Thursdays are hard

they always have been and apparently they always will be. I just have the hardest time getting up on Thursdays and I don't exactly know why. Maybe I'm just worn out from the week. I'm not really any more tired this morning than I am any other morning, but getting out of bed is just difficult on Thursdays. I'm thinking I'll schedule my off day for Thursday at least for the foreseeable future. And of course it's not completely off, I have cycling on Thursday nights.

A while back I had decided to give up the quest for weight loss. Not that I don't still want to lose weight, but I kind of decided that I've been battling it (and losing) for way too long. I decided to focus on gaining things, strength, speed, swimming ability :) I've learned over the years that focusing on what I want is generally much more effective than focusing on what I don't want. That whole Secret thing, you attract the type of energy you put out, blah, blah, blah......

So a little over a month ago I said enough. I eat pretty well and I've continued to watch what I eat. I've been pretty consistent in my workouts, never missing more than a day, and I've seen some really good improvements. But the weight thing is always at the back of my mind. Then on Tuesday night it hit me smack in the face! Again!! We did a body composition at cycling. They had a little had held thingee that measures your % fat. I did it thinking I had a pretty good handle on what my body fat is (I have calipers I use at home). Boy, was I wrong. Now I know the limitations of these things. I know that they are affected by lots of different factors; hydration, if you've exercised recently, heat, cold, etc. I got that. But still it was waaaaay higher than I expected to see. And, of course, it's been bugging me ever since.

So I've decided one more time. I'm going to examine my diet in great detail (I'm keeping a journal for a couple of days). I'm going to continue swimming, biking, and running, but I'm going to focus heavily on weights and interval training. I know, and I read it on someone else's blog recently, that long slow workouts (aka: lots of cardio) actually causes me to gain fat. I gained this fat I have now when I was training for my last marathon. So I'm not doing incredibly long running or swimming workouts and the biking is only long on Sundays. I should be okay. Plus, if I push the weights and intervals that should boost my metabolism for the other times.

I'm going to try not to obsess on the food part. I find myself doing that, focusing so much on how much to eat and when that it becomes the only thing I think about. For the last month or so when I haven't been obsessed with losing weight, my eating has become much more normal. So I have to watch that.

Okay, if you've managed to read through all this I'm sure you're thinking, oh boy, here she goes again. It's true. I do this then stop, mainly because I become all consumed with calories and eating, and what, when, where, it drives me crazy. So I just need to lay out a food plan, go shopping and then not think about it again. Kind of what I've been doing recently. So, one more time with feeling.....