Getting my exercise on!

Last night, I had far too many beers – six. According to that study, that’s the average a white woman drinks in a month! What can I say, I’ve always been one to live by the motto of “go big or go home.”

However, “going big” on beer is not so good for my waistline. Lately I’ve been really unhappy with the way my stomach is starting to pooch out – I don’t look my best in fitted dresses like I used to! I don’t think I’ve been eating THAT terribly, but it’s definitely time for a change – I’m up about 8 pounds from where I was this spring. Part of the difficulty has been traveling so much, but I think I’ve mostly gotten a handle on the work travel – it’s the personal travel where I tend to piggle and try all kinds of delicious stuff. Gotta work on that!

In the meantime, I’ve been doing well with hitting the gym more frequently. It doesn’t hurt that my firm fitness league brings out my inner competitor and makes me want to work out just so I can log the points! Yesterday I managed to log 45 minutes on the elliptical while watching my summer guilty pleasure show, Big Brother (I’m a few eps behind, so no spoilers in the comments, please!). Later, I snuck in a quick 20 minute stationary bike ride while finishing a book that needed to be returned to the library (Bright-Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich). Finally, I got a decent amount of walking around in once I got to Philly for my meetings. Score!

This morning, I woke up with the realization that six beers was probably five too many to be healthy… oops! Unfortunately, I wasn’t awake enough to realize that until I had already snoozed my alarm a few times, leaving me with only time for a 45 minute workout before my morning meetings. I had wanted to do a double workout to really make a difference, but as it turned out, I got extra exercise in anyway: the “teambuilding” activity was actually a scavenger hunt that took us all over the streets of Philadelphia! I got a good 90 minutes of power walking/jogging in, so I was pleased to add that to my fitness challenge score for an extra 10 points… enough to move me up from 13th place to 11th place (out of 53). Almost on the top ten list! To sweeten the deal, I got back to the hotel at 11:50am and had a 12:54pm train, so when I rushed, I was able to get in another 25 minutes on the elliptical (at a pretty intense pace too – I covered 3.5 miles in that time!).

So I’m doing well on the exercise regimen, but I think it’s going to take more careful eating (and a lot less alcohol consumption) to get back to my true fighting weight. That said, the Hartford Marathon is coming up (October 9th), and since I haven’t really run since Minneapolis, I think it’s about time for me to get training. I’ve realized that while I originally planned to do my fifty marathons and stop, it’s probably going to take a frequent marathon schedule for me to stay in good shape with the consulting diet, so perhaps I will be back on the weekly marathoning circuit this fall after all!