A Week of Change

The past week has been a challenge on many fronts but a very successful week at the same time. (I think.)  As Melissa reminded me at least 100 times this past week, change is not easy.

Change is hard but at the same time this week I have seen some pretty cool results.  First on the diet front... I made it a full week eating full blown Paleo.  A few notes from the week... Wednesday got really rough after my run and I felt completely depleted and subsequently unhappy.  We went to Chipotle and I got a bowl with the appropriate ingredients and a diet coke (my one cheat for the week) and that did wonders for my mood and outlook.

Another thing that I struggle with on any diet, hell any day is getting soda's out of my diet.  I won't dwell on the one diet coke Wednesday night.  In the big scheme of things it is not a big deal.  I love drinking water but still sometimes that can just get old so I broke down and bought a juicer this week.  It is pretty awesome.  Since we have a shit ton of fruits and veggies around now might as well have another method to consume them.  Plus if I want something different to drink it is a much better option than a lot of other things.  I watched this movie on Amazon Prime this past week and it was really motivating.  I actually watched it 2x so far.  I highly recommend it.



After nearly a week of fruit, salads, meats, all unprocessed mostly and tired of having to get creative with meals I was laying in bed Saturday morning dreading getting up.  This is how my day looked... I had to get up... maybe eat a banana for breakfast... and then get layered up for a four  hour bike ride in the cold and wind and be gone half of the day.  I stayed in bed quite some time still.  Well about the time I was going to surrender to the inevitable and get up Melissa came into the bedroom with a plate and she was beaming.  She had made the most awesome cake with almond flour and it had sliced apples on top and it was delicious.  That cake really started the day off right. (Thank you honey!) See... you can be on a healthy diet and still have great treats.  The bike ride was even more enjoyable than excpected since the weather was still very mild.

I have lost eight pounds this past week.  Crazy.  After going all fall, tracking everything thing I ate, every calorie and really not making any progress I do this and boom, the weight starts to fall right off.  As a practicing food and beverage addict I have been wanting to literately have my cake and eat it too and that just does not work anymore.   Do I think that the Paleo diet is the end all be all?  No.  Will I stick to it forever?  I don't know.  But what I do know is that it is the closest and most balanced plan to what I was used to eating as a kid since it lacks all of the HFCS, processesed foods, and sugar found in just about EVERYTHING today.  I plan to write more about that at a later time.

Eight pounds though... it will be interesting to see what the next week brings.

On the training front... Oy vey!  A very interesting week which started with a rest day on Monday which was awesome after Sunday night's Pikes Peak assault.   Then three rides and three runs for the other six days.  Totals were 10:51 of training volume, and that includes 71 miles of bike and 21 miles of running.

MAF is hard.  Riding and running while keeping my heart rate in between specific predetermined ranges is a challenge.  Running is the toughest part because I almost can not go slow enough up a hill (sometimes have to walk) to keep my heart rate low enough then on the downhills I really have to push it to keep my heart rate high enough.  I am putting a lot of faith in the process and I am dedicated to being patient through these first few weeks because even though it is making me go so much slower now I think that in the end the benefits will outweigh any damage that my ego is taking now.  I hope. 

Riding poses a different yet similar set of challenges in regards to MAF.  My heart rate will plummet on any downhill and on an extended downhill slope I really have to crank it in the highest gear to say in the target zone.  This also can lead to some pretty fast speeds (or so I think) which I am not used to yet.   Fun, dangerous, risky and exhilarating all at the same time. 

Right now my confidence is marginal.  We are building the cycling engine from scratch more or less and stripping and rebuilding the running engine at the same time which means I am in completely foreign territory which is uncomfortable.  I am sure that if I am patient everything will soon settle in and become the new norm.  Really though as unsettling as it all may be I am betting that the weight loss, the more balanced and healthy nutrition along with the more aerobically based training will yield huge results more so than my typical type-a, beating my head against the wall, training methods of past.  So far so good!