Greg's Running Blog

I might be a bit belated on the update but I’m still keeping track of everything. Or should I say sadly I’m still keeping track of everything. This week was OK but it certainly could have been better and there was a lot of cake involved in this week’s nutritional saga.

As you can see in the chart my diet was flawless for the first four days, maybe a bit excessive on Thursday, but it is to be explained with the 3 slices of cheese pizza I ate at my son’s end of the season soccer party. And even with all that pizza I came in at a respectable caloric intake and if I account for my cardio for the day I was still in deficit. But for Friday, Saturday and Sunday I just have no excuses. I actually do, so let’s take it day by day.

I have already blogged about Friday. It was a day that started out good, even dinner was OK but I should not have let myself eat the two slices of cake (technically one was a piece of pie) and the cheese and chips that night. Saturday looks almost as bad as Friday, it is certainly over 3,000 calories for the day. So what happened?

It was my daughter’s birthday and we got her some awesome chocolate mousse cake that’s what happened. One slice of that stuff is a whopping 430 calories. But given that it was a family event I could not say no to the cake plus I quite honestly didn’t feel like saying no to it either. It was delicious and I felt it was so worth the calories. But how did I end up eating 3,000 calories when all I had was 430 calories worth of cake? Well Saturday we also happened to attend a wedding. My boss’ daughter was getting married and my wife and I were invited. So we went to the wedding and it was great. I’ve been to a couple of weddings and as far as weddings go this one was up at the top of the list of weddings I enjoyed.

It was a very casual atmosphere, the ceremony was outside and the weather could not have been any more perfect. It was a breezy low 70s (22 Celsius) day. The reception was also very casual and the food was pretty darn good. I stacked my plate high with veggies and roasted beef and turkey. So far so good. But I also ate a good amount of stuffed mushrooms which, I think were the highlights of the culinary experience at the wedding. They were splendid. I had some fruit as dessert but I also had to have some of the grooms’ cake, I kind of felt obligated to have a piece. So I did. So not only I had two pieces of cake on Friday, I did a repeat and had two pieces of cake on Saturday. The two slices of cake were over 660 calories so it’s safe to say had I not had them I would have been more than OK for the day.

Sunday I was certainly trying to maintain a more reasonable diet and I kind of did but we had friends visit us and we made some fantastic filet mignon for them with some shrimp on the grill to go with it. I used to enjoy going to steak houses but now I much rather make my own surf and turf. It was a very nice dinner with some quinoa, steamed zucchini and squash, and fennel puree as sides. And for dessert, you guessed it, I had another slice of the leftover chocolate mousse birthday cake. So even with the extra 430 calories that came in with the cake I still managed to eat a somewhat more reasonable 2,600 calories on Sunday.

So with all the “festive eating” , that is properly justified as you can see, you might wonder what my weight had been doing. Well, if I look at my rolling average I have lost 0.9 lbs. If I look at the scale on Sunday morning from a week prior I have gained 0.5 lbs. So the truth probably lies somewhere in between those two numbers. Even on the rolling average my weigh has been climbing for the past 3 days which was a first. So far every single weigh in was below my rolling average but this time the numbers have been constantly higher than my rolling average indicating that my rolling average was going in the wrong direction. I’m still happy with where I’m at, I know that this week was an unusual week with a trifecta of heavy days but the chances of such alignment of events and gatherings in the near future are slim. So eating was not the best, how about strength training?

Well I did go my lifts on Wednesday but I skipped Friday. I had to leave early from work for the company event so I couldn’t stay and put in my workout. I did do some push-ups, 25 of them, on Saturday morning but I would not consider it a workout. But if there is anything this week that I’m particularly proud of, it has to be my running.

I have logged 37.8 miles (60.8 km) with an average pace of 7:57 minute/miles. This is the most miles I had run in a week so far. I am extremely happy with my running. I had a solid 10x400m interval repeat on Tuesday that almost killed me in the 90+ (30+ C) weather. I also had a great 10.8 mile long run with my co-worker again on the same route we did last time and burned over 1,100 calories in the process. This is why I don’t feel all that bad about the cakes. All in all I have burned 4,194 calories with running this week.

Based on the average caloric intake of 2,654 calories and the average daily caloric expenditure of 599 calories my net daily calories were 2,055 calories. Combined that with the estimated weight loss of about 0.7 lbs and you get about 2,400 calories as my BMR. Certainly within the ballpark that I have been calculating all along.

So while the week was nowhere near perfect I still managed to generate a caloric deficit and lose weight even if it was at a slower pace than ever before. Had I not exercised at all this week I would have gained about 0.5 lbs this week instead.