Crazy Diet! Crazy Treadmill!

I will never, for the life of me, figure out why, for instance, I can eat a baked potato, chicken breast and a handful of yellow and orange pepper strips and feel totally bloated.  Yet, I can eat a big mac value meal and a gas station hot-dog for lunch and I'm ready for more, more, more food.

I'm zeroing in on perfecting this diet.  Today, despite eating said big mac value meal and gas station hot dog, the only problem with today's diet was fat (133%), saturated fat (102%) and sodium (226%).

Obviously, eliminating the Big Mac and hot dog component of the diet takes care of all that pretty easily.  Hey, I'm a stress eater, and my son is trying out for Mavs.  I went a little off the deep end, there.

The good news is that switching to the low-sodium V-8 gave me another step towards nutritional perfection.  It apparently has more potassium to begin with.  I added some, and now my potassium is hunky dory. 

So, the diet continues to be dialed in towards perfection.  Calories aren't such an issue for me.  On exercise days, I'm burning about 2,700 a day.  Even on a "off the deep end ordering off the value menu" day, I only consumed 2,300 calories.  Very, very bad calories, perhaps, but it's still a calorie deficit.  I'm not worried.

I am turning up the speed on the treadmill in an effort to shorten my workouts, time-wise, without shortening them, distance-wise.  It's not like I'm going fast or anything, but I've amped up my warm-up and cool-down pace to 12 min/miles and am trying to get 2 of my 5 miles at 10 minute pace. 

Ordinarily I might not care so much, but I am actually about to be evaluated on how well I run and I need to run about a 10 minute pace to pass.  It's been about 2 months since I started back on this whole fitness thing. 

It's not like I'm cranking it down to 8 min/miles or anything.  So, I don't see this as being so bad.  Eventually, I'd like to work my way up to running my warmup and cooldown at 12 min/miles and doing all 3 main-set repeats at 10 min/miles.  Once there, I'll change up the workout somehow.

For all the things that suck about a treadmill, one of the coolest things is that it absolutely forces you to run a pace.  It's got it's place in the training arsenal.

In the mean time, I really need to find religion about this diet again.  I've really not followed it very well this week and although I might have lost a half a pound or a pound, I need to stay serious until I'm at my goal weight in the 180s.  10 pounds lighter than this would feel great.