Three Years Lost

Three years ago I ran my best half-marathon ever.  I was in excellent shape and I was seriously trying to pick out what full marathon I wanted to do next.  All in all, my health was probably as good as it had ever been.

Unfortunately, I went out the next weekend and hurt my knee.  I have a lot of excuses for what came next but a lot of it boils down to my treatment plan for the injury:  sit on my couch and eat pizza.  Sadly that's not a really good recipe for staying healthy.

Since that time I've had a few attempts to get myself healthy again.  Unfortunately, every time I've gotten started it's fallen apart on me.  A review of my "recent" posts here can show a lot of those starts and stops.  This past winter I trained up for another half-marathon, but it was basically like starting from scratch.  I finished the race, but it was also my worst time since I first started running.  Just looking at my finishing photo shows the changes wrought by three years of unhealthy eating.

I've gained back far too much weight.  I held off a bit on my plan to restart my diet plan until after Easter, but as of this morning I weighed in at 273.4 pounds.  Since that race in 2013 I've basically regained 70 pounds.  So I'm restarting the 200k challenge.  I've got a few ideas for rewards during the course of the diet, and I think I may buy a fancy home theater system if I complete it.  However I'm also going to institute a penalty to help keep me honest.

Any week in which I don't accrue at least 7500 points will result in my co-workers pelting me with water balloons.  That particular penalty is subject to change...but I'm hoping their glee to penalize me will help keep me honest.

So today's food and exercise.

Food today:  breakfast was a bowl of Special K (2 cups of cereal and 1 cup of 1% milk) for 350 calories.  Lunch was a 6 inch meatball sub from Subway, a bag of chips and a diet coke (720 calories).  Dinner was a hamburger and a cheeseburger on whole wheat hamburger rolls (600 calories total).  Snack included a little bit of peanut butter (100 calories).

Exercise:  one hour on the exercise bike traveling a distance of 18 miles (504 calories).

Totals
Food eaten:  1770
Calories Burned:  509
Daily Points:  1734
Weekly Points:  1734
Total earned: 1734