No Pain, No Gain!

I amused myself this morning with the wonders of snoozing. After hitting the hay at two in the morning, I found myself rudely awoken at six-thirty, appalled at the lack of sleep. I've forgotten my little sister was on her way to Disneyland with her classmates for the CMEA festival and I was dragged out of bed by my feet.
When I saw her out the door, I slept for another hour before dragging myself out of bed again and prepping to run. If you haven't read my personal information at the side bar, I love to run.
Since March, I've had a regime where I was to wake up early in the morning and run half a mile every day. At first, I was groggy, my lungs burned and my muscles cramped up so badly that I cried. Now, I can run the half mile with out so much trouble with very few stops. This little fact is so encouraging that I promised myself ice cream at the end of the month!

My Goal: Run a half mile without stopping.

I hate to admit though, I stopped running for a couples days at a time, and each time I paid for my slack. It was horrible. I cursed myself every time I stopped to walk, which was frequently, and I felt a charlie horse always creeping up on me. I'm still a beginner at running so breathing is still hard for me to control. Every breath I took, I felt like passing out, so I try to breathe in deeper, but my lungs can hardly hold the fleeting oxygen.
While still trying to learn the ways of "professional running" (it does seem like a career), I found I hardly lost any weight until I realized what food I was eating.
Now for those of you who are Roman Catholics, there's a certain amount of time where we stop eating meat until Easter called Lent. This "lenten season," as the priests love to call it, find this as an excuse to forgo other worldly things. Such as: spend less money, take the bus rather than the car, stop smoking, or walk to stores close by. Dieting, in Lent, is no stranger to us Catholics. Plenty of people stop drinking coffee, soda, or cut certain snacks out of their daily life during Lent can extend out of this religious practice and continue this uplifting change throughout the rest of their lives...or until they succumbed to their habits.
For the past seven years, I've stopped drinking soda, or more specifically, Coka-Cola. So this year, I thought it was about time to cut soda off completely from my lifestyle as well as coffee. I was addicted to all the caffeine in the coffee. Now let me tell you that cutting that off from my life in cold turkey was like a drug addicts worse dream. I was always groggy in the morning and it was harder to get up from bed. Add this to my running regime and you get one hell of a wake up call. I was drowning in pain!
But I'll tell you now, I don't really regret cutting off these things from my life. I don't really need all the sugar and caffeine (unless I'm diabetic, god forbid), and I'm still young so I'm just extending my life by healthy eating and drinks (with the right portions). I even eat salad a few times a week, and I've gotten my mom stuck on my cranberry vinegarette salad dressing that I whipped up myself (I'm very proud of the recipe).
I found that also taking certain drinks or medicines can clean out your system. My mom gave me this drink that was imported from the Philippines (apparently, you can only buy it there), called ABS tea. Though I don't know what ABS stands for, but I found out after I tried one cup of this green tea wannabe. I was running to the bathroom an hour later and through my head rang the words: Absolute Bull-Shit. Talk about a thorough cleaner!
I may be no expert at all this health practices and diets, but my advice to you, my readers, is to read up on what you want to do before you even try anything. Look at reviews on gyms, certain foods, restaraunts, certain exercising routines (I like to do Tae Bo from time to time), and try to keep track of what you eat or if you're like me, just be mindful of what you put in your mouth. A friend of mine told me that I could eat whatever I wanted, just as long as I can put the aquired time to expel all the fat I ate. You know, a type of balance.
Seems like a lot to learn, huh? Either way, just enjoy what you do, it'll be more fun and worth your time. Like they say, "No pain, no gain!"