Alan

This was a week of ups and downs. My workouts were great, and while I did not eat poorly, I did have Chinese food one night. I think that the salt in the food made me feel bloated for the next two days and then I felt discouraged that I didn't see much improvement.

Last night I watched the movie Run for Your Life, a documentary about Fred Lebow, and the history of the New York City Marathon, and have been reinvigorated and motivated to stick to my plan and succeed at reaching my goals.
  

Alan

It's been a while since I've written, and while I'd like to say it's because I forgot, it probably has more to do with the ups and downs that I felt during this period of training. 

For about two weeks, I've felt that I was going backwards.  The training was becoming more and more difficult, I wasn't losing any weight, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to stay on my appropriate food regimen.  The one thing that I'm particularly proud of is that I never gave up and always did what I was supposed to do, and now, a couple weeks later, I'm really happy to see improvement.

My last measurement I had lost a number of inches and close to 10 pounds, and I  believe my body fat had also lowered.  I'm not sure if that was the mental and emotional breakthrough I needed, but I'm finding that I'm getting more and more excited the night before my workouts to come into the gym and I'm finding that my eating is becoming more routine.  Halloween was a little bit of a struggle because I ended up having some chocolate, but to be honest, it was almost too sweet and I realized because I had not been eating it, I didn't really want it. 

I have to say, I feel that I've gotten over some kind of hump and am really encouraged and excited about my training and have started to think longer-term of goals for me and my fitness.