peace + love + cupcakes

I did not want to work out at all today.  But I made it to the gym & walked 5K.  Wasn’t the best workout but I did it.  

I made these muffins today and they were pretty yummy.   Each of them are 150 calories/3 PP+ and have 7 grams of fiber.  

Are you giving up something for Lent?  In the past, I’ve given up coffee, soda & alcohol. I am thinking that instead of giving something up, I will commit to doing something that I haven’t been doing.   

Allow me to introduce you to my first cupcake of 2012.  It was a delicious & mouthwatering red velvet cupcake.  Yum!  

What made this cupcake possible was the fact that I walked 9.27 miles today.  Wheeeee!

(Total time - 2:56, total miles - 9.27, average pace - 18:59, total calories burned - 1,614)

I was very intimidated by walking 9 miles this past weekend & I decided to do 6 each weekend day.  This week I knew that I wanted to face these 9 miles & decided to just do it.   As soon as I got to the park where I was walking, I could tell that my mind wanted to do 9 miles but my body was not keen on the idea.  By mile 1.5 I couldn’t get into a groove and was just walking at a terrible pace.  But I kept going.   My goal was just to finish it.  My Runkeeper stopped and saved the first 3.57 miles & I thought to just stop and try another day.  

But I can be stubborn so I restarted the app & continued walking.  It was the longest workout ever.  I wanted to stop so many times.  The last mile and a half was so horrible.  I swear that babies could crawl faster than I was walking.  Maybe not.  But my body didn’t feel in sync with my mind.   I felt like my feet weighed a ton and I could barely lift them.  

But I did it!  I freaking did it.  

I got to my car & I started crying.  They were happy tears but man did I look like a hot mess afterwards.  I couldn’t believe that I had just walked over 9 miles.  I am not happy at all with my time but I now have room to grow.  I am just so excited to have been able to do it.  

I went to Whole Foods to get some watermelon (for some reason my body craves it after a long workout) and happened to walk by the bakery section.  And that’s all she wrote.  

I realized that this new healthy lifestyle is all about balance.  I can’t have a cupcake every day week but once in a while it’s ok. One cupcake is not going to damage my diet.  I am tracking it and the rest of the choices I make today will be healthy ones.  I don’t want to live a life where I can’t do something or go without something that I enjoy.  It’s all about balancing both my needs versus wants and doing what must be done to enjoy the only life that I have.

With my 1.1 pound loss this week, I’ve reached a total loss of 85 pounds. Like whoa! This is exactly the kind of loss I was expecting.  I was worried because it seems that whenever I get on track, the third week is the one where I fall back into my old habits.  But this week even though I didn’t make the best food choices, I stuck to my calories/points for the day.  Almost every day because on Friday I ended up going out for lunch & dinner and I ended up going a bit over.  But it’s ok.  It wasn’t a binge or a cheat meal.  It’s life.  

Yesterday I walked my first 10K race & I was very happy with my results.  I was hoping for average pace of 17 minutes per mile however, there were two obnoxious hills during the course & they slowed me down (side note: I really need to work on hills).  Instead my average pace was 17:06 for a total time of 1:46:27.  I am totally ok with that time.  Now I have a base to improve on.