Disney’s Tangled Royal Family 5K
Mar 5, 2012 What's Going On
Heading over with our group to the Tangled Royal Family 5K on Saturday morning I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do. It was the first day all week that I was feeling myself, my really bad cold having finally exited my body. And while most of the people in our group were taking it easy (Colleen was even doing the race with her six-year-old daughter) I kind-of wanted to do a test run for the half marathon, which would be the next day. I’d felt sick and exhausted the day before after stumbling along for just two miles, so I was curious how I would do if I tried to go at my half marathon pace of 4 miles an hour.
This was also the first time that I’d be using the vibrating run-walk-run pacer I’d purchased from Jeff Galloway at the Fit for a Princess Expo the day before. It ended up being the best $20 I’ve ever spent. I’d been doing Jeff’s run-walk-run method for a while, but it was annoying to have to constantly look at a watch or my phone. This timer can be programmed for a single pace or two alternating paces, and it can beep or vibrate to tell you when to switch from walking to running and back.
It was awesome! I could finally just enjoy moving and not concentrate on the timing. Switching paces became automatic each time the beeper-sized device vibrated on my waistband. If you do any kind of interval training, I highly recommend this timer.
The Family 5K was a blast. There were so many kids participating, and a lot of fun costumes. For the first time since getting to Disney World I wished my kids were there – they would have loved this!
This couple just cracked me up. I want to be them when I get older. Of course, I may have to trade my husband in for someone a tad more whimsical.
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Disney’s Fit for a Princess Expo
Feb 28, 2012 What's Going On
In my last post I mentioned how terrible I felt when I woke up on Friday, but things improved rapidly from there as the cold finally started to leave my body – just in time, since the Tangled Royal Family 5k was the next morning! After our early run with Jeff Galloway (more like a crawl for me) I went to sleep, and woke up feeling better than I had all week. I headed to the Fit for a Princess Expo with the rest of the group, and engaged in some retail therapy – a sure sign that I was on the mend.
I picked up a couple new pairs of running pants, an arm band case for my phone, a sparkly skirt and headband to wear for the half marathon, and a vibrating timer that Jeff Galloway had told me about that morning.
I also found some more shirts that I related to:
And, I got an inspirational look at a whole bunch of metals you can earn for running Disney races. I could see how this could become an obsession.
We also picked up our race bibs for the Tangled Family 5K and Princess Half Marathon. That’s when things got very real for me, when I saw my race number. That makes it very official.
I even caught a glimpse of Cinderella’s coach and footmen!
One more long nap later, and I was feeling about 90%. Everyone on our press trip met up for the big Pasta in the Park dinner at EPCOT. This is a great opportunity for carbo loading, dancing, and watching Illuminations from a special spot reserved just for the pasta partiers.
I, however, missed everything but the pasta, because I was exhausted and went back to my hotel after eating! Yes, lame, I know. But I tried to make up for it by eating two helpings of two different delicious (and vegetarian) pasta dishes. And, at least I got to see Spaceship Earth all lit up – I love the way it looks at night!
I got to sleep at a decent time Friday night, and managed to get six hours of sleep before the 5K. I’m so relieved that I didn’t spend the whole trip sick and miserable, that would’ve been such a waste!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 7, 8, & 16. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Want to catch up on my runDisney adventures? Here are the other posts (newest first):
Disney’s Tangled Royal Family 5K
From bad, to worse, to great with runDisney
And then a few zebra wandered by
A half marathon that fits on a t-shirt
From couch potato to 26K with runDisney
Diary of a Disney Princess Half Marathoner – Part 2
Disney Princess Half Marathon: Done
Diary of a Disney Princess Half Marathoner – Part 1
So this is what Disney does to me
Tags: Disney Princess Half Marathon, Disney World, exercise, Tangled Family 5K
Tangled Family 5k: Done!
Feb 25, 2012 Posted From My Phone
Originally posted on Selfish Mom, from Amy’s cell phone (so please excuse any weird formatting). All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 8. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Want to catch up on my runDisney adventures? Here are the other posts (newest first):
Disney’s Tangled Royal Family 5K
Disney’s Fit for a Princess Expo
From bad, to worse, to great with runDisney
And then a few zebra wandered by
A half marathon that fits on a t-shirt
From couch potato to 26K with runDisney
Diary of a Disney Princess Half Marathoner – Part 2
Disney Princess Half Marathon: Done
Diary of a Disney Princess Half Marathoner – Part 1
So this is what Disney does to me
Tags: Disney World, exercise, run disney
From couch potato to 26K with Run Disney
Feb 22, 2012 What's Going On
I’m weird when it comes to exercise, I’ll just admit that there’s no logic to it. I will bribe my kids to get something for me from upstairs, but voluntarily participate in long races. What can I say: I like a big challenge more than I like getting off of my couch to find my cell phone.
Last year I finished the Disney Princess Half Marathon, and despite having to get up at 2:30am and the exhaustion and the pain, it was worth it. Dare I say, it was even fun. And that’s because it gets the Full Disney Treatment.
I even managed to post right before, and during, and then right after the race.
From muscular men bouncing on trampolines to photo opps with Disney Princes, this is a race designed for women. There are men who participate, but they’re in on the joke: often they’re dressed in costume and there to support the woman they’re running with. Plus, they’re not allowed to win medals. [To clarify, they get the bling at the end, they just can't be awarded any medals fro finishing in a top spot.] And while I didn’t think I cared about the medals, this is some serious bling.
The first real race I ever ran was a four miler in Central Park, and it was intimidating. It was filled with real runners, many of them using that short run as a qualifier for the NYC Marathon. I was twice as big and half as fast as most people there. And while I finished just fine (slow but fine), I would not recommend a race like that for your first one.
The Princess Half Marathon, though, is perfect for a first timer. There are runners of all sizes. Many are in princess skirts. A lot of people walk/run it like I do. Everyone around you is supportive. They want you to succeed, they don’t want to beat you.
Well, except for the people in the front. There are some serious runners who take part. They want to beat you, and they are not in costume. But they are in the minority, and I will never be close enough to them for it to matter. In fact, the closest I got to the frontrunners last year was just a couple miles into the race. It takes a long time to get 17,000 runners started, so about half an hour in for me, the first ones to start passed us on the highway, going the other way, almost done. That was weird to watch. They were flying!
So, back to this year. I’m less nervous, now that I know I can finish. I would love to improve on my time, even by a few minutes, but I haven’t been training hard. I started jogging again in October, but I had gained a lot of weight since the last Princess Half, and could barely finish a couple of miles. I realized that I had to focus on losing weight instead, so while I haven’t been running much, I have taken off twenty-five pounds since October, bringing me back to roughly what I weighed for last year’s race.
Like last year, I’m on this trip as press, but unlike last year, they’ve put Saturday’s Tangled Family 5K on the itinerary, so that will be like a warm-up for Sunday’s half marathon. Plus we’ll be watching the kids’ races, which sound like a lot of fun. I’m considering bringing Jake next year if he keeps jogging with me (he’s been helping me train – he’s a great cheerleader!).
It will be a long weekend of not much sleep. Our press events start at 6am on Friday, and we have to leave for the races at 4:45am on Saturday and 3:30am on Sunday. Ouch.
But it will be worth it. I can’t believe I’m looking forward to this. There’s just nothing like that feeling of accomplishment when you achieve something that’s not at all easy. And the fact that it happens in Disney World makes it even more special.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 7, 8 and 16. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Want to catch up on my runDisney adventures? Here are the other posts (newest first):
Disney’s Tangled Royal Family 5K
Disney’s Fit for a Princess Expo
From bad, to worse, to great with runDisney
And then a few zebra wandered by
A half marathon that fits on a t-shirt
Diary of a Disney Princess Half Marathoner – Part 2
Disney Princess Half Marathon: Done
Diary of a Disney Princess Half Marathoner – Part 1
So this is what Disney does to me
Tags: Disney Princess Half Marathon, Disney World, exercise, jogging, Travel
Today’s Agenda: on the clock edition
Dec 12, 2011 Today's Agenda
I love Mondays. I get the house to myself once again.
Of course, I didn’t realize that the weather program on my phone was set to Celsius. I bundled the kids up like they were summiting Everest and shoved them out the door.
So I haven’t been talking about weight loss for a few weeks. I haven’t given up on Slim-Fast, but I have fallen into the habit of doing it for only four days a week. After about a month of going strong, that seems to be all I can muster. Which was totally predictable. Even Dr. Oz knew that would happen, after knowing me for all of thirty seconds. He thought it was a good way to kick-start my weight loss, but warned me that I’d better have a back-up plan for when I lost steam.
So, I’d been thinking a lot about what the next stage would be. And I think I’ve found it – but I’m not going to tell you what it is until I’ve seen if I can stick with it for a couple of weeks. Because it’s a little weird, and some people would probably yell at me and tell me it won’t work and blah blah blah so I’d rather say what I did after I’m able to follow it with “And it totally worked!”
The other new thing for me this week is trying to keep my OSS (“Ooh, something shiny!”) brain from flitting from thing to thing. No more running to check an email if I”m folding laundry. No more putting a few things in the dishwasher in the middle of writing a post. Part of my new plan is admitting that I will not get everything done, no matter what it is. So instead of saying “OK, I’m going to put away ALL of the laundry!” and then being pissed when six hours later it’s not done and my day is over, I will simply set a timer for one hour and whatever I get done in that hour, I get done, and then I leave it for the next thing. I’m hoping this will keep me more focused, and also keep me from letting certain things go for too long. We’ll see how it goes.
And last, it just hit me that I’m “running” (walking, crawling) the Disney Princess Half Marathon again, and it’s in eleven weeks. And all I want is to get my time down to a still-pathetic 3:15. Which would actually be an awesome time for a full marathon. Maybe I should just accidentally on purpose forget to mention the “half” part when I tell people my time. So after I hit publish, it’s down to the treadmill I go. I’m already wearing a sports bra and everything.
Here I am crossing the finish line last year:
I can’t even describe how that felt. I’m actually looking forward to it again this year!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 16 (Disney Princess Half Marathon). Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Disney Princess Half Marathon, Dr. Oz, exercise, Slim-Fast
Week 4 weigh-in: a little stumble, & a great recipe
Nov 13, 2011 Weight Loss
So this week I only lost half a pound. That’s not bad itself – down is better than up – but this is where my motivation starts to falter. If I don’t see great results I have a hard time justifying the effort.
My eating was fine this week, although I did eat 1,800 calories a couple of days, instead of the 1,200-1,400 I’m aiming for (I ease up a little on calories on the days when I exercise). Not a huge deal. Those days probably didn’t hurt me at all, but they didn’t help either. What did hurt me was that I only exercised once this week, as apposed to six times last week.
Why the big difference? Last week I was home almost the entire week. I had plenty of time to head downstairs to the treadmill before getting a shower. But I had to work out of the house a lot this week, and wasn’t willing to get up early and exercise before starting my day. And frankly, if I haven’t done it before lunch time there’s very little chance I’ll do it.
I’m hoping to hop on the treadmill today, to at least make it twice for this week. Next week I’m just going to do the entire week two workout over.
Also, this week the kids had two days off from school. When I’m with the kids, preparing food for them all day, I’m way more tempted to eat. Slim-Fast keeps me out of the kitchen, but the kids being home gets me right back into the kitchen.
Oddly enough, the one thing that didn’t affect me this week was baking for and working at a big bake sale at my kids’ school on election day. I made brownies and didn’t eat any, and didn’t eat any of the other yummy-looking sweets at the bake sale. That’s not the stuff that tempts me. It’s chips, bread pasta – food, not desserts – that I tend to binge on. I can bake all day without eating any, thank goodness, because I love to bake.
What else went right this week? I made this recipe for baked zucchini sticks a couple of times. They’re super easy and yummy. So yummy, in fact, I keep forgetting to take a picture of them while there’s still a big plate.
I dip mine in light ranch dressing. A couple of changes I made to the recipe? I added a teaspoon of garlic salt (my husband’s suggestion, and a good one) and halved everything else. The recipe makes way too much flour coating, and you just end up wasting most of it. Half is plenty.
I also used all wheat flour, instead of half white half wheat. Tasted exactly the same. Be careful about the cooking spray though: even though the package says no calories, that’s for a tiny spray. I weigh the can before using it, then weigh it again when I’m done, and figure out how many calories I’ve used. Taking into account the fact that some of the spray ends up on the pan, I estimate it adds about 50 calories per serving.
So what’s up for the next week? I’m going to make exercise a priority. You’re all my witnesses. And I’m going to remind myself that for the past year, I was gaining about half a pound a week. So I know for a fact what a half pound a week difference can make. It doesn’t have the motivating power of two pounds a week, but it’s still a move in the right direction.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
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Carbs, sleep, dieting, & more: my interview with Dr. Oz
Nov 7, 2011 Weight Loss
A couple weeks ago I had an amazing opportunity to sit down with Dr. Oz and a fabulous group of bloggers. He gave us about forty-five minutes to pick his brain, and pick it we did. The topics were varied, but since I’ve been on a weight-loss kick lately (ten pounds gone!) I was most interested in what he had to say about that subject.
The show that he had taped before meeting with us was about his Transformation Nation initiative (this episode is airing today – check your local listings for when). He had forty middle-aged women there who were all looking to lose at least forty pounds. He’s teamed up with Weight Watchers to help not just those women but also his viewers take control of their bodies and take off the extra weight. He’s even dangling a million dollar prize for one of the “losers.”
For me, he hit on four key points that are going to help me lose – and keep off – my extra weight.
Find A Plan You Love
I was dying to ask him about what I’m doing (Slim-Fast) because it seems to run counter to what he talks about on today’s episode. He talks about moderation, and my year-long attempt at moderation has resulted in an extra twenty-five pounds. But I don’t want to do something that will be damaging to my body. My goal is to lose two pounds per week. If I don’t see those kinds of results I know that I’ll lose interest and go back to my old habits. So, I asked him:
Me: How to stay motivated when you don’t have a moderation button? I have an on and an off button and I don’t seem to be able to do things moderately, not just with diet but with everything. Ten days ago I started a very severe diet, and I’m loving it. I’m loving the strictness, and the rules…is that bad to do it that strictly, and what do I do when I’m done to be moderate and keep it off?
Dr. Oz: You said one thing that was really important to me, that you love it. If you don’t adore the program you’re on, it doesn’t matter what program you’re on. You have to adore it. You have to want that to be the rest of your life. So the challenge I ask you back is if the program you’re on now is one you can stay on for the rest of your life, then stay on it. If not, then think of it as a jumpstart then get off it quickly before you get bored of it and revolt against it, because that’s your natural instinct. Just from asking the question I can feel that in you.
Ding ding ding! In a couple of sentences he really got me, and the problems I face when trying to lose weight. My husband, for the past six months or so, has been doing what just about every reputable weight-loss authority recommends. He has mostly cut out white flour and sugar, and red meat, and cheese (ouch!) and walks home from work or goes to the gym two or three times a week. He’s lost thirteen or fourteen pounds (and honestly I think he should stop, but he’s still going).
If I were only losing at a rate of a little more than half a pound a week, I would lose interest super fast. However, I’m trying to lose about four times as much weight as my husband is. If I can’t simply eat whatever I want while lying on the couch, then I need to see solid results fast to stay motivated.
But what to do next? I don’t think I could stay on Slim-Fast forever. But I don’t have to. After I’ve used it to lose the weight, I don’t know what I’m going to do, so that’s my challenge from Dr. Oz. I’ve lost weight before, and if I don’t have a post-diet plan it will just come back.
What he said next said a lot to me about why Slim-Fast is working for me.
And I also think that people who go to extremes do better with automation. I have the same darn breakfast every morning. [2% Fage Greek Yogurt with blueberries mixed in, Ezekiel cereal, and a green drink that he swears by.] People think I’m boring. But I always get it, and I know what I’m going to feel like a couple hours later.
I totally get that. I’ve fallen into a pattern that gets me to about 2pm on 500 calories, and I feel fine. I know how I’m going to feel all morning eating and drinking what I am – there are no surprises.
Keep Some Fat
Dr. Oz had some very interesting things to say about skim milk, things that I haven’t heard doctors say before. This really surprised me, but made total sense. The rest I’d heard, about fat-free and sugar-free products. But what he said about milk caused me to switch from 1% to 2%, just to be safe.
By the way, skim milk puts weight on you. You take the fat out of milk, what’s left? Sugar. Eat 2% milk or put some fat in the milk, and you’ve got staying power. I don’t like fat free/sugar free foods because in order to adulterate the food they did something else to it, I guarantee you. And it’s not just chemicals. They often add sugar to the fat-free products to make it palatable. The benefit you get is trivial. The most important thing I’ll ever say about dieting is the brain is smart. It wants nutrients. If you don’t give it the nutrients it craves it’s going to force you to eat more calories.
For the first half of the day, I’m eating (mostly drinking) Slim-Fast. But after that, I eat all of the foods I normally would, but in much smaller amounts. I count calories, something I hate doing, but when I don’t I go completely overboard. And only having to count those calories for part of the day helps a lot.
In the past three weeks, while I’ve lost ten pounds, I’ve eaten pizza, Kraft Mac & Cheese, pasta, chocolate, bread, potato chips…my normal foods. But I’m no longer pigging out on them. I’m eating enough of the stuff that makes my brain happy (carbs! cheese!) and bulking the rest up with lots of vegetables so that my stomach feels full.
Make Lifestyle Changes
Isabel Kallman from Alphamom asked Dr. Oz to clarify his hope that the women on his show will lose forty pounds by spring. (If we’re counting all of spring, and I think he must be, that’s about 35 weeks from when he taped this episode.)
Isabel: At the top of the show today you mentioned that this is a marathon and not a sprint. 40 pounds by spring seems like a lot. Isn’t that more like a sprint number than a marathon number?
Dr. Oz: If I look around this room no one here needs to lose forty pounds, with two exceptions. [Yes, one of them was me.] But if you look at our viewer, and where they live, and the struggles they face in their life, they need to have that long-term aspiration. Now, the most that I really think most people should lose is one pound a week, which is 3500 calories, which means basically every day of the week you’re shaving 500 calories off of what you would normally eat, which is a lot to ask. And I don’t think you can do that through food. You have to do that in exercise as well. The issue that most people struggle with is they try to shave off 800 calories, a thousand calories, and they try to do it repeatedly, and it’s not doable. So as fast as you lose it you gain it back again. And losing forty pounds in six months can also put you in that predicament, if you haven’t adapted to lifestyle changes to go along with that.
That’s going to be the key for me, I think. I’m glad that I’ve added exercise to my routine, so that I’m not losing even more muscle as I’m losing weight. Having that muscle and having exercise in my routine will, I think, be my key to keeping the weight off.
Get Some Sleep!
Dina Freeman from BabyCenter asked Dr. Oz about the tie between sleep and weight loss:
The brain craves four things: it craves sleep, it craves sex, it craves water, and it craves food. If you don’t get enough of one you will make it up with more of the other. When you don’t get sleep, you will crave carbohydrates. There’s tons of literature on this. It is what your body naturally will do. The average American sleeps 6.9 hours, and needs closer to 8 hours of sleep. The sleep that we give up causes much of the problems that we see. You also lose growth hormone, because the major thing sleep offers you is growth hormone, and without growth hormone you can’t build muscle mass. Without muscle mass you lose the metabolic furnace to burn through calories. The biology of blubber is not subtle.
I do not set my alarm to wake up, I set my alarm to go to sleep.
OK, it’s unfortunate that I’m putting this post together after 2am, because it’s going to sound like complete BS when I say that I’ve transformed my sleeping habits since talking with Dr. Oz. But this is not normal for me anymore, it’s an exception, and is driven partly by the fact that I took a three-hour nap today.
In the past two weeks I’ve gotten more sleep than I probably did in the month before that. Between sleeping several more hours a night and exercising six days a week, it has been harder to fit some things in, but on the other hand I’ve been more productive. When I’m not exhausted I can stay on task better and, simply, get shit done faster and better. It’s a good trade-off.
Today’s Episode
I really hope you’ll watch today’s episode. It’s full of so much common sense about weight loss and health. It’s crammed full of practical advice, not gimmicks. Dr. Oz is sincerely trying to give us the tools with which we can solve our weight problems long-term, and I’m very grateful to him for that. I’ve heard too many people be dismissive about people like me who struggle with food, who toss off comments like “Just have a banana!” instead of trying to understand what it’s like when you don’t want a banana, you want an entire banana cream pie. Or why what you ate when you were twenty is now making you fat a forty.
This clip from today’s show is great. I mean, it’s depressing, but it explains a lot.
Thanks so much to Dr. Oz for letting us sit down with you and for giving us such thoughtful advice.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Dr. Oz, exercise, Slim-Fast, Weight Loss
Week three weigh-in: Ten pounds gone
Nov 6, 2011 Weight Loss
I’ve changed my weigh-in day to Sunday, it’s just easier. It’s the only day I’m not supposed to exercise according to my exercise program. Since I often sleep in my workout clothes to make it more likely that I hop on the treadmill first thing, Sunday morning is the only day I know I won’t have to take all those workout clothes off in order to weigh myself. And if you’d ever struggled to get into my favorite sports bra, you’d know what a big deal not having to remove it an extra time is!
But anyway, I weighed in this morning, and I’ve officially lost ten pounds in my first three weeks on the Slim-Fast plan! The first two weeks I didn’t exercise, but this week I exercised six days. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t see a loss on the scale once I started doing toning exercises. I mean, at this point my body is about 40% soft cheese, so there’s a lot there to turn into muscle, which is heavier. But I was happy to see another two pounds gone for this week.
They say that doing something for twenty-one days makes it a habit. Today is day twenty-one…
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
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Tags: exercise, Slim-Fast, Weight Loss
