215 pounds and running a 10K?!?!?

At the completion of the 10k, wanting to lay down!!
215 pounds

This post is about my journey in jogging, you can look around my blog and find out how I eat to fuel this exercise. I don't touch on the food side of the health equation, but feel it is EXTREMELY important and more-so than the exercise. I love this saying, 'You can't outrun a bad diet!!'

God can have a funny way of getting our attention. I was perusing Facebook one morning and  a friend of mine posted that she had registered for the Disneyland 10k and wasn't able to run in it. She was asking if anyone would want to buy the 2 registrations from her. I talked to my husband and we decided to do it. No, big deal, right?!? Wrong! We had never ran 1 mile before, let alone 6.3 miles. I was very skeptical that I could lug my 235 pound body around Disneyland while jogging! We had five months to train. Thankfully, I found an app that would train us, and it was free! It's called C210k. The few months previously, I had been walking about a mile every other day, so I wasn't completely out of shape, but FAR from being able to jog a mile. The first day of training, we (my husband and I) followed the app and walked for 3 minutes, jogged for 1 minute, walked 3 minutes, jogged 1 minute and so on for 30 minutes. The app is so cool, it speaks to you when to run and when to walk.  I
thought I was going to pass out (literally) 30 seconds into the jogging portion. It was the longest minute of my life!! But we kept going, day after day and it became easier. I was slowly losing weight too. (This was before my change to plant-based eating. I was on the journey to health, just in the whole foods phase, not completely plants.) The jogging became easier, but was never easy! I found I could keep up with the app, but at a slow pace. By the time the race came around, we had jogged 4 miles without stopping and I had lost about 20 pounds. So the day of the race I was ready, terrified, but ready. We had to sign forms for the race and part of the paperwork was informing us that we had to keep a certain pace and if we didn't, there would be a car to come and pick us up....that scared me to death. I didn't want to be the one who couldn't keep up and had to be picked up!!! I needn't have worried!! My husband could out-run me, but chose the whole training time and at the race to stay with me, no matter how slow I went. And I was able to jog all of the 10k---that's 6.3 miles!!! There was an even bigger feat...the Southern California dead of summer, humid and yucky heat of the morning, but we prevailed. I was so excited to see the finish line and get water :)

My journal entry for 'The Big Day'

When we first started the jogging endeavor, I really didn't think I'd be able to jog the whole 10k and I wasn't sure I'd be able to do the training. Having a goal, though, made getting out and exercising so much easier! I don't like to fail, which is one reason I really didn't want to lose weight. I had failed so much in the past, hence my 246 pound body, but knowing that we had spent $230 to be in this race made it easier to NOT fail!!

Today, I haven't stopped jogging and now run 3-1/2 minutes faster than I did  and go more miles all while eating only plants!! I've logged 242 miles so far this year on my Nike+ running app. Currently I'm looking for a race to join. My goal would be the Ragnar, but I need to talk my husband into letting me go for 2 days and recovering for a day after that, I'm working on him ;) When I get bored with jogging, I'll buy new shoes, or listen to a different podcast, or change up my playlist, or like right now, find a new race to join.

One thing that I've been doing for about 6 months now is listening to Familylife radio on a great app called OnePlace. I NEVER want to go out jogging, but always just do it. Knowing that I have broadcasts to listen to, helps motivate me to get out there. I don't listen to them, except when I'm jogging. I've learned so much about God's plan for family, parenting, marriage, adoption, forgiveness and so much more. It really helps to take my mind off of the miles I'm huffing!

My prayer is that people reading this who feel like they have no hope for good health will be inspired to see what a former 'big girl' can accomplish.. I pray that God shows YOU  His plan for your health! Whatever He brings your way just keep doing it, day after day after day!! You CAN do it!!

Me-151 pounds after 1-1/2 years of jogging, day after day after day...
holding my jeans that I fit in when I started jogging!