I mean, there’s no big secret in that. I like food and every time I try to cut certain foods out of my repertoire, it just leads to obsession, pain and ultimately abandonment of the banishment, which circles into self-loathing, recrimination and a host of other bad things. Strictly counting calories does the same thing. I’m not doing that ever again.

All that said, I am very interested in learning how to fuel my body for this new thing I’m doing with training for a half marathon. And it’s proving to be really, really hard to find information on just that – fueling my body. Not losing weight. Not reaching for some kind of fat ratio. Just… fueling my body well, so that I can train and improve. I think it’s quite likely that I will lose weight no matter what just by upping the movement and eating well, but I do not want that to be the focus. That way lies madness. So what’s a girl to do? Recommendations welcome.

I think I really need to stick to my goal of walking the first one (can you see me convincing myself here? yeah… repetition helps. repetition helps.) and prep to up the “run quota” once I’ve seen where that goes. I mean, once I can log this kind of time in brisk walking, moving up to jogging, then running can totally happen, right? Because I really do ultimately want to run. I dream about it often and it’s second only to flying. But I want to take small, doable steps, not burn myself out, not hurt myself so I can’t go on. Hence, the sticking to walking, even as I yearn to step it up.  The problem here, also, is finding great training resources (and nutrition resources) for people who plan to stick with walking their first half marathon. Everything seems to assume that you will include some kind of running. Pushes towards it. Makes it hard to stick to my goal of walking (see how I went full circle there?).

I think I most likely need to have a good talk with one of my coaches this weekend at Portland Fit. Talk about all this stuff, about what I want to do and how I want to do it. I suspect there will be good advice to be had. Until then, I am … aw, who am I kidding? I’ll still keep looking for stuff to read, ’cause that’s what I’ll do. But I’ll try to be okay with the anticipation and not pull any triggers. And I’ll keep seeking community.