minor milestone, proud anyway

[wutitiz]

Originally Posted by gypsy5oul

so i'm 30, overweight but not obese, and more importantly have no stamina or anything like that.

i'm tired of wanting/needing to lose 40lbs and not doing it. of losing motivation, of going to "far" and hurting too much the next day, of not finding the time, of not sticking with it.

i think i've found the right thing for me. last monday i decided to start jogging (again) and decided it would be best to limit myself to 5mins instead of trying to do a full session on the treadmill or whatever.
the next day i did 6mins and so on... i decided to increase my run by 1 minute every day. i did this for 2 reasons: 1. if i could set aside 5mins, it's easy to just add another minute and 2. i could work up to a full run for longer building my endurance

today i hit 10mins! i know it's not much, i know it's nothing to you folks who run on the reg. but it's something for me! since i got myself to 10mins today i thought i would try alternating a light jog with an actual run, i didn't do every other minute but i did do a fair amount of actual running (not just jogging) at times it almost hurt to go on but i did it. i'm proud of myself and i'm just looking for a pat on the back and a little self-confidence via horn tooting.

i hope with this minor increase every day i will soon be devoting more and more time to running and not feel so out of shape.

in addition, i've become more discerning about my food choices. i'm not restricting myself or starving myself (i did that once and my hair fell out and my nails all broke off) but i'm cutting portions and eating things like celery or rice cakes as snacks.

You're doing it exactly right, so please don't low-rate yourself. I don't know how many people I tell to just start out by running a block, and keep building from there. Precious few do it, so you already are a cut above. Build your distance slowly and post it in the progress thread!

[gypsy5oul]

Thanks everyone!! Your support means a lot
Had midterms today and it was so hard to motivate myself but I went out anyway because of your supportive comments

[johnnytang24]

Hey, good job!

One thing I recommend is slowing down your rate of increase. Adding one minute every day is a lot! How about adding one minute twice per week? You'll still be up to 30+ minutes within a year, but doing too much too fast doesn't give your body a chance to recover and adapt. Not recovering increases chances of injury or just burning out.