Being fat is hard.  Losing weight is hard.  Maintaining lost weight is hard.  Pick your hard.

Today I picked:  losing weight.

I think I'm going to start every day's entry like that from now on.  Simple and to the point.

Today I chose losing weight, but not dieting.

I ate a 'horrible' sandwich for lunch, lots of mayo and double cheese, but delicious and worth the added calories.  And for dinner I made an amazing pot roast that I've been salivating about all week.  Mashed potatoes full of butter, cream cheese and half and half.  BUT, I ate until I was full and stopped.  I didn't leave the table with my stomach so full I wanted to throw up just to be comfortable again.

Also, most of the things I ate were minimally processed.  Which is something that I've been working towards for the longest time.  I wasn't even trying, didn't even think about it until just now, so that's even better.  It's become not a quest, but just a natural way of eating.

Oatmeal for breakfast - plain old fashioned oats mixed with sugar, cinnamon, raisins and boiling water.

Sandwich for lunch on homemade bread with real cheese (not 'pasteurized processed cheese product' - if the FDA mandates that it states on the label that it is in fact food, it's probably not something I really want to eat) and sliced carrots.  Mayo and sliced turkey were the processed foods there - wonder how hard it is to make mayo?

Dinner was the pot roast with fresh herbs, carrots and onions, and mashed potatoes.  I did use beef broth, but I bought the brand that had the fewest ingredients.  The store brand had a disclaimer on the package - something like beef 'flavored' broth.  WTF?  Anyway, I dropped the cash on the name brand because it's ingredients list was a little less intimidating.

Good run tonight - it got hard in the middle but I forced myself to get through without backing off the speed.  Thought of both the line at the top of this post and the article regarding lack of weight loss and comfortable runs.  Made it below 35 for a 5k.  Really as someone who has been running somewhat regularly for 2 years, that not much to brag about.  I think the hills and intervals will really help me increase my overall speed.

I've been toying around with doing the same half marathon that I did last year, next year.  My time was like 2:48, and I was thinking of trying for something drastic, like under 2 hours, but I think that might be a bit unrealistic.  I'm going to work on constantly changing my running routine for the next couple months and see how much I can improve my speed.  Weight loss should help too.  Every pound I lose is one less pound I have to haul around with me each mile...  We'll see...