Maintaining

I really don't have too much to say, so hopefully this post won't be as long as my others recently :P
So as you know, I ended up doing well with my eating yesterday, even though I did not exercise.
However, this afternoon I was very excited for my long run. Of course I was looking forward to it because I love running for an hour and forty five minutes around 7 minute mile pace without stopping. It makes me feel invincible. I would be lying, though, if I said that the fact that I would be burning so many calories didn't cross my mind.
Ughh, where is this coming from? Over the course of last semester I got so much better at separating my love for running from my love for losing weight. Now it's hard to tell at times. :/
Anyway, the run was going great until around 50 minutes when my achilles was just really starting to tighten up. I ran through it, thinking it'd get better.. Then when I stopped to go to the bathroom and started up again, it hurt more than ever. I couldn't stop running because I was out on South Farm and I knew I had around half an hour at this point until I would reach my apartment. (We ran from our apartments because the snow was just too much for us to drive in, apparently. 3 inches! haha)
Well I finished the run, and my achilles was swollen x 3. I look like I have a cankle. I only did 90 minutes with my teammate Chloe. I wanted to do the extra 15 like I had originally planned, but you all are right in your comments that it is better to rest with this thing than to have to deal with a serious injury later.
So now I'm sitting in bed icing and taking ibuprofin. I'm also reading this strange novel called Where we Once Belonged for World Lit after 1600. So I guess something productive is coming out of this! Anyway, I'm cross training in the morning and probably tomorrow afternoon, too. Oh well, I'm taking it day by day. I like to believe everything happens for a reason.

It's fiction, but narrated by a young Samoan girl who is apparently very interested in sex and the family history of everyone around her. It's pretty bizarre. I'm constantly referring to the back of the book to find out the meaning of the Samoan words :P

As for as eating goes... I saw my nutritionist Kelly this morning. The first thing I do when I walk in is put down my jacket and step on the scale. Drumroll please... I have lost 1 pound over the past month, (the last time I saw her was December 9th) but she doesn't seem to be bothered by that at all because at this point I am still at a healthy weight. Yes, I am at the lowest possible healthy weight, but I am still there, ha. She plans on having me eat 2500+ every day in order to maintain this. It seems like so much when I'm eating so healthy, but she just reminds me that I need to be eating more dense snacks and things throughout the day. I guess she's right. I hate having to stuff my face at night when I realize I need 1000+ calories after dinner. Grr..
Anyway, it kind of shocked me a little that I actually lost weight. If anything I would think I'd be five pounds heavier after all of the snacking on sweets and occasional bingeing I had over the break. But I guess it just goes to show you that we tend to be harder on ourselves than we should be, and we overestimate how eating certain things will truly affect our bodies.

So, for those of you reading this, I hope that you learn the same lesson I have been learning and continue to remind myself: one meal, one snack, one cookie, one slice of cake is not going to make you fat. You are not going to lose control of your life just because you decided to indulge a little. And so what if you gain a pound? What is a pound, really? It might even be one that would be beneficial for you to gain. I know it's that way with me. I want to be strong and healthy. I don't want to come through the finish line weak and drained. I want to feel like I could go another mile if I really had to. I want to feel this way about life, too. It's not just about living. I want to enjoy this time that I've been given, to savor every moment: living, laughing, loving.
Food doesn't control me. Running doesn't define me. I choose who and what I want to be.
I want to be happy. :)
<3

P.s. I named this blog "Maintaining" after I wrote it. I want to maintain (or maybe even increase!!) my weight, viewing food as necessary fuel, my progress towards recovery, my love for running, and the joy I'm getting out of life at the moment. I love it all. I don't want to go back. I'm not going to.