Motivational Mondays (Jan. 4)

Welcome back to the rat race.

For many, today is the first day back to school, back to work, back to whatever, after spending some down time to celebrate the holidays and ring in the New Year. I don't know about you but for me, January is always such a drag. All of our Christmas stuff is in boxes and I have to take the lights down from our house today. Then, it's right smack into the beginning of a long, cold month. And where's the joy in that?

I'm going to try and combat the usual holiday letdown with some January cheer. For me, the holidays now are just another mile-marker in my quest to reach my goals. I have running goals as I wrote on the 1st, but I also have family and nutritional goals as well.

My main nutritional goal is to get back to the routine that helped me drop 120 pounds. It's actually pretty simple:

7 a.m. Breakfast (200-400 calories)
9-10 a.m. AM snack (100 calories)
Noon-1 p.m. Lunch (300-400 calories)
3-4 p.m. PM Snack (100 calories)
6-7 p.m. Dinner (600-900 calories)

That's just sort of a rough outline. My goal is to get around 1800 calories a day. It's tough especially with running now because you have to fuel your body properly before long runs and then you have to recover after them, and that means calories galore sometimes, but it's still a good rule of thumb for me because it worked so well for me from early 2006 to late 2007 and all of 2008.

Yeah, 2009 was a bit rough in the food department. It could be called as The Year of Eating Dangerously for me because I didn't always stick to the above guide. I was always picking at stuff, it seems like. It's hard because I'm at home and there's just small things to pick at but small things add up. If I hadn't been running so much, I don't know how it would have affected me as I fit into all my clothes just fine.

In some ways I think the running though has given me a bit of a false sense of confidence. It's like I'm telling myself 'I ran 15 effing miles today, of course I can have a second helping.' But that's not the right mentality.

So my major goal for this year will be to get back to the tried-and-true and go from there.

As far as combating my January gloom, it might not be as tough this year as other years. I have a huge event on Feb. 7. Have I mentioned the marathon I'm running? It's a little 26.2 race that is staring me down. It's going to try and knock me on my arse way before I even get to the start line, but for me this whole month and the first few days of February will be about not letting Surf City get the best of me.

And I can't let this gloom drag me down if I want to come out on top.