit.

Me, the day after tax season ended:

OK, not really, but I have started looking at my eating and exercise routines. Each day, I do at least an hour of something and usually alternate running one day and biking the next. My goal is to run the 4 Bridges 1/2 marathon in the fall, followed by a credible Chickamauga 1/2 Marathon in November.

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I've been using an app called "My Fitness Pal" (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/), which tracks calories taken in, records sodium, protein, cholesterol, sugar, various vitamins and other stuff.  It also takes away calories burned through exercise, based on the type of exercise, and my weight.  I can plug in my goal weight, and how quickly I want to reach it and the app (I mainly use it on my phone) will adjust the desired caloric intake to what it would take to get me there.  I've been using it for a little while now, and it is working. An interesting byproduct of using it is that I'm paying attention to what I eat now, and don't want to put entries in that go against my goal.

So, I'm down 8 lbs so far.  Looks like I'm dropping about 2 per week, AND I'm getting back into shape. AND I feel much better about myself.  Pretty soon, I'm going to have to buy some smaller sweatpants.