Last week I was finally able to run 20 minutes straight at 6.0mph. It has taken about 4 and half years to achieve it. Not bad given I couldn’t even run one minute back then. I felt that extra three minutes later on in the day and took a nap.I haven’t had a chance to try it again. I hit a workout slump because I was tired. Perhaps it was just a challenging weekend. I did have a lot of going on and more physical activity than the usual. I also started a 30 Day challenge (on September 1st) where I am awake by 7:00am each day regardless of a late bedtime. There were a lot of those. I was feeling bad about being too tired to workout but having realized that it could just be recovery from a busy couple of days, I feel a lot better. I also read this blog about the Tired Fairy that gave me a boost.I’m still working on those pushups. I can do 30 of them consecutively judging from today’s exhaustion test.I’m about to start The Specific Carbohydrate Diet for the kids and I. I hoping the diet will help me address my energy issues and the kids’ behavior issues and food intolerences. I won’t go into the whole premise since this website does a good job of doing that but basically all grains are stricken from the diet with caloric needs coming from vegetables, nuts, fruits, legumes, and animal protein. The diet appears to be in line with what the Metabolic Typing Diet suggests for me, although the Metabolic Typing Diet doesn’t eliminate grains completely. My plan is to start on November 1st. I’m using this time to gather recipes, learn what I can, and start trying out some dishes.

30 Day Challenge UpdateMy 30 Day challenge of getting up by 7:00am lasted 23 days. That is the longest I’ve been able to maintain a 30 day challenge. My alarm is now permanently set for 6:30am on weekdays.I’ll be starting a new challenge tomorrow morning of getting up upon waking even if I don’t have to be up early. I’ve noticed that sometimes I wake up after 5:30am and I’m not tired. However since I don’t have to be up that early I’ve gone back to sleep only to wake up exhausted at 8:00am. My plan is that this challenge will remedy this.I’ll also be applying some techniques to get my body used to getting up right away instead of hitting the snooze and going back to sleep.Tell That Tired Fairy to SHUT UPOctober and November were very slack for me exercise wise. I did exercise weekly but I averaged only about 90 minutes per week. The core of my workouts were not at the gym because I didn’t get up early enough often enough. This of course means that at this point in time, I have been unable to repeat my accomplishment of 20 minutes of running at 6.0mph. I’m able to run for 15 mintues so I hope to regain that ability by January. Obviously, I must be consistent.There’s been no improvement on the pushups. Again, due to the fact that I wasn’t exercising enough.Strange ThingsToday was the first day of us (me and the kids) on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. It’s been difficult for me to maintain my patience level. It’s been difficult for my kids to accept the meal preparations. You are advised in the beginning to bake, roast or broil all meats and use oils sparingly. I typically saute our food.Raw fruit and vegetables are not permitted in the early stages and that is also difficult for my kids to accept. They found the fruit stash and “cheated” which means that they aren’t hungry enough to try the new food and that the initial cleansing stage is a wash today. So I guess today was the practice run and tomorrow will have to count as Day 1.I feel strange. I have a mild headache and I’m tired. I’ve read that while the harmful bacteria in the gut are starved there might be temporary side-effects. But the fact is that before this diet I was perpetually tired and did have the occasional headache. It’s part of the reason I’m going on the diet as well.[ad name=”Google Adsense”]