Goals for 2012

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Vivikare

I am not a big fan of new year’s resolutions, because let’s face it, most are forgotten by the time February rolls around, but nevertheless I have a few goals for this year that I am going to continue to work on.

Kick my insulin resistance: I have a little over a month left of taking the Metformin. After that, I am on my own with the weight loss. I am positive that I will keep losing weight. Six months later, after keeping off the weight and continuing my healthy diet, I am going to take the OGTT again to find out if my insulin resistance is gone. I am confident that my hard work will pay off and the IR will be gone by August.
Reach my goal weight: I have a little over 13 kg to lose and I would love to get to my goal weight within the first half of 2012. I am not going to stress over it, though. If it takes longer, then that’s okay too. I am confident that 2012 will be the year I finally make it to 65 kg.
Continue a healthy diet: I have improved my diet so much over the past few months. Though I have phases in which I slack off a little, such as lately, I am going to keep up my healthy eating. Even though it takes a certain amount of dedication, time, and planning, it is worth it. I know how important it is for my health in general and my insulin resistance in specific.
Keep up the running: I am going to keep running. I want to run at least 2-3 10k races in 2012 and start building up to longer distances as well as improve my pace. During the winter, my main focus is to maintain my endurance and once the weather improves, I want to up my running and follow a training plan again.
Get fitter: I have worked hard on my fitness level, and have managed to average 3-5 workouts a week throughout the past five months. For my standards, this is quite frankly outstanding. I want to keep this up and become even fitter and stronger. I feel so much better and everything is so much easier when I am fit.
Work on my confidence and self image: I feel so much better about myself than I did five months ago. I am more confident and I like my reflection in the mirror a lot better, I am even at a point where I almost like my body, but there are still plenty of issues I need to work on. I am more confident, but overall, I am still not a very confident person and when I allow myself, I get consumed by negative feelings about myself. I don’t think this is an issue that will magically disappear once I am “thin” so it is something I need and want to work on.
Eliminate bad habits: I successfully managed to stop biting my nails and haven’t since August. I don’t get the urge to bite anymore, either, so I am confident that I have kicked this habit for good. There are a couple of other bad habits I want to work on in 2012, though. One is to cut down on diet coke. I have been working on this on and off for months, and I have had weeks that I did quite well, but lately I have been back to drinking a lot of it again, especially at work. Another is to cut down on the amount of chocolate and candy I eat. Also something that was much better a few months ago, as I have been slacking off a little. I am never going to cut out chocolate or candy for good, but I need to do better than I have lately.

What are your goals for 2012?

A year in review

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Vivikare

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.
- Margaret Thatcher

2011 was a year of ups and downs for me, in terms of weight loss and health. I had lost quite a bit of weight between August and December 2010 when I started my first full-time job after university in mid-January. After that, I quickly gained back all the weight I had lost and a few kilos on top of that.

In June, I found out that I had PCOS – explaining all the symptoms I had been experiencing since I went off birth control in October 2010 (a very irregular cycle, acne). About a month after finding out about the PCOS, I was also diagnosed with insulin resistance. While I knew I was to blame for most of my weight gain, i.e., my lack of activity and eating too much junk food at work and at home, the insulin resistance must’ve played a role as well.

August is when I everything changed. I started taking Metformin, and I decided that if I was going to take a medication like that, I would do my best that I wouldn’t have to take it for long. I decided to try something new and signed up for MyFitnessPal. Probably one of the best decisions I made in 2011. At the end of August, I canceled my Weight Watchers Online subscription, and I never looked back.

Since August, I have been using MyFitnessPal to count calories, journal my food and my exercise. And I’ve made a few new friends too. I have come to really appreciate the support network that MFP, or rather other MFP members, provide and I love the clean interface of both the MFP website and the iPhone app.

I also had two appointments with a nutritionist in the fall. She gave me some very helpful tips and also reassured me that I was already doing very well. My 3-month check-up, roughly three months after I got my RI diagnosis and started taking the Metformin, went very well, and I got praised by my endocrinologist for having lost so much weight already.

It’s been nearly five months since I joined MFP and started exercising regularly again. Five months since I turned my life around.

On August 3, I weighed 97.4 kg. Probably my highest weight of all times. Since then, I’ve lost 19 kg – putting me at 78.4 kg at my most recent weigh-in this morning, my lowest weight of recent years.

At some point in the fall, I set myself a goal of getting to under 80 kg by the end of the year. I made it. At my last weigh-in of 2011, I weighed 78.6 kg.

I also started running again and have made huge progress since then. I started fresh with Couch to 5K in August and ran a 5k race in October. Unlike all the other times I had done C25K, I didn’t stop running, though, when I finished the program this time, but I kept running following a 10K plan by Jane Wake. Two months later, I ran my first 10K (race) ever.

Now that 2012 has begun, I can say that 2011 was a really successful year for me. After a rough patch – that lasted 7 months, hah – I turned it all around and I can honestly say that I am in a much better place now, in terms of weight, fitness, physical and mental health.

Here’s to continuing on this journey and making 2012 even better!

Race Recap: 10k Nikolauslauf 2011

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Vivikare

Finally the review of my race from three weeks ago – better late than never, right?

On December 3rd, I ran my first 10k, the Nikolauslauf in Munich. It wasn’t just my first 10k race, it was also the first time I ran a whole 10k distance. My longest run until then had been about 7k a little over a week earlier, and it was actually during that run that I decided to participate in the 10k. I had found out about the race a couple of days before and while part of me really wanted to do it, the other part said, ‘you’re not ready,’ and ‘you’re not going to be in Munich that weekend anyway.’

All that changed during my training run on November 23rd. It was a great run and I realized after 7 km that I could have kept running for a while longer. I decided that I was ready to run a 10k, and that I would spend the weekend in Munich just to do the race. I realized that if I wasn’t going to do a 10k race now, it might be months until I do one, because I knew I would have waited till spring. So that night I signed up for the race. I finished my running program by Jane Wake just in time and it all worked out perfectly.

The Olympic Tower in Munich

The race took place in the Olympic Park in Munich, where I had run my very first 5k race in 2009. I got there a few hours early to pick up my race bib and chip at the Olympic Swimming Pool.

Handing out bibs, chips & Santa hats

Afterward, I just stayed at the pool, watching the swimmers. At some point a girl came up to me and asked if we knew each other because I seemed so familiar to her. I couldn’t place her but I’m really bad with faces so it wasn’t surprising. Turns out we both studied in Heidelberg. I spent the rest of the time chatting with her and her boyfriend who were also doing the race.

Me before the race started

The race itself started at 3pm and it went really well. I started out a bit fast (a 7:09 pace on km 1) but quickly noticed (my Runkeeper app tells me my time, distance and pace every 5 minutes – so useful!) and slowed down to a pace I was more likely to keep up throughout the race.

The race was St. Nicholas themed, so everyone got a Santa hat to wear during the race

I ran the entire 10k with just one short walking break to drink something after 5k. The weather was really nice for running, 7C and overcast, though it was a bit windy. Really lucky considering it’s December. I was so pleased with my result. I had hoped to finish in under 1:20 but after my last two runs – which weren’t that great – had ‘re-adjusted’ my expectations to finish between 1:20 and 1:30. I managed to make my goal after all.

Ready to start running

There were two short inclines on the course, but as it was a 5k course and we did two laps, there were 4 inclines, one halfway between km 4 and 5 (and km 9 and 10) and that last incline just about killed me on the second lap. I didn’t give up though, I knew I was not even 5 minutes from the finish line, I wasn’t going to start walking now, no way!

A weird experience was to be overlapped by the fastest runners between km 3 and 4. The winner finished in 32:13, I cannot even imagine running that fast.

I was glad once I started the second 5k lap because it meant no more runners overlapping me – I liked being able to run by myself. I also felt fantastic after I finished the first half, because I knew I would finish the 10k – I had struggled a little bit on the first 2-3km, then after the first 5k I felt this energy boost, I almost cried I was so happy (and promptly felt really silly for getting so emotional), felt really strong for km 6-8, and then struggled a bit on km 9 and 10. Well, until today my longest run had been 7km so it’s no surprise.

I am so very pleased with my result, even though I was the next-to-last to finish. This is a huge achievement for me and I’m so proud I did so well. I honestly cannot think of a single thing that went wrong during this race.

Just two months earlier, I had run a 5k in 42:52 (pace: 8:34) – on December 3rd, I ran a 10k in 1:18:08 (pace: 7:48) – I doubled my distance and improved my pace by almost a minute.

The mug I got for finishing

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any official pictures of me running, probably because I was much slower than most of the runners, and the photographers didn’t wait around for the last few runners, but I did get a video of me crossing the finish line!