Fitness Ridge 2011 - Check in Sunday

I'm back to Fitness Ridge in St. George, Utah.  I spent a week here last July and enjoyed it so much I booked this week to return with the roommate I met on my last trip.  There are so many reasons that I am back here again but at the top of my list is the AMAZING food!  The chef is incredible and feeds us the most spectacular meals on 1200 calories a day.  Tonight we had tamales with a chocolate pudding cake thing.  Everything was exactly as expected.  DELICIOUS!

Here is a picture outside my room.

I took a mountain bike out for a spin and had a blast.  I never realized how fun a mountain bike was until today.  There are some rolling dirt hills behind the resort that were a lot of fun.  I saw a ton of these giant jack rabbits out there but they were too fast for me to get a picture.

We have lots of pool classes everyday.  Of course I love the water, love the pool and love pool classes!  I did an hour swim workout after I got checked in tonight before dinner.  The air temperature was only 60 but the water was very warm.  The sun was shining beautifully so it was a great swim.  The hard part was getting out.  I'll be spending as much time around here this week as I can squeeze in.  It should be nice and sunny all week and the temperatures will be warming up a bit from today's temps.

Some of you may wonder why I needed to come back here to Fitness Ridge.  I've lost touch with my blog so I guess I haven't been taking the time to really reflect on where I am, mentally and physically.  I'm here to get back to some basics and try to kick start losing some of these last 35 pounds.  

I started this journey with an all time high weight of 286 pounds!  Yeah, OMG!  I weighed in here last July at 190 and left around 185 or so (I don't recall exactly).  I got down to about 175 by the end of summer and was doing great.  I continued to tone, build muscle and get more fit as I built using triathlons and runs as my goals to keep going.  Fall stress at work set me back a little but kept me hovering around 180.  I had surgery in November that took me out of workout commission for a few weeks.  My weight crept back up to 185-190.  I've been hovering at that weight ever since.

Today I weighed in at 190.  My at home weight this morning was 187.  But my morning weight to later in the day weight always varies by 3-6 pounds.  (Which is why I will ONLY ever weigh myself in the morning at home.)  So basically, I checked in today at the exact weight I checked in with in July 2010.  I checked my measurements from here last July before I left and they also seemed to be pretty much the same as well.  I don't understand how that is.  My fitness level has gone up tremendously.  Heck, I've run 3 half marathons and just ran the longest run of my life just yesterday (15 miles!) but yet my body is exactly the way it was 9 months ago.  I don't get it.  

Maybe I do get it.  I have the exercise part down but not the food, the emotional eating, the out of control eating, the bingeing, the bad eating behaviors that sabotage weight loss.

I've thrown myself into my training for a marathon coming up in May and triathlon training.  I started working with a triathlon coach in January.  I work out 12-18 hours a week.  I love the way my body feels.  I am happy in a size 12.  I've been enjoying just being the weight I am.  Well, mostly.  There is that belly roll on the top of my tummy.  And my arms are pretty big.  And my inner thighs are still pretty flabby.  Alright, so maybe I have a few target areas I'd like to trim up a little.  

Really though, the biggest reason at this point that I'd like to lose some more of this weight is for my racing.  Running and biking will just be easier and I will gain speed if I could lose more of this weight.  And bending over on my new road bike I found is not as easy with that extra tummy roll.  I've been wanting to get back on track but I don't do it.  I use my training as an excuse to eat when I shouldn't.  Most of all.......the biggest reason I am not able to continue to lose weight is that I have not focussed on it.   When I lost weight last year, I was 100% dedicated and focussed on losing weight.  Now it is like I kinda want to.  No, I really want to.  I want to be lighter so I can be faster.  But my head is not in the game the way it was before.

Why?  What do I need to do?

I am also finding that I am going back to old habits that landed me where I was to begin with.  My portions have been growing.  I am bingeing all too often.  I sneak food because if no one sees me eat it, it doesn't count, right?  I'm eating when not hungry.  I'm blind eating.  I'm doing all the things I know not to do and that I succeeded in cutting out while I was successfully losing weight.

I eat VERY healthy.  It's that darn stuff on top of the healthy stuff that is getting me.  I am realizing I like sweets more than I thought with chocolate of course being on the top of that list.  I catch myself scarfing instead of chewing thoroughly.  I drink a lot of water but I haven't been drinking a ton of water.  I am drinking too much coffee.  I stopped tracking calories.  I'm not drinking my daily green tea.  I need to get back to basics.  It is move more and EAT LESS. 

Top off these old habits creeping back up on me with a recent RMR (resting metabolic rate) test showing that my daily calorie burn with doing nothing but living is now down to 1460.  It was at 1865 last July.  So just by nature of becoming more fit, I have to eat 400 calories less per day than I did at this same weight a year ago!!!  Boo to that!!!!  And then, add that all this exercise I am doing is burning less overall calories than it did a year ago.  I remember when a Zumba class could yield me a 700 calorie burn!  Not anymore though. I'm darn lucky if I can 400 calories burned in a Zumba class these days.  My BodyMedia band that tracks calories burned has many days now where it is well under 3000.  That was unheard of last summer.  So my body has changed.  My caloric needs have changed.  I need to get back to changing my food intake to better match my body requirements.  If I wasn't training so much, it is pretty clear that I would have gained much of this weight back again.  I know that my workout regime is extreme but that's ok.  It works for me right now.  I have dreams.  Big dreams.  And I need that workout regime to help me accomplish these dreams.

What I don't need is the extra weight to keep carrying around with me to get me to my goals.  So I have two goals this year.  1 - Half Ironman distance triathlon in September and 2 - Get my weight under 170.  Maybe one day I can shoot for my goal weight of 155 but 169 is a number I'd like to start with and Fitness Ridge is the VERY place to help me get there!