First, a note – March always gets all crazy-pants up in here due to birthdays and good weather and the world coming alive again, so we owe y’all some catchup training and food posts. They’re happening – I promise!
Second – onto motivations!
Right now, here’s a summary on how I feel about everything in my triathlon world:
Swimming – YAY!
Running – Yay!
Biking – Yay.
Nutrition/Body Composition: Booooooooo.
I’ve been trying to think about why this is. Why am I so in love with swimming right now, when last year I was so mehhhh about it. Why is biking #3 on the list right now when I was enamored with it over the winter? What is frustrating me so about my body?
And it hit me. I need to see progress to be happy about what I’m doing.
In swimming right now, I’m progressing in miles. I’ve taken 15% off my swimming time in 2 months. This is huge.
In running right now, I’m progressing in feet. My heart rate is coming down, and my speed is (while definitely not there) coming back.
In biking, I’m progressing in inches. I made some huge gains over the winter here on the trainer, but I’m kinda topped out and need to progress to turning that into better outdoor riding, which oddly enough, means doing it more than once every few months.
In body composition, inches aren’t even small enough to measure it. I’ve started to track my calories in and out, and the deficit is pretty small, folks. Back when I lost a bunch of weight years ago, I had no issue holding a 750-1000 calorie deficit per day when all I had to do was go hit the elliptical for 30 mins. Now, it takes a little more to fuel an hour on the bike and a lunch hill run, and if I don’t eat enough one day, I’m almost paralyzed by hunger the next. Going on the model diet is not an option for me, folks, and that’s ok with me!
However, those little deficits lead to me not making a whole lot of progress quickly. My weight just looks like it’s going nowhere when my fluctuations per week of about 5 lbs are about 500% or more of what I actually expect to see on the scale. And when I see stalled progress, I get incredibly stressed and want to give up. So, what’s the solution when you have something you can’t measure with inches?
You get more granular.
I’m moving to daily weighing, recording it, and graphing out my progress, and letting go of the emotional attachment I have of a measurement. I’ll admit it, I’ll avoid the scale for a day or 3 if I think it’s going to give me a bad number. I need to get over that. I may get frustrated that Wednesday is up 2 lbs from Tuesday, but if I can see that trend line going down overall I will know that I’m headed in the right direction.
Eventually, once my fitness comes back in all these disciplines, I’ll need to measure my increases in inches or smaller, so I had better get used to it!
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