Project Race Weight

This past week, there has been a lot of discussion about training to eat or eating to train.  Do you train so that you can eat whatever you want?  Or do you eat so that your body has the proper fuel to train? If I'm being honest, I try to eat to train and have been improving, but it is hard to switch off my love affair with food - "bad" foods especially.  The stuff that has no nutritional value & doesn't help me train better. I have been overweight for all of my adult life & am an emotional eater. I don't remember a time I have been less than 175 pounds. At one point in 2012, I weighed 222 pounds. Thankfully, that was as high as I allowed it to get. Since then I have lost weight. I workout for 8-10 hours a week & yet I continue to eat junk. I think about everything that I eat & make better choices 80% of the time. The other 20% though - that is the problem. I have said for the past 4 months that I was going to change my habits & drop the weight I need to drop.  So far that scale has gone down 2 pounds. I've come to the realization that if I don't have some sort of accountability, I am not going to do it. So I have decided to blog about what I am doing. I may be the only one reading it, but as far as I'm concerned, if it's on the web, it's out there, so here goes. 

I made a decision at the end of last season that I didn't want to race as an athena, I wanted to be an age-grouper. For those that don't know, athena is the division in triathlons for women 165 pounds and higher. I know that I can lose the weight, so when I signed up for the Kinetic Sprint (May 10th), I did so as an age group racer. I told myself that would be motivation enough to start losing weight. Well, that was 3 months ago. Now the race is in 2 months & I need to get my act together. I am tired of carrying around this extra weight & my body isn't getting any younger, so I need to lighten the load & treat it better if I want to succeed. Kinetic is only the beginning of the races this season with Augusta 70.3 the A race on September 27th. I am also running the Richmond Marathon in November. I want to drop the pounds and be in the best shape I have ever been in. And the time to start is now. I am not sure exactly how I am going to do it, but I am going to do it. Tomorrow morning, before I swim, I am going to weigh myself. Then I will post it on the blog. My plan is to document everything I eat (photos and/or journaling) and share it. I know it won't be perfect and I know there will be desserts because I am not "dieting", I am revamping my food choices. I'm going to focus on improving my nutrition choices & raise that 80% to 95%. Time to get serious because race season is almost upon us!