Week 7, and an eating update

I'm in the middle of week seven of C25K, so I'll reserve my judgment until I'm done. But I can say without hesitation that this is the most challenging week, not only so far, but overall. The jump from running increased time/length over the course of the week to running long runs every time was a bit of a shock. But, again, I'll write more about this later.

I wanted to post that I've started the South Beach diet this week. Let me say off the bat that I am not a diet fan. My opinion is that if people eat real foods in moderate amounts they shouldn't need to follow trendy diets or join a program or anything. However, I have come to realize that many people, myself included, need to break out of some bad habits in order to get to the point where they can eat real foods in moderate amounts.

I'm an emotional eater. I want to celebrate, mourn, and just chill out with food. Since Sam was born I've gotten into the terrible habit of snacking at night after the kids go to bed. I might have been so busy during the day that I missed meals and was genuinely hungry, but the amount of calories I'd wolf down after dark was way, way more than I needed. And usually it was the wrong kind of food.

I looked into a couple of different diets but I have heard about South Beach from several people (including my own parents who had great success on it a few years back. In addition, it seems to be Nina Planck-approved, which means it passes my hippie-meter test. Planck is the author of Real Food, which has become my sort of food-bible in recent years. Anyway, South Beach for the most part doesn't require you to eat a lot of weird, artificial things, something I approve of.

So I started South Beach for two reasons: to break my really bad snacking habit, and to thwart my recent weight gain. Yes, that's right. Weight GAIN. I'm probably the only person in the world who can be nursing full-time AND training for a 5k and therefore exercising regularly and be GAINING WEIGHT. Boo. I know my baby is only three months old, and I shouldn't be expecting to be back in pre-baby shape or anything, but certainly I could be expecting to be maintaining or even losing a bit of weight, right?

I'll be writing about South Beach over here and at Tig Eats in the next few weeks.