I had one of those "duh...." knock-yourself-on-the-side-of-
the-forehead lightbulb revelations last night.

I've been feeling like crap lately.

I've been eating too much crap lately, not drinking enough water, and not getting enough sleep. It's been easy to tell myself that I'd been eating MOSTLY healthy foods, so it can't be my diet that's bothering me, ignoring the slice of cake and the mini candy bar. It's so simple to justify that since lots of people get by with 7 hours of sleep a night, that I should be just fine and dandy too. Or that filling my waterbottle once a day at the office means I'm getting adequate water. The headaches, the stuffy nose in the mornings, it must just be a lingering cold.

Well duh. No wonder I've been feeling sickly, lethargic, weak, headachey... and why was I ignoring it for so long?! A little bit healthy is not enough!

My stomach was upset for much of yesterday. Not dying-upset, not Pepto upset, just uncomfortable. Background irritating. Enough to make me not interested in most of our dinner options. I ended up having scrambled eggs for dinner, while Max had leftovers... it was like I was recovering from a flu or something. My stomach had been upset the night before, too, and off and on for... I don't know, since the holidays? Not enough to be on the radar, but just enough that when I reflect back now, it makes me feel like a moron. Stop eating crap, and your stomach will feel better. Duh. So I'm giving it a go. If you seen candy or chocolate in my food tracker in the near future, smack me.

And exercise. I've been dragging my feet about getting back into it regularly. Feeling too tired to do anything moderately intense, or with a headache (which typically gets worse with exertion), or just feeling BLAH and unmotivated. Oh hey, guess what? That also gets better when you take care of yourself.

Friday night my husband, my cousin and I went for our scheduled learn-to-run walk/jog. It is the fifth walk-jog I've done in my return to running, and although my shins and calf muscles are occasionally achey and tight (not surprising, and to be taken in stride...heh) I'm really enjoying it. It's a really good thing that I'm with Max and Cassie, or I'd be zooming off ahead and likely injuring myself - they're really good at reining me in.

After our run, I thought I should follow with some stretching (which I hadn't the last few times, likely hence the tight calves) and I'd also been thinking about doing some squats and lunges before and/or after our runs on a regular basis so as to strengthen my knees and ankles and other twingy bits. We did that in my first half marathon clinic, and I'll be indebted to our skinny little blonde 20-year-old clinic leader Aaron forever. Rather than digging out his warm-up / cool-down program (although I will at some point), I just did some step-ups and squats, and I stretched. It felt good.

Yesterday, after getting a bunch of things done including visiting my parents and borrowing my mother's still-unopened copy of the SparkPeople 28 day Bootcamp DVD, I decided to pop it in and see what it was like, so I'd know whether to encourage her to use it. It's got a 28 day program built in, with a number of workouts a week made up of different combinations of the DVD sub-workouts. I got off my butt and did the 6-minute warm-up which did, indeed, warm me up. It felt good, but I still felt tired and not interested in doing a cardio video nor tromping up all my weights from the basement, so I swapped that DVD out for the P90X Yoga DVD, and did 20 minutes or so of that, until my arms and shoulders were feeling sore from all the vinyasas, then swapped back for the SparkPeople cool-down segment. It wasn't a workout the way I used to work out, and yes I've just decided workout = noun and work out = verb, but it felt good, got me moving, started to wake up my muscles, and left me knowing I could work out again today. And feeling GOOD. So, again, a lightbulb.

Today, Sunday, is a run day. I may add some weights as well, or dig out Aaron's old run warm-up / cool-down regime.

I'm tracking my food, and I'm entirely off sweets. I baked whole wheat-oat-flax-bran-wheat germ-banana-chocchip-raisin-mo
lasses muffins yesterday (yes, all that) and will have one of them if I'm needing a treat. Oat pancakes for breakfast (also leftover from yesterday) and a scrambled egg for protein. Fruits & veggies. Wholesome. Nourishing. No more junk. Water.

Andiamo.