Marathon Monday: If You're Looking to Run, Well Then You've Already Ran

Running by surfers making the sketchy cliffside hike up and down from the waves at Sunset Cliffs on Friday morning

This week I discovered something life-changing: Spotify Personalized Running Playlists.  

I say this at the risk of exposing the fact that I live under a rock. Because this seems like something so obviously obvious that I should have discovered much, much sooner. 

And yet, there I was last week, running to the "Eat Pray Love" audiobook like a chump (one could argue there are multiple layers of chumpiness involved in that admission). 

The difference in running to Elizabeth Gilbert whining about her struggles with meditation versus a playlist of music I either love, just found out I loved or forgot I loved, all timed to match my pace is truly, as I mentioned, life-changing. 

Not only did I find some great new bands that I'm now obsessed with, but it got me through all four of my runs this week, two of which involved me running through my hangovers like a champ (Alternative post title: From Chump to Champ). 

So there you have it. The secret to NYC Marathon (pre)Training, Week 2. 

Sometimes it's the little things. 

NYC Marathon Training Week 2: 6/20/16 - 6/26/16

• Ran 4 Days For a Total of 15.94 miles
• Average Pace: 11'07" /mi
• Strength Training: 0x
• Yoga: 0x

Living La Vida MOCA

When I was 21, I spent 3 weeks living in London visiting roughly one museum a day, most of which contained some of the most famous and important art in history. My favorite? Warhol's Marilyn Diptych at the Tate Modern.

Personally, I'd take a Warhol or a Rothko over a Da Vinci or a Michelangelo or any of the other Ninja Turtles any day.

True story. I mean, while I barely passed Art History in college, I've always loved, loved, loved modern art. It inspires me to see things from new perspectives, which in turn has influenced my own creative projects. So honestly, I'm kind of surprised that after all of my visits to LA and all of my years living in Southern California, that it took me this long to finally make it into a single modern art museum on the west coast.

Ryan and I went up to LA over Memorial Day weekend just to get out of town for the day and see what there was to explore. We ended up starting off our adventure downtown near Little Tokyo and after a couple of false starts (specifically: a failed attempt to tour the Disney Concert Hall and a too long line at The Broad), we found ourselves at the Museum of Contemporary Art, otherwise known as MOCA. 

Marathon Monday: Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made Of

So... I'm running the New York City Marathon in November. 

I'm not really sure how this happened. Maybe it was because NYC was the first marathon that ever made me consider wanting to run a marathon when I was in high school.... it just seemed so cool, the idea of conquering this city one borough at a time with my feet, all in one day. Maybe it's because New York and I have a complicated past and this marathon seemed like it could symbolize some closure for that chapter of my life. Perhaps, over the course of 26 miles, I could even finally find something to love about a city that I've vehemently denied even liking ever since I left. 

Maybe it was because, at the time that I entered the marathon lottery in January, my uncle and godfather was dying back home because of cancer caused by a genetic mutation that I may or may not have inherited. The sadness that I felt over losing him, and about his condition and not visiting family on the east coast as much as maybe I should have over the years, made me look at this marathon as an excuse to have at least one east coast visit on the books for the year. And the confrontation with mortality and my own health, both in its current and its genetically predisposed state, made me look at the marathon as a real opportunity for motivation to get back in shape and start taking my health more seriously.

Or maybe it was because I was turning 30 a few months later and had been loosely planning to run another marathon during my 30th year. When I look back on this year, I wanted something big to remind me of entering my third decade. 

Whatever the reason, I entered the lottery on January 25th. And when I checked my credit card account on March 8th, there it was: a charge for $255. My NYRR account updated a few hours later... I had been accepted into the New York City Marathon. 

Fast Metabolism Diet: Week 3... More is More

I mentioned this last week, but it bears repeating: the Fast Metabolism Diet is not about deprivation. Ultimately, Pomroy has a great way to drive her philosophy home by asking why, when it comes to dieting, do we expect that we'll get more by doing less? We don't expect to become stronger by exercising less, so why would we expect to become healthier by eating less?

Unfortunately, during Week 3, that's the exact aspect of the diet that I struggled with, though not intentionally. I skipped meals or snacks on more than a few occasions this week when I wasn't hungry or prepared and I definitely felt the effects full force: I was tired and lethargic for most of the week. Granted this week had more social functions that had me out later than most nights, but still...it was a good reminder that Pomroy is absolutely right: more is always, always more.

Fast Metabolism Diet: Week 2... D.I.E.T.

Gorgeous view leaving the Point Loma Nazarene University Track after a Week 2 workout

I get a lot of emails and comments on my post "Everything You Need to Know Before Doing the Fast Metabolism Diet" that lead me to believe people have not read the actual book. If I write a revised guide for this meal plan, I think that's the first and maybe the most important thing you need to know: read the book. And not because I don't like answering those questions... in fact I'm happy to help. But because the book explains the science behind the Fast Metabolism Diet better than I ever could!

I spend so much time trying to explain the point of this meal plan to people who get stuck at the word "Diet" and don't hear me say anything else. Important things like how this "diet" is not about calorie counting or deprivation. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Which reminds me of one of the greatest takeaways from the early chapters of the book: Pomroy's acronym for D.I.E.T is Did I Eat Today?

FMD reframes the word "diet" into a question about whether or not you ate with intention or purpose to fuel your body that day. Which is an even higher purpose for starting this "diet" than weight loss. It also happens to be the mentality that propelled me through my second week of this new round of FMD meals.

Fast Metabolism Diet: Week 1... Here We Go Again

Well it's been a minute, hasn't it?

The beginning of 2016 sure brought a lot of big changes... some amazing, others not so much. And in the midst of it all. I lost track of a lot of things. This blog, for starters. But a lot of other aspects of my life fell by the wayside too.

Most notably? My health.

I think I was sick no less than a dozen times between January and March. I gained weight, I wasn't sleeping, I was up late diagnosing myself with some different and terrible health problem every night on WebMD. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times and I was kind of tired of the extremes.

I needed structure and balance and a healthier diet. So I went back to one of the only health plans that has ever truly worked for me: The Fast Metabolism Diet. The first time I did it, it changed my life. Since then I turned my back on soda for good, really started learning how to cook healthy meals for myself, and started to understand nutrition more. It didn't come without it's challenges, but in the end, I was a convert.

Like the first time, I decided that tracking and sharing what this diet looks like in practice was helpful for both me and anyone who was ever interested in trying it out themselves. The only difference? This time I'm doing it more or less scale-free since losing weight is not the most important part for me this time around. But more on that (and everything else that's happened over the past six months!) later.

For now, it's time to cover how my first week back on FMD went...