Once a year...

Rosy
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I am sitting in my studio dripping with sweat. It is literally running off my skin...and it's only seven a.m.! I have to go fill up the kiddy pool before it starts to get too hot.

My husband is a professional athletic coach so we have a pretty set schedule year round (and always will) on where he has to be and what he's doing. The Olympics are every four years, the World Championship every two, European Championship every two, etc, etc. Then there are the races that each individual athlete chooses such as the fall and spring marathons or smaller races here in Italy. A professional athlete cannot train in hot, humid weather during the summer, so they usually pack off to the mountains for at least three months. The number one choice for the month of July for most pros is St. Moritz, Switzerland. It's at 1800 mt altitude, it usually around 15° so they can run all day long without any problem. It is expensive. Very expensive. But hubby and I have worked out a system that cuts the costs for us, mainly so that his family (me and the kids) can be with him. We rent a house. Sometimes we share it with one or two of his athletes (as was the case this year) and we buy most of our food in Italy which is only a half hour over the border. I bring my work with me and go to this posh hotel where they have a Wi-Fi in the lobby. Free internet! My days are uneventful but relaxing. We follow the same rhythms that hubby's athletes do:

- Get up and eat breakfast around 8.00 am. Breakfast was either whole wheat pancakes or oatmeal or bread. All with tea and fruit.

- 10.00 am. While hubby did first training session with athletes I brought Evan to this fantastic park. It had a 300mt slide and trampolines and lots of wooden bridges and more slides.

- 12.00 - head back to the house and start lunch. Lunch was always a meat dish with a huge salad and fruit to follow.

- 14.00 - Watch the Tour de France while working on writing, articles or big group that I'm training at the Venice Marathon.

- 17.00 - Second training session for hubby's athletes, one and only training session for Julia. I learned SO MUCH about running this month. Actually I should say that there were a few concepts that really clicked in my head. I've started to apply them to myself to begin with and...they work! When I came back home I did a track test and it showed that I am really on schedule for my Boston Qualifier. I'm trying not to get sidetracked though and will just keep my nose to the grindstone for the next few months.

19.00 - Time to start dinner! Pasta or a bean soup or homemade pizza (no cheese!) or rice accompanied by a big salad and fruit.

21.00 - Five minutes of watching television in German. Eventually give up and read a book. Bedtime at around 22.00.

This was it, day in and day out. At the end of the three weeks I did not want to leave. I was so relaxed, so rid of stress, I'm only hoping that I can keep it up somehow.

Now I'm back home and Hubby has changed mountain location. He'll be flying up to Finland on the 10th to assist the young lady you see in the photo who will be running the women's marathon. If you happen to follow it on television it should be televised on Sunday August 14th.

I in the meantime am back to sweating in 100° weather. I'm heading to that kiddy pool now...

Vacation!

Well, sort of a vacation. I'm spending my last days in beautiful St. Moritz , Switzerland where my hubby is working with some athletes and I'm soaking up the beauty of it all. I'll be back home this weekend and will write some nice entries on what I've been doing: running, eating well and enjoying life!

100° Degrees

That's how hot it is outside: 100 degrees. That would be about 38 celcius...it's hot! Since I stopped counting WW points I've lost another two pounds, but I think it's mostly due to having no appetite except for fruit and water.
We went down to the south of Italy to go see my homeopathic doctor. I love him. He's about 75 years old and very sweet. He found a few things that needed to be attended to (one kidney not functioning well, one ovary blocked) but mostly said that I was run down and gave me a cure to build me back up. He told hubby not to leave me alone so much. P laughed as he got on the plane to go to Spain for the week... After only a week of the new drops and sticking to my anti allergen diet, I feel 100% better. I did take a week off of running, also because I caught a super cold. It really sucks to have a cold when it's hot as hell outside. You can't get under the covers and sleep, you just have to be miserable and hot and sneeze a lot.

This week I'm working on my "Get Light" list. I love self help books and they do work for me since I follow instructions well. The new book I have is on self coaching yourself and the first exercise she has you do is to list 60 things that are dragging you down. It can be anything from sewing a button on a shirt to paying an outstanding bill. Just all of those things that you think about all the time and put off doing. So far I've only come up with about thirty but I'm still working on it. Some of them are easy. Next to my kitchen door that goes out onto the yard I have this wire shelf. It was PILED with junk that needed to be put in the right places or thrown away. Every single time that I walked past it (approximately seventy times a day!) I would say to myself - I hate this, I need to clean it - and then not do it. I did it yesterday. It took me about forty minutes and now it looks beautiful. And I feel lighter. My list has some simple things (clean this, file that) and some very grave items that I have shoved to the back of my list for a million years. The biggest is that I have to get an Italian drivers license. Now I have an American drivers license, but they want me to actually take the Italian test as if I didn't know how to drive. I've known this for years...So as part of the effort to lighten the list I went yesterday to get an application form. Today I made an appointment for the obligatory doctors visit and saturday I should be able to hand in the papers and they'll give me a pink slip so that I can drive with someone so I can "learn". The test is two part: written and driven. I'm not concerned about the driven part since I've been driving for thirty years. It's the written test that freaks me. I'll get over it though...and I'll feel so much lighter when I have that license in my hand!

Weigh In #11

Well, I faithfully followed seven days on the Weight Watchers points plan. I’m now down to twenty base points which seems like so little to me. Last year when I was breast feeding I got a whole TEN POINTS extra. Now that was nice! Anyway, I ran regularly and counted the points for that too, which were never above seven. I also ate all my extra points – their name fails me right now- which are thirty five more. When I went for my Wednesday Weigh In I had loss zero pounds.
This sort of surprised me because all week the scale had shown a loss. Yes, I weigh every day and I need to address this problem too, but we’ll get to that when I’m ready for it. The scale variation was by as much as two kilos (four and a half lbs...), but Wednesday I dutifully recorded my 68 kg into my excel sheet. The next day I was down a kilo. Today I’m down two kilos again, which would be my original target weight.
I think that at this point of the game, I am better off not following a “diet”. I have really good eating habits. I eat all the right foods and I haven’t binged in so long I can’t even remember the last time I did it. My exercising is regular, probably even more than your average person. I’m running well. I can really tell the difference from a few months ago when little places would jiggle all the time, and I’m definately faster without those extra kgs on. I fit into all of my clothes, even those size ten red shorts. I really can’t think of a whole lot of things I can improve on right now. Of course I’d love to be firmer and I would really love to lose some more on my thighs and butt, but it’s not going to happen counting points. I feel liberated.
Now I have to decide what to do with this open diary. Keep it and write about maintaining my weight and continueing my running?

Mind Games

I've discovered a really important thing about my dieting self this week. If I follow an eating routine because I think that I need to drop five pounds in order to fit into a pair of pants, all I can think about is eating a bag of chocolate chip cookies. If instead I think that I'm eating to keep up my energy and improve my health and get that Boston Qualification, I pretty much don't care about food and skip on the ice cream 'cause it might put a few pounds on me that will eventually drag me down during a run. This is good...

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My scale is doing some wild ups and downs this week, so I don't even know where it will land on Wednesday. I'm on schedule, within my points and exercising, but that doesn't seem to mean very much to this 'ole body lately...

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I've also started to do some daily strength exercises. I'm only planning them out one week at a time. As a matter of fact I'm thinking of changing them every week so that I don't get bored. With static exercises (sit-ups and such) I tend to have these big plans that piddle out after a few days. But I really need some help in the hip, thigh and butt area. Again, if I think it's going to help my running, I'll probably do it. If I think that it's for weight loss it'll piddle out after two days...We'll have to analyze this behavior someday...

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I have a "babyjogger" for the baby that I've only recently started to use. When my daughter was born I used to tow her in it for every one of my runs. I even trained for a marathon, pushing her up to two hours at a time. She loved it and would take naps in it while I ran. Of course I would bring juice and snacks for her - she had a blast. Evan on the other hand couldn't stand to be in it. This last summer twenty minutes was his max. I used to time it daily and I was never off. This last week he's been asking to be pushed in the stroller. He uses it as a sleeping mechanism since he only asks when he's tired and then he nods off after about ten minutes. It's a nice way for me to get a walk in during the afternoon though.

Weigh In #10

If habitual readers have been attentive, I stopped counting WW points the week before my marathon, exactly one month ago. I didn't want to worry about how many points I was eating that week. I also knew that I wouldn't be gaining anything so I took the plunge. Ever since then I've been very good about my eating, but I've only lost one pound for the month of May. While I'm REALLY happy about losing a pound... I want to get this over with! I only have 2 kgs (4.5 lbs) to go but as I've said in the past, I want to be able to take them off in a natural way. I don't want to be hungry, I don't want to do a diet that I can't maintain in the longrun. So this week I'll be counting my WW points again to see if something moves. I'm a little apprehensive to do this because if I DON'T lose something (say, at least a pound) I'm afraid it might trigger some bad eating which, to my great surprise, I haven't done in months. Anyway, I'll give it a go and update here as much as I can this week (more for me than for you!). If anybody wants to join me, we can do it for just ONE WEEK. One week won't kill yah!

Weigh In #9

My twelve year old daughter started her menses this last March. As she was gearing up to “D – day” it was like watching a scientific experiment. In the month before she was, of course, as nasty as could be. She talked back all the time, ran into her room to cry every day, told me that I probably didn’t really love her, and absolutely never helped around the house. I can’t tell you how unpleasant it was to be around her. She was also always hungry. Always. She’d have a full dinner of chicken and potatoes and salad and fruit and then thirty minutes after getting up from the table she’d be back in the kitchen trying to find something else to eat. I don’t keep junky food around the house but I sensed that this was exactly what she needed, so one day I bought this twelve pack of these little fruit pies. She ate them ALL in a matter of hours. I thought something was seriously wrong and I was starting to get worried about her. She’s not overweight at all (1,60 mt x 53 kg) but at the rate she was going I didn’t know where it was going to all go. And then her period started and everything went back to normal…until thirty days later!

I read once that in the week before your menstrual cycle your body needs approximately 250 calories more per day, which is why we feel hungrier and more on edge the week before. After watching my daughter I started to pay more attention to my own hunger needs in the week before
My period. I always used to try and tame my hunger, ignoring it or pretending it wasn’t around when in actuality my body was just asking for some clean fuel so that it could go about the task of popping that monthly egg out. This week I gave it cherries, cantaloupe, bananas and an occasional
Ice cream. When it finally arrived it decided to stick around for eight whole days (I’m pretty sure I’m headed toward perimenopause…) so I just kept feeding it that extra bit. Surprisingly ( or maybe not…) the extra that I ate always worked out to about 250 calories.

My weight stayed the same this week and I’m happy with that.

I do what I do

Running in Rome
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I remember when my daughter was small she wanted me to be a check-out lady at the grocery store. The second option would have been a hair dresser. She didn't like what I did...though I think she still doesn't understand exactly what I do for a living. Here's a link to an article I wrote five years ago in an american running magazine. Sorry, the book will be in Italian. Maybe I can set up some sort of groovy english language website. I haven't really seen one of those for women...(you'll have to copy and paste the address, I still haven't figured out how to manipulate the html by hand on this site).

http://www.runningtimes.com/issues/00oct/corso.htm

Biorhythms

My biorhythm is out of wack. Quite frankly I don't really know how it should be but this is how it is: in the morning I wake up in a fog. Worse than a fog, I don't like to communicate with the world until at least eleven o'clock. This of course is impossible given that I have two children and a husband that I live with. So, after being called several times by my daughter to get my butt out of bed, I throw on whatever looks right for that particular season, walk to the kitchen, make myself a cup of tea, get the car keys and then bring my daughter to school - driving and drinking my tea. I stay alert for the rest of the morning, though it still does take me a few hours to be myself. Around three o'clock in the afternoon I get a little sleepy. Sometimes REALLY sleepy and I'll take an hour nap with the baby but I try to only do this in an emergency. Like when I realize that if I don't sleep for an hour the rest of my day is compromised. Then something awful happens. I wake up. Usually around nine p.m. So I start to do things. I'm self employed so it usually involves working or writing, other times it involves snuggling on the couch with the husband while we watch satellite television with a choice of 400 stations in three languages. I could literally stay up until three or four in the morning but I don't because then I wouldn't be able to get up in the morning and it would start an endless cycle...which I think has already happened. It does cause me to go to bed later though. I rarely go to bed before midnight. I am not happy with this whole set up but it's really difficult to change.

I read a magazine article that said to just establish a consistent schedule of getting in bed at 10.00 pm and getting up at 6.00 am. I've tried it this week though it has been more on the 10.30 pm - 7.00 am side...It seems to be working. My energy is a little better, but I do have to find a new time for writing (part of my profession) which always seemed to come out best after midnight. Gotta go, it's now 10.25 p.m. and I HAVE to try and change this one aspect of my life...

What exactly do you mean?

Trieste
Originally uploaded by juliainitaly.

I was on the phone yesterday with my friend...She lives about two hours away from me so we actually don't see each other very much but she's good about keeping in touch by calling me often. We were talking about fall marathons. She's decided that she'll be running Berlin at the end of september after doing NYCM four times. She is always bugging me to train her, which I have on occasion but the thing is is that she never follows the program. She always has some little excuse why she couldn't do, complete or even think about starting one workout. BTW, she is single without children and has plenty of time on her hands. Then later she'll complain that her timing wasn't very good and maybe I could train her...it's a never ending merry-go-round. Yesterday I told her that I was going to run my marathon in mid october near home. It's a nice course and I don't have to worry about whether hubby is out of town or not. I told her if she wanted I'd send her what I was doing so if she wanted to follow along she could. At the moment we are almost running at the same pace though I'm probably slightly faster. (Note: no effort on my part to just send an email with my schedule...) I told her I'm looking to go under four hours for my Boston qualification. She thought about it for a minute and said, "Well, you are older than me..." Yes, by five years. What she was meaning to say was that if I, the old bag could do it, she could too..."And fatter..." I didn't say anything. I just thought about the last time she saw me was probably last year...I really can't remember but it was probably a good five kilos ago. But still, how dare you! Some people have no tact. It only fires me up more to do better at this next marathon. I've included this picture just to show y'all that I bitch and complain about these last five lbs all the time but the reality of it is I am in pretty darn good shape...for an old lady that is.

42.195 km (!)

I ran my marathon on Sunday! Since I wasn't really sure how it would go I decided that I'd run the first 21 km loop and then evaluate how I felt. Well, I felt great. There was a lot of wind, it hailed for about 10 minutes really hard. Then it rained a bit and then the sun came out. If we'd had a snow blizzard it would have been complete. The biggest problem was that when I went onto the second 21 km loop nobody followed! Most people were there to do the half marathon and there were only about 300 participants in the full marathon. It was tough with the wind and being alone because I didn't have anybody to run with to help me block out the wind like I did on the first loop. The great thing was that I always felt like running and I passed a lot of people in the last ten kilometres. I ran the last kilometre pretty fast and had a huge smile on my face. My final time was 4h21'15". Now I feel really energized and ready to train the whole summer for my next marathon which will be on October 15th. Can't wait!

My Secret Garden

We bought a new house a little over two years ago and one of the main features was that it had a 200 square meter garden. It's not a lot, but I didn't know much about plants so it seemed like a manageable size. In the Condo there are three other houses with a garden, one with the same square footage as ours. While everybody else just called gardeners and had them install a ready made garden, hubby and I wanted to plant it ourselves. Mind you, we really didn't know much about plants or design or what would grow, but I figured it couldn't be rocket science so we started planting.

One terrible behavior I have that I hate hate hate is to buy seeds that I never plant. I'll buy like thirty packets of various flowers that never even get opened. This year I tried to "examine" this peculiarity of mine and decided that it was because deep down I did't really think that I had a green thumb. I don't ever expect the seedlings to sprout. This year I got my courage together and planted some. Twenty different varieties, actually. I figured that if I didn't plant them how would I ever know if they would grow? Wouldn't it be like my weight loss? I just had to keep at it, adjust my mistakes and never give up. I am pleased to say that eighteen out of twenty flowers have popped up. I'm not giving up on those last two either. I think my main problem in the past is that I'd practically dig graves for the poor seeds when all I really had to do was set them on the soil and put a half an inch of dirt on top. I feel like a nerd 'cause I go and examine them about four times a day to see what's come up and how much they've grown. Not quite a green thumb, but I'm working on it.

On the weight front everything is going well, thank you for asking!

No Secrets here!

One of my three readers asks how I can eat so sensibly and if I have any tips to share. Mmmm...that’s actually a really difficult question to answer. This has been a really long journey for me, though I must say I do feel like I am at the end of the road. I’m mostly satisfied with my eating lifestyle and habits, but it did take me years (like twenty-five!) to get to where I am. Here’s generally what I had to do:
- I overcame my bingeing. I did that a lot as a teenager and probably a good part of my twenties. I used food as a way of getting out my aggressions-emotions-frustrations. Not bingeing has nothing to do with willpower. You have to learn why you abuse food and what is really hurting you. That took me a long time and a few trips to the psychologists couch to figure out. I still go overboard on sweets every once in a while but I do recognize that it’s because they are really tasty and just put a stop to it.
- I love exercise. I love endurance exercise. I always have, btw. Fun to me is training for a 100km biking race, and then doing the race. I love running, I love swimming, I love biking, I am very grateful that I have found my exercise groove because exercise does have to be part of your life if you have a tendency to make the scales tip the wrong way.
- I found a style of eating that works for me. I don’t eat milk products, pork, most sugars, and coffee. They’re all things that irritate me and I’m unable to digest. The most difficult to get rid of was the cheese, but after a few months I didn’t even miss it anymore. This is not to say that everybody should do this...it’s what worked for me. But I think it helps to know what your body works on best.
- I eat a TON of fruit and vegetables. I spend most of my grocery budget on fruit. Right now I’m into making fruit salads with lots of strawberries. Peaches should be coming in next month!
- I don’t feel guilty about eating dessert and probably do once a week. Manageing your weight is not about denial. You just have to find a balance for yourself, and for me desserts are in the picture.

Lies, lies, lies!

I read an interview in a women's magazine with Catherine Zeta Jones asking her about her family life and what she does to keep so gorgeous and beautiful. All you new mothers out there must remember CZJ during both her pregnancies. She was still beautiful but WAY larger. At the Academy Awards those boobs were spilling over her low cut bra. She was gorgeous. Anyway, the mag editor asked her what she now does to keep in shape. She replyed "Oh, just running after my children is enough exercise for me!"
How dare she lie like that! Can't there be some sort of solidarity among women? There is no way that she didn't have some sort of personal trainer (or two...) whip her into shape after that last pregnancy. Plus dieting, plus a personal chef...geez...

Quick Trip

We went to Paris for the weekend. It was a quick trip, a business trip actually. We went to see the marathon since hubby had a female athlete running there. I already knew ahead of time that I wouldn't be exercising since we had every minute planned, but I did get in a long five hour walk on saturday walking from the Operà to the Eiffel tower. The baby slept the entire time! I assure you, this is a rare occurance since he always wants to get out of the stroller and push it himself.
Eating went well considering that we had all our meals at the hotel and it was buffet style. I piled on the salad at the start of each meal and then had some fish one night and chicken the next. On the walk I did make the exception of trying a cone of Ben & Jerry's ice cream (chunky monkey) since I had never eaten it. No big thrill, I remain a diehard Hagan Daz fan. I decided not to count points over the weekend though I'm positive I didn't go over. I also started my cycle on saturday which doesn't help things scale-wise.
This morning I went running under the rain. 14km and it felt great. I mean, I feel lighter...we'll see...

Never judge a book by it's cover

I have this male client that I train. For those who know nothing about me, I’m a personal trainer for aspiring runners. He joined a beginners marathon program that I had few years ago, ran the marathon, and then signed up for private sessions. I remember the first time I met him in person he had this breath that almost made me faint, it was so bad. Somehow it cleared up by our next meeting, but I had always sort of judged him as…I don’t know…a poor person. Whenever I would talk to him he would say that he does nothing but work so running was his outlet. He never went on any sort of significant vacation. All of his marathons were locally run, like not more than 50 kms away from his house.
This weekend me, hubby and the kids went to the Clients town to do some testing on some of the athletes I train in that area. The Client absolutely insisted that we come to dinner. He even wanted us to spend the night at his house but I wiggled out of that one.
Anyway, we arrived at the house…it was this HUGE villa smack in the center of this historic town. The house was out of a magazine. At one point he showed us the children’s (3 boys) “playroom”. The dang thing was as big as my ENTIRE house. The maid (yes, the maid) served us this gorgeous dinner of salad, shrimp pasta, baked fish and pineapple for dessert. I was truly embarrassed by how much I was off mark about this guy. Just goes to show you that you can’t judge people by their appearance. I had always thought that I didn’t…but I guess I do.
So the dinner turned out to be good (I was really worried about that) and I stayed well within my points for the weekend. Tonight I went on a really nice hour and a half run that left me feeling full of energy. Maybe too full since I’m writing this at almost two in the morning…Good Night!