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The Marathon: What A True Beast

Hi Healthy Happier Bear readers! I’m Meghan from Little Girl in the Big World! When Ashley asked me to share my story her marathons + moderation series I was excited, because after running Disney on January 13th, I haven’t been able to stop thinking or talking about the marathon! What a true beast it is in the most beautiful way!

My journey to the marathon started indirectly in March 2011 when I started the Couch to 5k Program. I started it just to lost weight, but when I got some encouragement from a co-worker who had run a few marathons, I knew a half marathon was doable for me. If you had told me when I stepped out the door those first few weeks that in less than two years I’d be running a marathon I wouldn’t have believed you for even a second. I hated running for all of my life up to that point!DSC01299

But after running Disney’s Wine and Dine Half Marathon as my first half, I knew that running was something that was going to become a part of me. I could write an entire post (and I probably will at some point) on what running has done for me, and I without question wouldn’t be the person I am today without it. Two of the things that are the most important to me are my relatively new commitment to a healthy lifestyle and my ability to continue pursuing goals that I set for myself even after going to college and grad school and securing a job that I’m happy with.

I’m not sure what it was that made me decide to run the Walt Disney World Marathon, but I think it had something to do with the 20th Anniversary medal and the 20-mile spectacular. I wanted to be a part of an entire event, not just a race. So after getting married in July and then having pretty serious abdominal surgery in August, I decided that I was going to make it happen. The surgery went well enough that I knew I’d be able to train after my six-week recovery period was over (I talked to my doctor, who is a runner, and she said it was fine), so I was able to sign up when the race was at 98% capacity. I just made it, and I was so glad.photo 1

But what came next was training, and this is where my moderation came in. Though I definitely had to moderate social time and other activities in my life, the thing that I had to moderate the most was my mind. It has been my biggest enemy and roadblock on my path to achieving goals. It’s not that I doubt myself or that I don’t think I’m able to do something from the get go, it’s just that while I’m in the process I am constantly questioning if I’m capable of finishing a certain run or a certain workout.

My mind is absolutely what I’ve had to moderate on long runs, tempo runs, and speed sessions, because if I let myself believe the occasional negative thought that would come through my head, I probably would have stopped before I had gotten to the starting line. Because I did most of my training alone, I had ample time to think. And while I sometimes thought about work, friends, things I needed to do, my mind would frequently throw in thoughts like, “your hip is hurting! You should cut this run a few miles short!” or, “you don’t need to run this fast to go the time you want. Just slow down a little bit.” Of course I would also doubt myself sometimes as well. There would be times that runs didn’t go as well as I had hoped or things were harder than they should have been, and the idea that maybe I wouldn’t be able to run 26.2 miles. And that was when my heart had to step in.

It was really heart over mind that got me to the starting line, and ultimately the finish line of the Disney Marathon. My heart wanted to do this to prove to myself that I could. I had set a goal with my heart, and I wasn’t about to physically allow anything to get in my way. Even during the race, it was the continued battle between what I knew was true and what my mind was trying to convince me at the time. Talk about mental games! They are sure to arise during training and especially during a first marathon.725248-1064-0017s

But in the end, I did it! I ran 26.2 miles (in reality I ran 26.61 miles because of all of the weaving), I got the medal I had signed up for, and I became a true running addict. I had pushed myself to a point I would have never thought possible earlier in my life, and I did it all by letting my heart continue to believe that it was all possible. It wasn’t pretty, and the race was pretty warm. I didn’t hit my goal times, but I later learned that I probably shouldn’t have set those anyways.725258-1008-0002s

The marathon is a distance to be respected. My advice to anyone that’s training or looking to run their first would be to believe in yourself and to believe in your training. Your mind will try to convince you that you’re weak or not capable at times, but you are! I wrote a recap of some more details of the actual miles along the way, and I kept all my training on my blog. I’m already planning my fall marathon, and I’m really excited to use everything that I learned in this training cycle and race to improve myself on marathon number 2!

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When Things Don’t Go As You Plan

Happy Wednesday gang! I hope you all are having a good week so far. This morning I headed back to Barry’s Bootcamp for the first time in 10 days and the intense workout was exactly what my body needed to reset 100% from traveling and partying. As of now, I don’t travel again until April when I head down to Savannah for some quality time with my family! I can hardly believe it at this point since I feel like I’ve been traveling weekly for the past few months. 

This week’s marathons+moderation guest post hits home for me as many of the same feelings Jamie talks about are ones that I had this year when I finished Philadelphia but Bo chose to hold out for NYC 2013. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and head on over to her blog to show her some support!

Hi everyone! I’m Jamie and I blog at From Couch to Ironwoman.  My husband, Mike, and I started running using the Couch-to-5K program and relatively quickly built our way up to a half marathon only six months after we started running.  Since our goal is to do Ironman Louisville in 2014, we knew we couldn’t stop at the half marathon distance.  Last December we registered for our first marathon, the Wineglass Marathon in Corning, New York, and we trained for it diligently together throughout the summer.

JamieandMike

Mike and I have trained together since the beginning.  We completed all of our training programs together: Couch-to-5K, Bridge-to-10K, our first half marathon and our first triathlon training program.  It only made sense for us to do our first marathon training program together, sure there were days when we couldn’t run together because of conflicting schedules but for the most part we were together.

On the days when we were supposed to do our “marathon pace” (which we just guessed at since it was our first marathon), I would run slightly behind Mike.  I ended up never running my goal marathon pace, I ran it slightly faster.  We ran our long runs together and suffered through some pretty horrible training runs, and celebrated the good ones.

Our 20 miler went really well for me, but Mike struggled through it.  Even though we had both had some difficult runs (19 was NOT good for me), I never had a doubt in my mind that we weren’t both going to become marathoners.

On the morning of the race, I could tell that Mike was really nervous. I don’t think that it helped that his mom was talking about running almost the entire car ride to the marathon, so I just tried to get them to change the subject.  When we got the race, we did our thing and saw two of our friends who were also running the race. Then, we all went and found our respective spots with the rest of the runners.

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Although Mike and I train together, we don’t race together. He is a lot faster than me so he lined up with the 3:55 pace group and I fell back somewhere behind the 4:10 pace group.  This was a little bit faster than what we had been planning for but we both knew we felt relatively good.

A little while after 8am, we were running our first marathon.  The first 10 miles I was averaging 9:30 pace (which was a bit faster than my goal marathon pace) and that’s when I saw Mike’s parents for the first time. His mom told me that Mike was doing well, and under his goal pace too, so that made me happy.

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I hit the half marathon point at 2:07 and then I started to feel fatigued.  I kept pushing but there were times when I had to walk.  At this point, I still didn’t doubt that I would finish the marathon but I knew that I might have gone out too fast in the beginning. I saw Mike’s parents again at mile 16, and his mom said something about Mike and his paces but I couldn’t understand her.

Then, at mile 18.5, everything changed. I saw this guy that looked like Mike on the sidelines cheering me on and then I realized that it WAS Mike. I was so disoriented and confused, but I asked him what he was doing. He told me not to worry about him, but since we’re married I did just the opposite. I remember motioning and willing for him to come with me, but he wouldn’t. I even said, “well then I don’t want to do this either”.

From that point on, the race was “over” for me and really over for Mike. His legs and hips had cramped up so badly he couldn’t continue.  Looking back on it now, it was the right decision, but in the moment I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t going to achieve what we set out to do.

The rest of the race I struggled; my paces plummeted to over 15 minute miles at times. And I probably walked more than I ran. I also stopped taking in fuel, mainly because mentally I didn’t care anymore.  The only thing that got me through was our friend Mark who saw me with about 3 miles left to go, and knowing that Mike wanted me to become a marathoner.


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I finished my first marathon in 5:01:23 and I cried as I crossed the finish line. Not because I was happy, but because my training partner, my husband, hadn’t done the same. I felt guilty and I had a hard time calling myself a marathoner (I still do) for a long time.

I know that 26.2 miles is a long way and that anything can happen, but I NEVER expected anything like that.  It felt like nothing was going right and I really wanted to quit, but I didn’t.

Mike is going to become a marathoner someday, and I hope that our next marathon is one that we will remember for the good times and not the bad.  We’re registered for two marathons this year: the Cleveland Marathon and the Mount Desert Island Marathon. In fact, we registered for the Cleveland Marathon the same night after my first marathon finish. We needed redemption and we will get it.

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Intuitive Eating Tips for Work and Travel

Greetings from snowy Geneva where we received almost a foot of snow in the past 24 hours!  

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I had no idea that due to the geography  heavy snow is quite rare here and therefore has put the city into a tailspin. My run outside turned into an awesome 30 minute Strong Arm & Back workout followed by a long day in our Geneva office. It’s incredible to spend time in this office as it is truly a global office where people speak Italian, French, German, and English just to name a few! I knew that I wouldn’t have time to post today based on my workload and therefore reached out to one of my New York City friends for help. Jamie and I are going to work together during the month of March as I continue to make headway on my intuitive eating  In advance of that partnership, we thought it would be fun to share her journey and knowledge with you all along with new of her next challenge! 

Enjoy and catch you guys tomorrow!

Hi there! My name is Jamie and I blog over at StudioEats. I have my own Health Coaching business and specialize in working with people on becoming more Intuitive Eaters- ditching the diets and learning to listen to their own bodies.

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I’ve been running a 21 Day Intuitive Eating Challenge with 45 people during the month of February and am going to be running the program again in March. More details on that at the end!

I am so excited to be posting on Ashley’s blog today. I’ve been reading it for a long time now, and was SO excited when I read her post a couple weeks ago titled “Turning Point”. This quote that she wrote literally made me grin from ear to ear:

“I decided that I was tired of trying and figured that I’d take some time post marathon just to see what my body wanted to do naturally.  I’ve been eating what I crave, enjoying wine, and working out consistently. The trick is all about intuitive eating and drinking. When I’m craving something, I eat it but in a small portion.”  -Ashley

Ahhh… music to my ears! A little about my story… After trying every single diet in the book during college, I finally began my own Intuitive Eating journey a few years ago. I was desperate, I was at an all time low in terms of my body image and weight, and I knew that diets just weren’t working. There had to be a better way. I ended up finding a Health Coach who changed my life—she helped me look inward instead of outward, get back in touch with my body, and learn how to deal with emotional eating. I was finally able to shed the college weight but more importantly, find the freedom and liberation I was so desperate for in terms of my relationship to food.

Ashley asked me to talk to you guys about how to become more Intuitive Eaters while working crazy hours and living busy lives. Before leaving my job to start my Health Coaching business, I worked full time in Finance for 3.5 years. For 2.5 of those years, I traveled almost every week all over the Southeast. So I know how challenging these environments can be and am excited to give you a few of my top tips that I learned over the years. So here goes!

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My Top Three Tips for Being a More Intuitive Eater While You’re at the Office:

  1. Ditch the notion that you have to stick to meal times: Part of becoming an Intuitive Eater is eating when you’re actually hungry. I’ve noticed that a lot of people are really stuck on eating their breakfast/lunch at a certain time each day at the office. Play around with meal times and focus on eating your meals when you’re actually hungry. The more in sync you are with your hunger and your body, the more satisfied you will feel when you actually eat. Try pushing your lunch back an hour, or up an hour. It’s all about experimenting!
  2. Rethink your lunch: If you bring your lunch to work, it is slightly harder to be Intuitive about your lunch choice because you already packed your lunch that morning or the night before, but my suggestion here is to bring some options for yourself, and make those options varied. This way, you can give yourself something you’re actually craving at lunchtime. Bring some cut up veggies or a salad, something more carb-heavy like a sandwich, maybe some yogurt/granola in case you’re in the mood for that, some chocolate or other sweet options, a piece of fruit or two, etc. When it comes to be lunchtime, choose from your options. Anything leftover can just be used the next day or brought home. If you buy lunch at work, take a minute before you go to lunch to REALLY ask yourself what you’re in the mood for. Get exactly that, enjoy every bite of it, and try as hard as you can to stop eating when you’re full
  3. Take some time for yourself: I focus on finding pleasure in the day-to-day with my clients. Take a lunch break- even if it just for 5 minutes. Focus on your food, not your computer screen. If you can, get out and walk around with your ipod or a friend. Every now and then, take yourself down the street to a cute café if you can. Treat yourself—you deserve it. The more pleasure we have in our lives, the less we need to use food to fill that pleasure void.

My Top Three Tips for Being a More Intuitive Eater While Traveling:

1.     Give up control: I know, this is SO hard for most of us. I coach a few clients who travel frequently for work and I just tell them to go with the flow and ENJOY IT. Just like Ashley gave up control while she was recently traveling, try to do the same. Don’t plan out your meals, fight the fear that there won’t be enough “healthy” food available, just use it as a time to practice giving up control. Flow through your days eating exactly what looks good when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. If you follow this guideline, it will help you survive your travels without gaining an ounce.

2.     Bring whatever snacks you can: Intuitive Eating means honing in on your actual cravings and hunger. Since traveling is so unpredictable, have snacks on you so that you can eat when you’re hungry and also so that you don’t feel the need to load up/stuff yourself at a certain meal because you’re not sure when you’re going to see food again. I ALWAYS have almonds and dark chocolate bars on me when I travel, and I also used to bring cut up raw veggies for my plane rides there.

3.     Self Care and Comfort are SO important: When we travel, we are out of our element. We are in a world of unknown, in strange cities and airports, we don’t have the right clothes, our flights get cancelled, we don’t know our food options, etc. When we are in situations like this, it’s important to up our self-care BIG TIME. Give yourself any comforts that you can. When I traveled every week for work, I used to make sure all of my work clothes were as comfortable as possible, that I always had flats on me to change into, that I had tea bags with me because I was constantly cold, that I had my own snacks with me, that I took a few minutes to myself whenever I could, that I had interesting magazines and books to read, etc. Self-care is so crucial to our health AND our weight because when we are uncomfortable for any reason, we often times try to stuff down/eliminate that feeling with food. The more comfortable and relaxed we can make ourselves, the less we will turn to food.

 I hope you find these tips helpful! Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

And now for the March challenge:

21 day intuitive eating

During the Intuitive Eating Challenge, you will learn how to break free from the Diet Mentality, listen to your body and your actual cravings, give yourself permission to eat exactly what you want, tune back in to your hunger and fullness, and re-learn what makes you satisfied. I’m telling you… working toward becoming a more Intuitive Eater was the smartest thing I ever did in my life. It made me WAY more in touch with not only my body and what it needed, but what I needed in every single area of my life. Not to mention it helped me easily shed the college weight in a way that worked with my body instead of against it.

You can read two additional posts that I did about Intuitive Eating and how much it has impacted me:

Intuitive Eating: What Does This Mean, Anyway?

The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

I will be your guide and your coach during the 21 days of the challenge and will be devoted to helping you grasp the concepts and implement them into your personal life. This is what the challenge entails:

–          Two 15 minute one-on-one coaching calls with me. One is at the beginning of the challenge to help me understand your current situation and help you formulate goals for the challenge and one call is at the end to recap with you and answer any remaining questions specific to you. 

–          Daily newsletters in your inbox at 6am, each with a different topic related to Intuitive Eating and a “task” for you to try out that day going forward

–          Unlimited email one-on-one email coaching with me during the 21 days

–          Access to the Private Intuitive Eating Facebook Group (the Feb group has been super active! They post pics of their food, questions, “ah-ha” moments, and successes)

For additional information about the challenge, head over to my main Intuitive Eating Challenge page.

The cost of the program is $49 but I am happy to offer it for the price of $39 to any of Ashley’s readers because I know you guys are serious about learning. In order to get signed up and the $39 rate, simply email me at jamiemendell@gmail.com and put “IE Challenge- Ashley” in the subject line. I’ll then get your payment information and we’ll be on our way.

I can’t wait to have you be a part of it and to have the honor of guiding you toward something that I am so passionate about.

And I’d like to just leave you with a little tid-bit from an email I got this morning from one of the people participating in the February Intuitive Eating Challenge. She wrote me this in an email:

“Just some quick feedback to let you know how much I look forward to “chatting/connecting with a dear friend” (you) everyday!  For the first time in my life I am paying attention to MY well-being and not thinking it’s self-centered.” – Kathy Skinner

 

 

 

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