Trip to India Post 2

I guess the best place to start is the beginning. My trip here was extremely uneventful. Two flights, both a little more than 8 hours each, a layover long enough to pickup McDonald's french fries and suddenly we were in India. Luckily I had two great travel partners and was able to sleep most of the way (shocking, I know!) so it was a really easy trip here.

The driver picked us up - Mr. Farah White actually, but I assured him that was me, and we headed to our hotel. It was the middle of the night, but even at that point I was just doing my best to take it all in. We got to our hotel and were immediately impressed, case in point, a few days later our professors came to meet with us, saw how nice our place is and changed hotels. We really lucked out with the hotel thing here!

I spent most of Sunday sleeping, again, shocking, but did join the girls out for dinner. That's where I got my first real "taste" of India if you will. To be honest it was a little overwhelming. The driving is like nothing I've ever experienced before! Before we left I figured I've been in a taxi in NYC, how bad can it be? Let me tell you, NYC has nothing on India! It's like the drivers are playing chicken with one another. It's a little scary, but you do get used to it.

We ended up going to church street, which seemed to be a pretty happening area and walked around. I felt like I was in Times Square, but even more crowded and chaotic. We ended up at a Portuguese place, and it was actually pretty good, either that or I was just starving.

Day two was Monday and we began work at 10:30am (I love Indian work schedules!) My roommate and I started out the day with a workout because well, when you wake up at 4am (awesome jet lag) what else are you going to do?

First day of work was good. Got a tour of the facility, did a lot of listening, and learned a lot. Our host even took us out for lunch where I had my very first Indian meal...I actually even liked two of the dishes - one was chickpea and the other was potato. It was a neat meal where they gave you little tastings of everything and then you could request more of whatever you liked. Perfect for a first timer like me.

Did I mention the weather is beautiful here? Because oh my gosh, it's amazing. It's been anywhere between 60-80 degrees outside with very little humidity. Quite a difference from the weather I left back in the states!

Ok, back to my recap. After lunch we headed home to regroup. To be honest, up to that point I hadn't been feeling all that well, but I chalked it up to jet lag, but by that afternoon I was feeling pretty rotten. Unfortunately the sick feeling continued to get worse and worse for the next few days. Monday afternoon through Thursday morning are pretty much a blur to me. I made it to some work functions but spent most of the time in bed unfortunately. I missed out on quite a bit, but luckily for me my teammates were really understanding and happy to fill me in on everything once I was feeling better. I'll write more about what happened once I got better in the next post, for now, it's time for me to do a little dance around my room if the colts can hold onto their lead for another minute (yes, I did get up extremely early to watch the play by play of my boys against the jets, I think that's what you would call a true fan.)

Trip to India Post 1

Well today is day five in Bangalore India and I have done a splendid job of blogging about my experiences here every day. Obviously! And now it is well into the night and we have a big work day ahead tomorrow, so I probably shouldn't start some long blog post - but I figured I'd at least get something started to keep going with when I wake up tomorrow. Suffice to say this trip has been all kind of amazing, and overwhelming at times, and I want to document it all. I'll let this picture speak for tonight.




Beautiful isn't it?

What a Difference a Year Makes

Ok, so it's been months since I've blogged (how many? I'm too embarrassed to count!) and it may be months before I blog again, but I have to document today for myself. It just hit me that today is my 365th day of being gluten free. Tomorrow will mark day one of year two of my gluten free journey, which is kind of unbelievable.

A year ago today I was having migraines constantly. I took more sick days than vacation days in 2009. I was fighting with my boyfriend constantly over how sick I was (apparently being sick affects the loved ones in your life quite a bit too!) Basically, I was miserable all of the time. I never saw my friends and I always felt like crap, it was just a really really awful situation.

And then my doctor made a little suggestion. That I try seeing what life was like without gluten. So I did, and I haven't looked back since. I'm now today 25 pounds less than I was on this day last year (thanks to weight watchers, not a gluten free diet!) I can count on one hand how many true migraines I have - in a whole YEAR! And I believe I only used one sick day in 2010 for a migraine, and said migraine may or may not have been self induced (too much wine anyone?!?)

I can't believe it's been a whole year. I can't believe how much better my life is in so many ways today then it was a year ago today. I don't want to make it seem like it's all about gluten, it's not, but it was an important milestone in my life. December 10th was the day that I started making sacrifices to take care of myself. And once I started taking care of myself, my life improved in ways I never ever imagined.

As luck would have it, December 10th of this year stands to be a very important day for me as well, however, I'm not about to put it out on the internet why :-) Hopefully by this time next year, I'll be able to write a similar post to the one I wrote today.

For now, I will think good thoughts, prepare as best I can, and remember how far I've come in the last year and be thankful for that.

Setback Wednesday

This day just hasn't quite worked out the way I'd planned...

I woke up extra early this morning so that I could make it to yoga class for a half an hour before my training session. I spent all of that "extra" morning time running around the apartment looking first for my blackberry and second for a pair of capri yoga pants (which I never ended up finding.)

Since I didn't find my capri yoga pants I had to wear my long pants, which was a disaster since it was POURING rain my entire mile long walk to the train. By the time I got to the train the entire bottom half of my legs and my feet were soaked.

I also discovered that my cell phone is no longer working (hence the urgent need to find my blackberry before I left the house.)

Needless to say I did not make it to yoga this morning and barely had enough time to get a mile in on the treadmill before my trainer got there.

Today was measurements day which I have been really looking forward to because even though I haven't lost a single pound (after 10 weeks of running, 8 weeks of training and countless months of weight watchers and exercising on my own) I've looked to "inches lost" as a marker of my success. BIG MISTAKE. This month I gained inches everywhere but my legs.

Needless to say I'm discouraged. I'm working so hard and not getting any results. I'm afraid I'm going to have to do something more drastic with my eating habits than weight watchers which intimidates me. But I also know I cannot continue to work this hard and not see results. I feel pretty stuck and discouraged at this moment.

I need to lose thirty pounds. Thirty pounds! Considering how things have gone for me so far, it just feels like an unattainable goal. (and it isn't even really my "real" goal, I'd actually like to lose more like 40-45 pounds to get down to my happy weight.) At this point though, I'd take five pounds.

Ugh.

Last Thursday yoga? Fail!

I completely forgot to write about the fact that I did not in fact make it to yoga last week. Nor did I make it to the hot yoga class I've been wanting to check out this past weekend. The whole week was really one big yoga fail. BUT, tomorrow, before training, I'm going to get a half an hour in before my training session. Sure, I'll feel weird walking out halfway through, but hopefully I can just get a spot by the door and sneak out very quietly. And besides, if my trainer told me to do it, I can do it. Right?

So yes, tomorrow I will right about yoga darn it!

8 miles, again

I'm ridiculously late in writing about my latest long run, but late is better than never right??? Last weekend's long run was another eight miler. I could have probably upped it to nine and been fine, but I've been fighting injuries so much that I thought it best to just do a repeat eight miles and then do a mile cooldown (i.e. walk slowly) The first mile was by far the worst. I walked the first two or three minutes and then could not catch up to my normal pace to save my life. Which considering the fact that my normal pace is somewhere slightly south of 13 minute miles well, that's pretty sad no?

The next seven miles were a breeze really. The weather was nice and it was cloudy so really a perfect day for a run. I stopped every two miles to stretch (again, trying not to aggravate my injury prone body more than is necessary) and all was well. I think I'll be ready to tackle nine miles in two weeks. I'd try it this weekend, but I have a weekend full of class (9-4am F/Sat/Sun) so it just isn't going to happen. I think I'm going to try for two five milers this weekend and then tackle nine miles next weekend. Hopefully it won't throw off my training schedule too much...

Hump day!

The first week back from vacation is always tough. This time it's really tough! I'm not completely sure why, but suffice to say I am dragging this week. Getting up for training on Monday and Wednesday mornings was torture. But I was glad I did it, so it's obviously completely worth the torture!

In an effort to try and actually start losing weight I decided to tweak my diet a little more by trying to lessen my sugar intake. I'm already doing weight watchers religiously and live by a gluten free diet, and of course I'm working out like a crazy person, but I'm still not losing weight. So more changes must be made. Since I know sugar has always been a problem for me (which was confirmed recently by my doctor) I decided to give it a try. So far? It's hard. I really want to eat candy and did totally cave last night and have 2 points (100 calories) worth. But I figure a little bit of sugar is less than the tons I was eating before, so it's something right?

I'm also going to try and focus on incorporating more vegetables into my life, but for now I'm just going to focus on less sugar and then up the veggies gradually. I've found that trying to make more than one change at a time is pretty unrealistic for me, but that making small changes over time seems to work.

I'm also thinking about trying to change up my workout routine a little bit. I'm doing weight training twice a week and running three times a week (at least) but again, the scale isn't budging. I really want to incorporate more yoga into my life, so tomorrow, I'm going to go to the super hard yoga class at my gym. Actually, it probably isn't all that hard, it's probably just more that I have no upper body strength, but either way, it's a struggle for me!

In running news, my mom, sister and I are all signed up for the Houston Half Marathon in January. Well actually, my sister is signed up for the marathon, but my mom and I are signed up for the half. I may switch to the marathon, but that all depends on how my half training goes. (as luck would have it the half marathon fits perfectly into my supposed marathon training plan should I go that route.)

I'll write about yoga tomorrow, should be interesting.