Well, I can say that the Couch to 5K program definitely works, and according to my friend Megan, I’m now a runner. When I started out I was dying at the end of the one minute run intervals and the 90 second walk intervals to catch up just didn’t seem long enough. Now I’m running for 40+ minutes and feel great the entire time. I still think I’m slow, but after nine weeks of running three times per week I am now running 4.5 miles non-stop. My new goal is to get up to five miles non-stop and then add one day of running per week until I’m up to six days per week. After I’m running six days per week I’ll work on getting faster. That’s the plan anyway, unless my pesky left knee keeps acting up.

One thing that is a bit discouraging is that while I definitely feel better, after running for nine weeks I don’t look any different and I haven’t lost any weight. At all. Last year when I lost a bunch of weight it was solely due to eating less. A lot of people thought I was exercising too, but now that I’m actually exercising regularly, shouldn’t there be some weight loss? I mean, it has been over two months. “Oh, you’re building muscle,” is what I hear, but I’m not seeing it.

While hovering between 190 and 195 pounds is better than where I was back in January of 2011 when I was at 230ish, it’s not the 168 I was at the end of last summer. In the end my actual weight doesn’t matter to me as much as I want this belly gone, and if cardio isn’t the way to do it, then what the heck is?