165

In April 2010, I weighed 165 pounds. I am 5'3". And I was getting slower. My marathon time slowed about thirty minutes and my knees were hurting. I have always been a runner. I competed in high school Varsity cross country and track and have been signing up for community races since college.

Running has been a part of my life. As a youngster, I could really eat whatever I wanted because the amount of exercise helped me burn it off almost instantly. It wasn't until I was in my 20's that the weight slowly crept up. I was still eating three servings of whatever I felt like it.

I really was never taught about serving sizes or how to eat. I just ate. People used to talk about portion control but I never knew what that meant. I never knew that eating a super star with cheese at Carl's was 920 calories. And I had no idea how much exercise it would take to burn that off.

I am forever appreciative for whatever clicked in my head on the day that my long time friend introduced me to this cool calorie-counting app for my phone. I started using it all the time-it sort of felt like an obsession. I learned how to portion out my food and how many calories certain foods had. I liked the app because I was able to give myself a goal weight and the app would tell me how long it would take me to lose the weight.

I started cold turkey. 1500 calories a day. I earned more calories if I exercised (I think that's like Weight Watchers) so I incorporated running with my dogs every day (they need it too). We woke up every morning and ran. I walked on the days that I didn't run. I hiked on the other days. I climbed the Culver stairs every day the week of Thanksgiving to give myself enough calories on reserve to "pig out". I tried to eat more than one plate on Thanksgiving and I was spent on the first.

For the first three weeks of this challenge, I was hungry. Every day, all the time. I drank lots of water and made myself tea (unsweetened tea has almost no calories). It was tough, I won't lie.

However, there was a point in time after the initial period of hunger that I stopped being hungry all the time.

I started cooking a lot more for myself and learning what it meant to eat a serving size. I bought a kitchen scale and used my measuring utensils a lot more frequently. Told you it was an obsession.

When I went to the doctor in September of that year for my physical, I had lost 10 pounds. I felt awesome! I knew there was much more work needed to be done and I really didn't see the results on myself but I saw progress on the scale. I went out and bought a scale for my bathroom. I told myself that I would only weigh myself once a month-that seemed like enough time to watch the scale drop a little.

I continued to watch everything I ate. Now that I knew how to portion my food, I was eating appropriate serving sizes and taking my home cooked meals to work every day. I made myself a to-go breakfast of 1/2 potato, a hard boiled egg, 1 oz. of cheese and coffee. I ate that almost every work day. My snack was a serving size of almonds and cherry tomatoes or cucumber slices, to be snacked on until lunch time.

Cooking for myself was so much more exciting because I knew veggies would fill me up and would not add much in the way of calories to my weekly calorie count. I started finding new recipes and used my kitchen much more than I was used to. I started to read more about eating for a marathoner. I used "RunnersWorld" recipes and paid close attention to how foods would benefit my running. I absorbed everything I could and began looking at food as fuel for my running.

By December, I definitely saw results.

My clothes started to fit loose after that. Little by little, my clothes became much more baggy and pretty soon, my size 12 was just too big. I had to buy more clothes. I did so sparingly, buying only a couple of pairs of jeans on ebay, because I wanted to treat myself after hitting my goal weight. I even unpacked some of my clothes from college and asked for hand me downs from my family members.

I started sharing what I learned with my runners (I'm a coach, mentor and leader for a running program in Los Angeles and have written about my experience with them-sans weight loss). Nutrition was part of training that I never could share with anyone because I wasn't well versed on the subject. I learned so much about food in the year that I was so excited to share it (I still am) with my marathoners-in-training.

February, 2011 was when I hit my goal weight, 135. It was a month after I expected, but I did it. I also saw other benefits. My running pace improved by almost a minute per mile. In 2011, I beat my marathon time from 2010 by 26 minutes and beat it again this year by 43 minutes.

Changing the way I ate and the way I perceived food certainly helped my training, it made me a better (and smarter) runner. The process sometimes felt impossible-especially when I really wanted a piece of chocolate cake and man did it challenge my self discipline!

But slipping into a clothing size 4 for the first time ever in my life was exhilarating. Would I recommend it to others? Absolutely. But have patience with yourself.

I still don't know how to do a pull up and have a hard time doing any more than 10 push ups at one time, but I'm working on that. Stay tuned! Cheers!