A year in my life: 2010

Statistics:
Highest weight ever: 89.2 kg / 196.6 lbs
Weight on January 1: 80.5 kg / 177.5 lbs
Weight on December 31: 78.8 kg / 173.7 lbs.
Total weight loss in 2010: -1.7 kg / 3.7 lbs.
Total weight loss since highest weight: – 10.4 kg / 22.9 lbs.

Fat % on January 1: 41.9
Fat % on December 31: 40.6

Muscle % on January 1: 30.0
Muscle % on December 31: 30.1

BMI January 1: 26.9
BMI December 31: 26.3

Waist on January 1: 88 cm / 34 inches
Waist on December 1: 86 cm / 33 inches

Hips on January 1: 108 cm / 42 inches
Hips on December 1: 106 cm / 41.7 inches

Number and time of workouts in 2009: 138 workouts, total time 95 hours and 52 minutes.
Number and time of workouts in 2010: 154 workouts, total time 101 hours and 53 minutes.

Total km’s/miles in 2009: 445 km / 276 miles
Total running time 57 hours and 56 minutes

Total km’s/miles in 2010: 615.5 km /382.4 miles
Total running time: 71 hours 45 minutes

Goal: 900K / 560 miles in 2010.

Races 2010:
03/07/2010: Trappenbergloop Huizen, 4K, time 00:26:51, 8.9 km/hour, 6:43/km.
03/28/2010: Zandvoort Circuit Run, 5K, time 00:32:36, 9.2 km/hour, 6:31/km,
04/18/2010: Nike Ladies City Run Hilversum, 10K, time 01:13:49, 8.1 km/hour, 7:23/km.
08/25/2010: Emiclaerloop Amersfoort, 4.95K, time 00:32:45, 9.1 km/hour, 6:37/km.
09/03/2010: Vathorst Fit2Move Run Amersfoort, 6.55K, time 00:45:07, 8.7 km/hour, 6:54/km.
09/19/2010: Dam tot Damloop ladies run, 6.4K, time 00:42:17, 9.1 km/hour, 6:36/km
10/10/2010: Hoge Veluweloop, 10K, time 01:08:23, 8.8 km/hour, 6:50/km, new PR.
10/30/2010: Virtual Pink Dress Run, 5K, time 00:32:19, 9.3 km/hour, 6:28/km, new PR.

Overall conclusion:

I couldn’t be happier how this year went. Sure I could have lost more weight but looking at the numbers it has all gone down: weight, fat%, muscle%, BMI, waist and hips.

I did more workouts in 2010 and I made more km’s/miles. I didn’t reach my goal of 900K / 560 miles but if that’s all I didn’t reach I’m happy with it.

2010 was a good year for us, our families and friends were healthy. We both have a good and steady job and we did a lot of fun things.

The only sad thing that happened was the loss of our beloved Roussy, who would be with us 12 years today if she still had lived.

And even though we will never forget her (her photo is on the wall in the living room and her ashes are still in the living room) we were very happy that we found and got Bella a few weeks later. She helped us dealing with the loss and gives us so much pleasure, fun and love.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

I look forward to 2011 with confidence and self-esteem knowing I can do this!

I want to thank all my dear blogger friends for your support in 2010 and hope you still will give me your support in 2011. I look forward to following you next year and see what 2011 brings you. I hope it’s mostly happiness and love.

A day in my life: Wednesday December 29, 2010

Thoughts:
I’m enjoying my vacation very much although it seems I didn’t have that much time to myself but from today I will. Yesterday I spend the entire day from 9 till 4 on cleaning my house, I had a lot of chores to do where I normally don’t have the time for. Result: clean house and sore muscles where I didn’t know I had.

Tonight we’re going out. We’re going to a musical called “We will rock you”. Don’t know what the story is about but all the music is from Queen which we like.

As the year is coming to an end, it’s time to look at my goals for next year.

My weight goals haven’t changed, I will post my year results on Friday. The goal stays the same: target weight 73 kg (161 lbs.), get fat percentage to < 27%, muscles percentage > 43% and BMI < 25.
I haven’t set a date for my goals except that I want to reach goal weight in 2011. I’m going to use Weight Watchers for that, starting on January 3^rd. I’m not going to put too much pressure on my weight, as long as I will lose weight on a regular base I’m happy with it.

I have posted my workout goals two weeks ago, these haven’t changed. I did decide to sign up for Syl’s January challenge: workout 5 days a week for at least 30 minutes because it fits in with my own workout goals.

I’ve asked you if you would like it if I started the 365 Photo Challenge again and you’ve responded very positive to that and I will start this again on January 1^st. I’ve warned you: sometimes it can be boring.

I’ve set some other personal goals and one of them is “try 1 new recipe” a week. I will post a photo every Wednesday on my blog. If the recipe is not too difficult to translate and it tastes good, I will post the recipe too. Monday will be for my weekly workout and weight watchers review and on Saturday I will post the 365 photo challenge.

Exercise:
After running a few times on my Brooks shoes and my Asics shoes I started to notice that I had more calf issues when I used the Asics. I decided to buy a new pair of Brooks Adrenaline shoes (blue this time) and they arrived just before Christmas. I put my Asics online and try to sell them because they are as good as new.

.

I tried my new Brooks for a test run on the treadmill on Monday and ………. no calf issues what so ever. In fact it was a great run (for as far as a run on the treadmill can be great). The snow has been melting all day and the roads were icy and I didn’t want to risk anything so went inside. Had to do 40 minutes and did 6K/3.7 miles. I played with the speed, every minute I went faster till a certain speed and then back. By doing this I had a new PR on my 6K but I’m not counting it. PR’s are for road runs and not treadmill.

Christmas 2010

Let me take you on a tour of my Christmas and the food we ate. This is a completely photo post and hope you enjoy it.

Started Friday by baking an apple pie for Christmas

Christmas morning

Santa got me a gift (I felt a bit bad because we normally don't exchange gifts and I didn't have anything for R.)

Breakfast

Christmas outfit

Of course it wouldn't be a photo post without ....

Time for a puzzle before we left

My Mom making dinner

Dinner, we started with pastry filled with ragout

Mushroom soup

Chicken, baked potatoes, chicory with ham and cheese, green beans, cooking pears

Dessert: tiramisu

My Mom and my mother in law

.
Boxing day

.

Long walk with Bella

Dinner, carpaccio for starters

Main: pork tenderloin with mushrooms in pastry, baked potatoes, baked mushrooms in white wine and crème fraîche

Dessert: crumble with apple and cranberries

A day in my life: Friday December 24, 2010

Did you know that ….

• I worked my butt off till Wednesday at noon but was able to do everything that had to be done and could shut down my PC at work at noon and have a great Christmas lunch with my colleagues and also got a Christmas bonus this year, even though our country still suffers from the economic crisis.
  .
• I have vacation till January 3^{rd
  .}
  
• I haven’t worked out all week and not going to till Monday and I’m totally okay with that. No guilt at all.
  .
• We are going to have a white Christmas. The snow is still here. Temperatures are above zero the past few days but we had so much snow that it’s going to take a while before it’s all gone.
  .
• I’ve cleaned up my Google reader and threw out all the blogs on which I comment regular but who never took the effort to look at mine.
  .
• I’m thinking about starting the 365 days photo challenge again on January 1^st.
  Would you like it if I start this again even though my life can be pretty boring sometimes?
  .
• We have something here in Holland called Serious Request?
  A radio station does this every year, for 6 years now. 3 DJ’s live in a house of glass in a city in Holland. They can’t get out for 6 days and they don’t eat for 6 days. All of this to raise money for the Red Cross. Every year they have a different cause. This year it’s for 15 million orphans who lost their parents to AIDS. You can give money, or request a record for money, or send a text message. Last year they collected 7 million Euro’s, half of it was donated by our government. This year the government won’t double the amount but yesterday they already collected 3.1 million Euro’s (4 million USD). It’s on TV 24 hours a day and we watch it a lot. It’s kind of a tradition. Tonight at 9.30 pm they leave the house and the final amount is announced.

.

This leaves me with only one more thing to say and that is that I wish you and your family a happy and loving Christmas.

A day in my life: Monday December 20, 2010

Thoughts:
Over the weekend we had a lot of snow. It snowed all night on Saturday. I can’t remember the last time we had so much snow. I realize that for some of you this is nothing but in the country I live in snow is an exception not normal. Usually our Winters are wet or just cold but hardly ever snow. I am getting used to it day by day but still not a fan of it. The only one who still loves it is Bella and it’s so much fun to see her play in the snow. Here are some photos how it looks now where I live.

Weekly review week 50:
Monday: Rest (calf issues)
Tuesday: Pilates, 1 hour, burned 174 calories.
Wednesday:. Running, 5K/3.1 miles, 34 minutes, burned 430 calories.
Thursday: Rest (planned).
Friday: Rest.
Saturday: Running, 11 K/6.8 miles, 78 minutes, burned 943 calories.
Sunday: Walk in the snow with Bella, 30 minutes.

Weekly totals:
Time: 2 hours and 52 minutes.
Distance: 16 K / 9.9 miles
Burned calories: 1547

Weight Watchers weekly review

I started on Monday last week with counting Points, I didn’t count on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. My weigh inn day is still Thursday and I’ve lost 1.2 kg (2.6 lbs.) in a week. Considering that I started on Monday and that I didn’t adjust my eating plan this week, I’m very happy with this result. My weight during the weekend stayed the same even though I didn’t count Points.

What have I learned this week? At lunch I bring a package of soy milk to work, banana flavour. It appeared that this is a lot of Points: 4.5 Points a package. I finished the packages I had and will switch to natural soy milk tomorrow which is 3 Points.

Another change are the snacks. I used to bring a mueslibar or something like that to work to eat in the mornings and fruits for the afternoon. As of this week I replaced the morning snack with fruits too.

And you can see I used a lot of Points on Thursday. I baked chocolate muffins for work and had one myself and we ate spaghetti carbonara for dinner which is a lot of Points too.

Conclusion: there’s definitely room for improvement. I think I used up all my Points this week and even some of my Activity Points but that’s okay as long as I keep losing weight.

Daily dinner

Monday
A piece of beef meat, rösti, carrots and green peas.

A day in my life: Saturday December 18, 2010

Thoughts:
Thank you all for your positive comments on my workout goals for 2011.

I’m a bit behind on reading your blogs, try to catch up this weekend. Work has been crazy this past week and will be next week, always the same at the end of the year. I have to work 2.5 more days and have to do a lot before my vacation starts. On Wednesday at 12.30 pm we have a Christmas lunch at work and after that my vacation starts and I don’t have to work till Monday January 3^rd. Really looking forward to that.

I still haven’t figured out our Christmas dinner. On Christmas day we will be at my Mom’s house and I offered to make dessert. Boxing day we are at home and I have to come up for a dinner for just the two of us. Have to sit down tomorrow and decide what we are going to eat.

This week I received a surprise package in the mail. Julie from Julie’s Running Blog sent it to me and I was touched and surprised when I opened it. She send me a few gifts including a Runners calendar for 2011, some perfume samples, Minnesota Moose Poop and some cleaning hand gels. Julie, again thank you so much, this was so sweet of you.

Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge

December 11-December 17:
Running (1 Point per mile): 9
Walking (1 Point per mile): 1
Weight lifting, Pilates, yoga, stretching or abs (1 Point per 20 minutes): 3
1 Point per day where you reach a minimum of 7 servings of fruits and veggies:  -

Total this week: 13 Points.

Exercise:
Tuesday I went to my Pilates class. Due to circumstances I didn’t go for almost a month and I really missed it. It was a great class, we worked on abs and back.

Wednesday I was home a bit earlier than normal, it was cold, hardly wind and the sun was still shining a bit and I decided to run outside. Had to do a temporun of 35 minutes. I kept a pace that felt good and did 3 times of 4 minutes at a faster speed. It was so good to run outside on a weekday. My calf was hurting a bit during the run but my foamroller arrived in the mail that day. I used it immediately and it really works! Thank you all who recommended this to me.

Victory run!
Yesterday we got our share of snow again. The whole country was a mess, major traffic jams, trains weren’t going, people got stuck on the highway for a long time. Where I live it wasn’t as bad as at the coast line but we had a bit of snow.

So when I woke up this morning, knowing I had 11K / 6.8 miles on my schedule I was thinking what to do. I could go to the gym and do it on the treadmill or I could try and run outside. From the possibilities the last one sounded the best. I dressed up and off I went. I choose a route of which I knew it would be cleaner than my usuals routes. This meant I had to run 5.5K on it and then back for 5.5K. Usually I run in a loop because I don’t like seeing the same thing twice but today this was the best option.

It was cold, I was slow (slowest run in 3 months) because I had to carefully watch where I ran, first part I had a bit of wind in my front, my water was almost frozen when I got home but I did it. By the way no calf issues today: I love my foamroller.

11K (6.8 miles), -4C / 24 degrees, snowy/icy roads: I DID IT !
And I’m damn proud of myself for trying and finishing.

Here’s a photo of the road I ran on.

Workout goals 2011

Here they are, my workout goals for 2011. I’m keeping it simple this year. I can always add things during the year.

From January 1^st I have a changed schedule at work. I have 1 day off every two weeks. This was Thursday but because it’s busier on Thursday at the office, my manager and I decided that I will have my day off on Friday. It was my suggestion to do that and I’m happy with it.

But this means I had to reschedule some of my workouts. I have to consider that when Bella is at home (too much energy and I won’t leave her alone immediately after I get home to do a workout), when I am going to clean my house and when I do my grocery shopping. But I found something that hopefully will work. Basically my schedule next year will look at this:

Monday: Running (tempo run)
Tuesday: Pilates
Wednesday: Weight training
Thursday: Running (short run)
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Running (long run)
Sunday: Rest

I have to find out if this works for me but I’m kind of excited because it feels like a fresh start.

Running goals:

Yearly mileage
Goal kilometres/miles in 2011: 1011 K / 628 miles

My goal for 2010 was 900 K / 560 miles. I won’t reach that goal this year. My first thought was to set the same goal for 2011. But Syl and Heidi have set a goal of 2011 K in 2011. This is way out of my league but I do like the idea of it and I’m going for 1011 K / 628 miles in 2011. It’s a challenge but with my half marathon training till April and my plan to run another half in September/October this is a goal I must be able to reach.

Personal records I want to achieve:

Run a   5K < 32 minutes
Run a 10K < 1.08

If I set a new PR on these distances, I will set a new one during the year.

Races:

April 25, Half marathon of Utrecht

After the half marathon I will decide about other races I want to run in 2011. Maybe I’m going to train for a Canicross with Bella in the second half of 2011.

Other goals:

Pilates and Weight training
Go as much as possible to Pilates once a week and do a weight training once a week.

Push Up Challenge
I’m going to give this another try and do the push up challenge (6 weeks to 100 push ups).
Starting this on January 3^rd.

Walking
Goal is to walk at least 1 time a day 30 minutes with Bella. It’s good for me and it’s good for her as she needs to build muscles.

Take a long walk once a month in a forest or nature reservation somewhere in Holland with Bella.

So here it is for 2011. What do you think? To ambitious? To easy? Good?

A day in my life: Monday December 13, 2010

Thoughts:
Another post on Weight Watchers. As you may or may not know I plan my meals ahead (just the dinners) I’ve been doing this ever since R. and I started living together 16 years ago. Main reason I do this is because I don’t like grocery shopping and once a week is enough for me. Every weekend I sit down and start planning and make a shopping list.

Being back on WW probably means adjusting my eating habits. This week I have planned already till Friday. What I’m going to do is stick to the planning and see how many Points I’m eating. Yesterday I sat down and planned for the week after Friday and also planned my breakfast, lunches and snacks. I use a Dutch WW book for that which has meal plans for 365 days. I do make adjustments however because I don’t like everything they suggest.

By doing this I can compare the two weeks after that and see if it makes a difference.

By using this small changes I will see if this helps me lose weight. If not I have to make more changes in my eating habits. But taking one step at a time to see what works for me.

We decided not to put up the Christmas tree this year. First of all I didn’t feel like it, it’s a lot of work to put it up and decorate it. Second we don’t trust Bella with it, she loves to play with her ball and I’m afraid she will see to many shiny balls in the tree which she wants to play with. Here’s what we’ve done this year.

Side table

Coffee table

Fireplace

Exercise:
No workout yesterday, it was my official rest day and no workout today. My calf is hurting again. I’ve ordered a foam roller this weekend and it will be delivered this week. I hope this will help me with my calf issues.

Weekly review week 49:
Monday: Running, 5K/3.1 miles, 33 minutes, burned 365 calories.
Tuesday: Rest.
Wednesday:. Rest.
Thursday: Running, 5.2K/3.2 miles, 35 minutes, burned 382 calories.
Friday: Rest.
Saturday: Running, 10 K/6.2 miles, 70 minutes, burned 853 calories.
Sunday: Walk with Bella, 30 minutes.

Weekly totals:
Time: 2 hours and 18 minutes.
Distance: 20.2 K / 12.5 miles
Burned calories: 1600

Daily dinner

Sunday
It’s been a while since I’ve posted my daily dinners. Will get back to this starting today.
Yesterday I made a stew with beef, sweet potatoes and leek.

Ingredients

Result

Monday
Meatball, potatoes and mixed vegetables.

A day in my life: Saturday December 11, 2010

Thoughts:
In the last 4 weeks I have gained every week. I have to be honest and admit I often didn’t make the right food choices. At this moment I’m close to my starting weight from the beginning of this year. If I continue doing what I’m doing now I will close this year by losing nothing or worse by gaining and I don’t want that.

I keep track of my weight in an Excel sheet (been doing that since November 2007, before that I’ve written my weight on January 1^st down since 2003) and I looked up when I had good periods of losing weight. In August I followed an eating plan, remember? That’s one period when I kept losing weight every week. The other period is at the beginning of this year when I was doing the Weight Watchers program.

This shows that being on a program works the best for me even though I’m not a fan of counting Points, calories or whatever. But it kept me thinking all week and I finally decided to go back to Weight Watchers and give it another try.

I’m starting Monday. This month I will get familiar with the program again and I won’t follow the program on December 17, 21 (Christmas lunch at work), 25, 26, 31 and January 1. From January 2^nd I will follow the program every day: no exceptions.

Honestly I don’t know if it’s going to work this time but I’m willing and ready to give it another try. After all, in all these years of the weight loss battle, WW has been the only program that worked, it helped me reach goal weight once and I hope it will help me reach it again.

Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge

December 4-December 10:
Running (1 Point per mile): 6
Walking (1 Point per mile):
1 Point per day where you reach a minimum of 7 servings of fruits and veggies: 1

Total this week: 7 Points.

Exercise:
This morning finally good weather to run outside. The roads were all clean again, temperature around 8C (46 degrees), drizzling rain, windy. My first few K’s were tough because my right calf was hurting a bit but after about 2K my legs were warmed up and it didn’t bother me anymore. I did walk more than I usually do, needed that today. The last 4K were harder because I had the wind in front of me.

I did 10K in 1 hour and 10 minutes which was my second best 10K this (to my surprise). Even tough it wasn’t my best run ever, I’m happy I went and were able to run outside again.

A day in my life: Thursday December 9, 2010

Thoughts:
Yesterday I had a dinner date with my BF K. As you might know after reading my blog for a while we do that about twice a year. But before we went to the restaurant we did a little shopping. You all know how much I love shoes so guess what I’ve bought? That’s right: shoes! K. bought some lovely black pumps and I got myself these.

After that we went to the restaurant. We had decided to eat Mexican this time. The restaurant opened recently so we wanted to try it out. I really loved how they decorated the place.

K. had an avocado filled with shrimps for starters and I had tortillachips with guacamole.

We ordered the same main dish: a burrito.

Because it was almost end of the year we also ordered a bottle of wine to go with the dinner.
As usual I had a great evening with her and I look forward to our next date.

Exercise:
I missed my Pilates class on Tuesday because my Blackberry died Tuesday afternoon. I was trying to fix it and by the time I watched the clock it was past 7 and the class had already started. My Blackberry is the only phone I have and I needed to get it restarted which I did after almost 3 hours.

Today was perfect weather for running outside but unfortunately the walking paths and roads where I run were still icy and slippery and I don’t want to risk it that I fall and have an injury. Decided to go to the gym instead and do my run on the treadmill. It was a good run, did 5.2K (3.2 miles) in 35 minutes.