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Guest Post: Up and Running!

Today’s guest post is by Julia Jones – triathlete and running coach. Alongside Shauna “Dietgirl” Reid she created Up & Running online running courses for women. They invited me to be a stop on their Blog Tour this week.

It’s easy to feel discouraged when you’ve had a terrible training session or run a rubbish race, but these less than perfect scenarios can help make you a stronger athlete! Coach Julia explains all…

Coach Julia at a 10K in sunny

This last spring I ran several half marathons as part of my buildup to a June 70.3 Half Ironman. The 70.3 finishes with a thirteen mile run, and that’s after swimming over a mile and biking fifty-six. I wanted to get comfortable with the 21K distance so that it just rolled out automatically at the end of my triathlon. I figured the best way to do that, besides my normal training plan, was to run the distance several times before the actual race.

I signed up for three smaller half marathons and then got offered a place in the Milan Marathon. I figured I could just conveniently duck out at the 21km mark.

I checked the weather forecast the day before the race: rain. Pouring rain. All day and all night. It was April so not freezing cold, but not exactly toasty warm. I packed a pair of gloves, a long sleeved shirt and a visor to keep the rain off my glasses, then took the train to Italy’s northern capital.

There was drizzle on the windowpanes on the ride up, then a torrential downpour as I dragged my bags through the streets to the hotel. Later at dinner in the hotel restaurant hail pelted on the roof.

The next morning dressed in my running garb I looked out the window and saw that nothing had changed during the night.

The heavens opened up yet again at the start line as thousands of runners huddled together waiting for the gun to go off. As I ran the first mile I asked myself the question that a few of you might be thinking now… “Why the heck are you doing this?”

For the next two soggy hours I jumped over puddles and had to run through a few. When I pulled out at thirteen miles, mission accomplished, I ran to the changing tent to get into some dry clothes then watch the finish. I stuck around for about three seconds – I was drenched again and had really had enough rain for the day. Maybe for the rest of the year!

In psychology there’s a term known as Resilience, which is our ability to cope with stress and adversity. The more we subject ourselves to situations that are difficult or just a litte more of a reach over our emotional or physical abilities, the better we get at handling them. They say that Resilience is a process, not a trait. You’re not born with Resilience, it’s something you can actually train and develop, from whatever level you happen to be starting from.

I’ve seen women develop their Resilience lesson after lesson in our Up & Running courses. At first it can feel like a huge struggle just to get out the door for a training session. But after a few weeks it becomes routine. Then they start building their Resilience through races. The 5k becomes 10k. Those building blocks stack up until they’re doing things they’d never dreamed of…
I develop my own resilience by dragging myself out of bed in the early hours of dawn, or by running races in the pouring rain. Countless times I’ve drawn upon that triumphant feeling of running through a storm to get through a difficult patch in a race, or a day that didn’t start off well.

It’s also helped me recognize that no experience is ever wasted; no matter how difficult it may seem in the moment. It’s a building block onto better things and you’ll always come out a winner!

Julia Jones lives in Italy and is coach at Up & Running. They offer e-courses for super-new and seasoned runners tackling 5K, 10K and half-marathon runs with expert coaching, awesome training plans and vibrant community support. Julia’s has rocked 33 marathons, 2 half Ironmans and numerous triathlons and is a columnist in Italy’s most popular running magazine.

Want to build up your own running resilience? Get a helping hand with Up & Running’s next e-courses which start 3 September.

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Guest Post: Kris says “Do Something!”

Do Something, ANYTHING, Every Day

It was a long, hard, tiring day, and I was feeling particularly haggish. Don’t get me wrong, I really love my evil twin, but I also like having control over her – calling her out when the time is right and enjoying her appearance.

When she controls me, it means that I’m not feeling so hot. A big part of my taming the shrew is movement. Cliché I know, but it is my truth.

It just so happened that Susan and I were feeling the same way, at the very same time. We had been on an exercise streak, but 3 days later we had completely lost our groove. And the motivation or inclination to do anything was long forgotten. And we were both lamenting our dilemma over twitter.

Since I’m a little by little gal, the idea of 20 minutes of movement everyday always appealed to me. For me, it is much easier to say, “I will go for a 20 minute walk,” rather than, “I will go to the gym for an hour.”

So the stars were aligned, exhausted or not, and Susan and I agreed at the same moment to do something, ANYTHING for 20 minutes that day.

And so it began.

We got off the computer and we went out.

We did it. Together.

We giggled.

We tweeted.

We felt better.

So we did it again.

And again.

And again.

Sometimes she got on her elliptical. Sometimes we got in the pool. Sometimes we got on a real bike. Sometimes we walked to work. But we always checked in with each other. We confirmed our 20 minute plans, and we encouraged each other every day.

There were days I was physically tired a day after a swim or a workout with my trainer. On those days, I spent 20 minutes on my mat. (My body loves my mat time.) There were other days where time and schedules seemed to get in the way, and Susan parked further from her work to sneak in the walk. There were also days that I was mentally tired, but I got up and got out anyway.

I walked. I didn’t even break a sweat. It counted.

Despite the physical or mental exhaustion, we did it. I can say that for me, I always shot for 20 minutes and many times I moved for longer. There were a few times when I did NO MORE than 20 minutes.

We did this for 14 days.

In a row.

20 minutes of ANYTHING.

EVERY day.

For 14 days.

Together.

And we felt better.

We found our groove again.

Thanks to 20 minute trickery and an amazing tribe.

Read More:

Care to join us? 20 minutes is all we ask.

Kris is a wannabe fitness/culinary guru who can neither cook nor jog. You can find her on The Heart and Humor of Being Human where she learns to mince basil and do kettlebell swings while tweeting, all while trying to find some balance in this distracting world. You can also find her on twitter @krazy_kris.

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Prisoner: A Guest Post by Tara

I am so unbelievably honored and thrilled to introduce you all to Tara of Life Changing Journey, who is one of my person heroes. Her honesty and determination and sheer willingness to do WHATEVER IT TAKES (physically, emotionally, spiritually) to find health and wholeness  – just blows me away. Tara, thank you for being here. Okay readers, are you ready?? Have Kleenex at hand.

—————————————–

For the first 40 years of my life, I abused my body. I used it to hide my emotions. I used it to comfort my fears and frustrations. I used it to shield me from the hurt and pain that I longed to stop feeling. I didn’t move it. I didn’t take care of it. I didn’t love it one bit. In fact, I hated it. I hated my body and I made damn sure my body knew it.

I became a prisoner in my own skin.

I locked myself in and threw away the key. Every year I had fleeting thoughts that maybe this would be the year that I changed. This would be the year I would learn to love and care for myself. This would be the year I would free myself from the prison I had lived in for so long….

Then the year would pass I would still hate myself. Still couldn’t stand to look at the person in the mirror. Still couldn’t bring myself to have a little faith that I deserved to live a better life. I resigned myself to living the life of a morbidly obese woman that found very little enjoyment out of life except for when I was playing video games or indulging in an emotional eating episode…

Funny thing about my body…

It never gave up on me. It would open up that cage door and give me the opportunity to stand up and walk out of my emotional prison. Every time I turned it down, my body would wait patiently. Again it would open the door ever so slightly and wait for me to finally believe…

I’m free of my prison now. Life on the outside is more beautiful than I ever imagined. I’m so far away from that prison cell that I have a hard time remembering what it was like being there. Locked away. Slowly dying, emotionally and physically, and not really caring. Now I care. I care more than I ever thought possible. I will fight tooth and nail and to my death to never return to that prison. I’m still scared, frustrated and learning to live in my emotions but can I let you in on a little secret?

The view is so much better out here.

I don’t know where you are on your journey. Maybe you’ve locked yourself in and thrown away the key. Maybe the years have come and gone and you too wonder if you’ll ever stand up and leave the confines of you cell. Maybe you’ve abused your body and you think that there is no way it’s going to do what you ask what you ask it to do. Maybe you’re afraid to unlock your cell door and see what’s out here. Listen, you get to unlock that door. Do you hear me: You get to unlock the heavy door that you thought would never move. You get to push it wide open, you get to step across the threshold and embark on the journey of a lifetime.

One slow step at a time.

Until you realize that you deserve this.

Your body already knows that.

Let it prove it to you.

~ Tara

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Healthy Beef Stroganoff – YUM! A Guest Post by TJ!


me and TJ!
I’m excited that Tracey (aka TJ) is sharing one of her awesome healthy recipes on my blog today! Her blog is full of fantastic, easy recipes that are super WW-friendly. Check out her fantastic progress – inspiring isn’t it?? One of her greatest strategies is coming up with wonderful recipes to keep her satisfied and on track. Take it away, Tracey!
——————–
Hi guys! Tracey here from tj’s test kitchen! Special thanks to Foodie McBody for allowing me to post a recipe over here today. 🙂 I made this just this past weekend with my Mom and the whole family loved it. Beef Stroganoff SCREAMS comfort food if you ask me but sometimes with comfort comes calories. My mission along this weight loss journey is to make the foods I love…. HEALTHIER!
Beef Stroganoff
serves 8
4PointsPlus
*add additional PointsPlus for noodles
1 lb package lean ground beef 90/10
1 can Campbells Healthy Request Cream of Mushroom soup
1 can Campbells HR Cream of chicken soup
1 Cup Fat Free Sour Cream
1 envelope onion soup mix
1 1/2 Cups sliced fresh mushrooms
1/2 Cup water
pepper to taste
First brown beef over medium heat until fully cooked; drain any fat after cooked.
In separate pan- even at the same time the beef is cooking saute mushrooms in a small pan sprayed with PAM.
Ingredients all lined up….
These are the noodles I used 1 cup for 5 PointsPlus
1 Cup Sour Cream
After draining any fat, add onion soup mix, sour cream, water, and both soups to the pan. This looks weird, I know, but wait! haha!
Give it a stir….then toss in the cooked mushrooms.
stir again…mmmm nice and creamy! Add in pepper if you like!
Serve on top of cooked noodles. YUM! After I took this picture I tossed in some peas. It was delicious!
Easy and tasty! My two favorite words to hear when I am cooking dinner! Hope you all liked my recipe! Make sure you stop by my blog to let me know if you decided to make it! I would love to hear all about it! 🙂 ENJOY!  tj
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The Book I Was Going to Write: Guest Post by Karen!

I’m thrilled to host author and blogger Karen CL Anderson here at my blog. She was one of my first friends in the blogosphere, and we “clicked” right away because of our love of writing and our desire to tell the “inner stories” of our bodies, our weight journeys. I think she’s awesome and so excited about her new book!

Ten years ago, if you were to ask me which would be the greater accomplishment – being thin or writing a book – I would have said being thin. No question about it. At the time I weighed ~230 pounds and even though I actually was a writer (at the time I was a plastics industry trade magazine reporter and editor), I had no confidence in my ability to write. In my mind, I wasn’t a “real” writer.

And very much like I used say, “someday I’ll lose weight,” I also used to say “some day I’ll write a book.”

Five years ago, I was the thinnest I’d been in my entire adult life. I had really worked for it, too. Not only was I was counting calories and exercising regularly, I was working on the emotional stuff. I was fully aware that this was a “lifestyle change” and that figuring out the “why’s” was just as important as the calories in/calories out equation.

I was also a weight-loss “success story” with my picture on the cover of a weekly women’s magazine and I appeared in a national commercial for a popular weight loss web site. I thought I had it all figured out and wanted to share my secrets with the world. That is the book I was going to write.

But.

But there was something holding me back…even though I had achieved something I never thought possible, I still had doubts and no real confidence in myself. And the biggest problem of all was that I hadn’t reached my goal weight…I was still 20 pounds away. Deep down inside I didn’t feel worthy.

What happened next was predictable: over the course of a year or so, I regained half the weight I had lost. Along with the pounds came panic, shame, frustration, and anger. I wallowed in self-pity a bit, I punished myself a lot, and I was desperate. I hated my body.

And that’s when I started to really write. My best writing was born out of pain and frustration, not success. At first, I did it for myself. Then I started blogging. It didn’t take long before I realized that I had found my voice, and along with it came a bit of confidence. Then came self-acceptance and the realization that if I could just love and accept myself enough, my body might just respond in kind. And it did.

And that’s when I realized that I truly had something of value to say. And so I took what I had written, edited it, added to it and published a book. It seemed like the right thing to do…a natural progression of the love and acceptance I was finally allowing myself to feel.

I can honestly say now that I am glad I regained that weight. It gave me an opportunity to really know and understand myself in a way that I never had before. I am more than just a number on a scale. My value does not depend on whether or not I’ve lost weight. And because I know that, my body does too.

Karen’s book, AFTER (the before & after) is the result of her belief that having a healthy body (mind and spirit) shouldn’t be a life-long struggle. It is NOT just another book about how to lose weight. It’s about the power of self-acceptance, and it’s about realizing that it takes as long as it needs to take. And that’s okay.

Her blog, “Before & After: A Real Life Story” (http://kclanderson.com/before-and-after) chronicles the lessons she continues to learn.

To learn more about AFTER (the before & after) and to read excerpts from the book, please visit: http://booklocker.com/books/5321.html

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Fatty McWHAT?!? A Guest Post from Jack Sh*t

I’m thrilled to bits to introduce my readers to Jack Sh*t, who is one of the funniest (and underneath it all, most serious about health & weight loss) bloggers out there in the blogosphere. He is one of the first bloggers I found on my “journey” and he has been a constant reminder that if we don’t laugh and have a good time on the way, there’s really no point. I consider him the King of the Index Cards, made most famous by his WIDTH (Why I Do This Here) campaign – Why DO you do what you’re doing?? (feel free to answer this on an index card of your own and send it to him!)

Jack, thanks so much for visiting, and, um… completely forgetting my name! Ah, maturity, it’s a lovely thing.


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Why Not Run A Little Bit Faster? Guest Post by @bradgansberg!

I am so honored that none other than Brad Gansberg himself is visiting FoodFoodBodyBody and has written a blog post just for us. He’s a running CHAMP and is actually starting up a free program to teach people to run in 100 days. How awesome is that? And I’m going to go try out this tempo running next time I’m out there.. which better be this weekend since I have TWO races (plus a stairclimb) the weekend after!!!

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Coach Jen says, “Uh-Oh!”

I’ve been using my Philips DirectLife activity monitor for about five months now, which is great for me, in terms of committing to a gadget. I’d also tried a BodyBugg and various pedometer things, and gave up on those fairly quickly. But I find the little white necklace of the DirectLife so easy to wear, that it’s become automatic.

One of the best, no, THE best thing about the DirectLife is the coaching that goes with it. By now so many of us have “met” Coach Jen and she is awesome! She is encouraging, she is inquisitive, she pushes when I want pushing, she backs off. But last week I got this message from her.

How is your week going? I notice that your activity is lower than
before – well, not hitting targets. Are you OK. Happy with the targets
as they are? Is there anything that I can do to help? Harrass you
everyday with emails? Give you new tips on daily activity? Let me know
😉

Jen

She was right. I was so busted! Except for a couple of huge spikes like the day of my 6 mile run, I was NOT hitting my activity targets, something I’d managed to uphold for all these months! Suddenly I was feeling so tired, and could not for the life of me get my activity level over 50 or 60%. (my personal goal was to have my activity at LEAST hit 90% every day, and 100% average for the week) But working more, and… it just wasn’t happening.

I still haven’t remedied the situation. But that little “uh-oh” in my email Inbox woke me up and showed me that someone else is paying attention. Suddenly I want to figure it out. Today is a lazy, rainy day. It would be so easy to just… do nothing. But I’m re-inspired to get my little white necklace shaking so I can show Jen some good numbers this week.

 

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Guest Post: Terre asks “What’s YOUR Goal?”

I’m thrilled that Terre Pruitt, awesome Nia teacher, has agreed to guest-post for me this week!

So what is YOUR goal?  I had a goal, I met it but I wanted more.  Then I kept aging and my “additional goal” kept slipping further away.  See my original goal was to get/stay/be healthy.  Then I decided I wanted to look like a super model.  Yeah, I know.  You don’t even have to know me or see me to know that is ridiculous.  Number one, who really wants to be THAT thin?  And I will never be that tall.  And really, honestly, right?  “C’uz that’s what we do here on Foodie McBody’s blog — is be honest, most people can’t achieve that state of thin.  It is a certain body type that can be a supermodel.  I am NOT that type.  I am of the shorter stockier version.  I started on my “health” kick rather late in life too.  I mean, certainly not too late to be healthy and fit . . . . never to late for that . . . but too late to not have gotten the sag here and the stretch mark there, ya know?  No swim suit runway modeling in my future.

My model goal kind of got me off track.  I started just giving up a bit because I know I could never be like that so why bother, right?  Wrong.  I think they work really hard at being that thin.  I don’t think that most people are supposed to be as thin as our models and celebrities so they have to work really hard.  It is hard work.  I want to enjoy my life and I CAN by eating sensibly, exercising, and being healthy.  Health is so important.

I once knew a woman who said to me one day as we saw someone scootering by, “That’s my goal.  I wanna scooter.” What?  Huh?  Uh . . .   My goal–really, my goal when I started this was to get healthy to stave off having to medicate.  At the time I started working out and eating better,  I knew too many people that were going on the hypertension drugs.  I don’t like to take medication.  Then on top of the medication they had side effects.  See, to me the less you have to take the less side effects you have.  So my goal is to stay off the meds and out of the scooter as long as possible.

Recently I got off balance (heartburn) but all my other tests came out good.  Average.  I think there is room for improvement, but I am basically healthy.  High five!  That is such an important thing.  Often time when getting healthy or staying healthy is the goal some of the others things follow suit.  Some of the other goals might be losing weight, having more energy, feeling better.  It is amazing.  I need to remember that my true goal is being healthy and concentrate on that more and not let the other stuff get in my way.  So what is YOUR goal?  What are you doing to achieve it?  Are you keeping on track and not getting side tracked like I did?  Health is one of our greatest assets.

Terre Pruitt is a Nia Teacher and a certified personal trainer.  When not teaching Nia she is sharing her passion for it on her blog and her website.  She “met” Foodie on Twitter, so she can be found there too@HelpYouWell

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