food.

I'm hungry. Here is what I ate today up until about 10 minutes ago:

Yogurt blast Cheerios with skim milk

Peanut butter crackers

Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips

Panera/ Bread Co.:

-broccoli cheddar soup (about 1.5 bowls)

-1/4 of a chicken salad sandwich

-chips

-Greek salad

-short bread cookie (not all of it, but you know... just most of it)

Diet Pepsi (aspartame and caffeine??! My baby will have 3 arms!)

That should be enough. Enough clearly until dinner tonight. Nope, I got home from work and was legitimately hungry again.

I just ate 2 turkey hot dogs with ketchup and mustard. 

I don't have any weird cravings, I just have cravings. For food. Immediately. I have food turn offs: vegetables, meat that I have to cook myself, and poultry is hot and cold for me. On the other hand, I can't get enough fruit or cheese. 

I'm trying to not make the mistake I hear a lot of first time pregnant ladies make: eating a lot using pregnancy as an excuse. But I'm not kidding people, I'm hungry. Right now.

I have also recently rediscovered Ramen noodles and I can't wait to eat it for dinner tonight. I mean I am really excited.

"Oh!'

"Uh oh, you're starting to show!"

I'm starting to hear this more and more often. It's a strange phenomenon because, really, they're telling me I'm getting fatter. That's what happens first, mostly, when you get pregnant, you just look and feel fat before you really look and feel pregnant. Which is exactly where I am right now. But, instead of it being an all-over weight gain, it's mostly just my tummy and my sides. I mean, yeah I've gained some weight everywhere else (ahem, butt), but noticeably in my stomach. Which is why I'm hearing the "showing" statements.

It's funny because it's confusing. It's hard to know what to think. Someone just told me they can see that my stomach is bigger. Until now, I could only relate that kind of comment to some serious weight gain and I need to hit the treadmill. But now I think, oh, riiiight... not my fault! Nope, I am totally gaining this weight through no efforts of my own. Ok, so I didn't need those Doritos. But mostly it's just my kid getting bigger, and how can I help that?! (By the by, he or she is the size of an avacado now... mm, avacado.)

I can't! Bring on the Doritos!

eh.

"Most of the current wisdom says that a pregnant woman can continue exercising to her full capacity, but that she should not take up new or more difficult regimens after becoming pregnant. To be completely candid with you, I did not know how to exercise moderately. If I wasn't working out to achieve strength or to stay trim, I would just as soon skip the whole thing. Since the stakes were so high, I wasn't willing to gamble with how much was too much. And since there comes a point when exercising lightly becomes a waste of time, I just gave the whole thing up."

-The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy

Ok, so before you give me crap about the book that I'm reading, let me first say that this pregnancy book is awesome. It isn't dry and boring like the other ones that I'm reading, it feels more relatable, and this lady talks just like me and cracks me up. So deal with it people, pregnancy books suck and if you can find one that isn't mind-numbing, read your heart out.

Case in point: this paragraph I have typed out for you, straight from the author's mouth/book. It pretty much sums up how I feel about exercising right now. The chapter I'm in has the author's top 10 list for reasons why keeping up your gym membership isn't totally necessary during pregnancy. It's something I really need to hear right now as my gym outings are levelling out at about once, maybe twice a week. When I do have the energy to go, I use the elliptical machine, but find myself really pushing myself and working hard, then I start to worry that I'm depriving my baby of oxygen. It sucks. Again, going to the gym as a stress reliever, in this instance, might be a tad counterproductive.

the half

Last weekend, The Bets and others ran the half-marathon and relay, respectively. I was glad to be there as a spectator and supporter, but I was really pissed off too. I wanted to run. I was so tired, but I still got that runner's rush and wanted to run my ass off. Argh. Oh well, maybe next year I'll say screw the half and run the full.

Here's a picture to show my frustration. This was when Betsy and our friend Katie and I went to pick up our shirts. I essentially paid $55 for a running shirt and some free samples at the registration place.

frowny face.

The half marathon is this weekend. The halfie. My halfie. And I won't be running it. 

I'm really bummed out about this. Very bummed out, actually. I was really enjoying training for it and pushing myself farther and farther. I was really excited to run it with a lot of my friends running in it as well or at least being there to support me. Some people from work were even going to come. But now I feel like I've quit. A small consolation is that I can still go pick up my goody bag that has my shirt and my bib number, but even that is a small slap in the face. 

I really wanted to run it. And the worst part is that I could have run it! If I had just a little more energy, I could have continued training and been even more proud of myself knowing that I'd just run a half marathon while I was almost 4 months pregnant. Instead I'm just some tired pregnant lady standing on the side lines feeling crappy. 

Oh well, I guess I can feel better knowing that, while I could have continued training, I could have also put my baby more at risk from all the exertion. I could have continued training, but if my body wasn't responding well or if I'd started spotting, that could have been bad news. At least I can still be there to support my friends, and hopefully I can keep myself in good enough shape while I'm pregnant that I can start training for the half (or maybe full?) in enough time to be able to run it next year.

If I could just freaking wake up already!!

anytime.

It used to be that if I didn't go to the gym first thing in the morning, I wouldn't go. I mean, first thing. There was a long stretch of time that I wouldn't even brush my teeth before I went... well, until my aunt told me that was kinda gross. I certainly never ate anything before I went. If I couldn't go first thing in the morning, I just couldn't go. I would skip that day. I hated having a work out at the back of my mind. I liked having my evenings to do whatever I wanted, not wasting it at the gym. Plus, the gym was more crowded in the evenings. No thank you, I'll wake up at 5:15 am  to go if I have to.

I did that for years. Years. I did that through college. College. I remember my junior year when I first lived in a dorm my roommate and neighbors would be amazed at the fact that I got up consistently 3 mornings during the week and went to work out. 

I can't do that anymore. I can't get up early anymore. I've gone backwards, so to speak. I've never been able to stay up late, but now I can't even wake up early. I need sleep. Thus, I've made some adjustments and I now go to the gym only in the evenings. It's the only time I can go. I don't really like it, if I had my way I would still go in the mornings so I could have my evenings free, but I just can't get up early enough now that I have a 45 minute commute. 

This week I found myself at the gym at 8pm and didn't leave until after 9. I feel a bit rebellious to my old self. I feel like I've finally given up some of my anal tendencies in my old age. I feel like I finally like to work out, instead of it just being something I made myself do.

Or maybe I'm just really, really tired.

an explanation.

Some of you may be wondering, "Gee Kate, for someone who is training for a half-marathon and blogging about her 12 week training schedule, you sure aren't talking about running too much." Well, my friends, thank you for being so observant, first of all. And second of all, I have a confession to make: I haven't really been training for the half marathon. I've been really exhausted. 

Because I'm pregnant.

I apologize for my secrecy, seeing as how I've known for about 2 months now. But, if it makes you feel any better, I'm 12 weeks into my pregnancy! How's that for ironic?!! Each trimester is 12 weeks long! Things that last for 12 weeks is my life!

So it looks as though I won't run the half marathon, not because my doctor says I can't, but because I have been so tired I can hardly think straight. However, I'm on to my second set of 12 weeks (read: 2nd trimester), and now that I'm "out" with my news, I can blog about pregnancy workouts!