M. Suzanne Terry

Still Life with Scale

Progress for Week 1:

Miles completed: 6.14
Days of proper hydration: 1/7
Days of good food choices: 0/7

If you just look at the numbers above, you might think I had a bad week. But progress and perfection are not the same word.

Those numbers don’t tell you that, even though I’m not an exact 7/31 of the way through my 50-mile goal, I’m actually a little bit ahead of the training schedule for safely increasing my intervals. My goal for the week was five miles, and I reached it Thursday.

Those numbers don’t tell you that, even though I only reached my goal of 100-120 ounces of water once this week, it’s still one day more than I reached it the week before, and I almost made the goal every day. My skin is also remarkably less scaly this week. Water is a frickin’ miracle.

Those numbers don’t tell you that, although I didn’t have one day when I could honestly say I ate well all day, I was more mindful of choices and made a few good ones. A day that I consider a good food day is one in which my food choices leave me satiated but not sluggish or squirrely. This typically looks like lots of fruits and vegetables, limited meat, and a low salt and sugar intake (which automatically controls for the carbs I tend to overindulge in). Even though I ate like crap this week, I maintained my weight from the week before.

You might notice, however, that weight loss is not one of the goals I’m measuring during this project. In fact, I’m going to talk about it once, and then you won’t see or hear about the scale the rest of the month. I keep track of my weight because, as I personally do not have any condition that makes me gain or lose weight regardless of the food and activity choices I make, it’s an easy way to get an overall view of how I’m doing. But it’s not the only way (or even the primary way) I make this assessment. In my adult life, the time period when I weighed the least was also the time I was the least healthy, so I know weight doesn’t always tell the truth. My focus, energy, and anxiety levels are much more accurate when it comes to understanding how well I’m doing both physically and mentally. Noticing improvements in those areas are how I decide that a new habit is working.

Tomorrow (erm, later today), we start our week on safety.

I’m spending 31 days running wild.