Tuesday Update

Things have been a little uneven over the last few days.

I took Saturday off from a workout, but kept my eating in check.

Sunday I didn't track my food because of the Superbowl. I did make as healthy choices as I could, but I didn't want to obsess about it, so no tracking. I did do a light (but late) workout. 30 minutes tempo on the stationary bike.

Monday I was back to tracking the food (but I forgot I had some of the leftover white bean dip from Sunday while I was making dinner and went over my 1200 calories for the day... only by about 200, so I'm not loosing sleep over it). I didn't workout thanks to a foot injury (bruise on the bottom of my foot that kept me from putting any weight directly on the ball of the foot).

Back on schedule for the most part today. I just got off the treadmill. I did a 1/4 mile warm up at a brisk walk, then a little over 1/4 mile at a jog, then back down to a brisk walk. I didn't get a full mile in, as the injured foot started to spasm a bit (probably from walking on it funny yesterday). I'll probably try to get back on and do an other workout on it, just so I get my miles in. No one said it all had to be at once.

I'm going to try to remember to weigh in tomorrow morning. I'm hoping for a one pound loss.

Friday Update

I did my walk/jog combo yesterday and was able to do the 1/4 mile at a jog. It was harder than I expected. I guess part of me assumes that once I do it, it'll be easier the next time. Nope, it's gonna take a little more effort and time to get to a "comfort" zone with it.

Today I did my 45 minutes of upper body with Maya. It looks like I'm going to have to add my own weights. For some reason she doesn't want me to use my hand weights. Weird.

I've been tracking my food since Monday. I've let Fitday set up my metabolism and I'm tracking my workouts, too. According to it's numbers, I'm about 800 calories down a day. Let's see if that shows up on the scale on Wednesday. I'm hoping for just one pound.

I will say eating approx 1200 calories is tough. I will admit I'm grumpy and easily irritated right now. It's always hard to do a deficit, especially when we live in a society that has such easy access to crap. However, that doesn't mean I need the crap.

The weekends are always tougher, and with the Super Bowl on Sunday, I'm going to have to be very careful not to over extend my calories and blow all this hard work this week. Must decide on some healthy choices....

Plugging Away...

So the tracking thing is always fun. Well, it's not really, but completely necessary. It's always fun trying to figure out what I'm eating. I change recipes so much that there isn't a "basic" formula to follow. Oh well, I'm hoping I'm pretty close and the weight will start to come off.

Speaking of weight, I did remember to weigh myself this morning. I weighed in at 157.6 lbs. So I'm up almost 4lbs from this time last year. Not really surprising, since I ate like crap over the holiday and I cut back significantly on my exercise. I'm hoping those come off pretty quickly and I can concentrate on dropping below that 154 lbs. I seem to do this pretty regularly. It always seems to take a bit of a gain to get me motivated to do the next drop.

Yesterday was my upper body concentration with Maya. I did 45 minutes and felt I got a good workout. She did have me use a little more weights this time (mostly with the bicep curls) and my shoulders were sore before I even started. I think that's from the jogging, actually. I must be tightening my shoulders when I jog.

I'll work on fixing that today, as it's treadmill day. I'll try to jog for an entire lap again at 3.5 mph. Should be a little easier... at least I hope!

Jogging... one lap at a time.

So yesterday was "treadmill" day. I'm currently working on being able to jog a full mile, slowly building up 1/4 of a mile at a time.

I normally walk at about 3.0 mph on the treadmill. I'm short, and I have short gait, walking faster than that is really hard for me. I can do 3.5 mph for a while, but I start to trip over my feet and can't keep up with the treadmill for any length of time. 3.3 is probably as fast of a pace that I can maintain.

I did the first two laps (1/2 mile) at a brisk walk, then I turned it up to 3.5 mph and did an entire lap at a jog. I did it. That's the first time I've been able to do a whole lap at a jog.

I know that they say it's the miles that count, doesn't matter if you walk briskly or jog, but that's not true. I had my heart rate monitor on. The effort to jog a 1/4 mile put me at about 165 bmp, while the same speed at a brisk walk I maxed at about 138 bmp. That's a significant difference.

I'm going to continue to take it slowly and work my way up. I didn't feel over taxed from a cardio standpoint (thanks to Yourself!Fitness, my cardio capacity is much greater) but my legs sure aren't used to running. With my bum knee, I want to slowly increase up to being able to jog a mile.

So today is Maya day. I'll do the upper body workout on Yourself!Fitness. Probably for an hour.

Oh, and I had my regular morning coffee this morning. I'm going to focus on being more physically fit and try to eat within a healthy diet without going nuts. If my coffee is slowing down the weight loss process, I can live with that. I should still be able to lose 1 lb a week with what I'm doing. A cup of good coffee a day is worth it.

Discouraged? Already?

Well, now that I'm all "focused" again and I'm back to tracking my calories I'm in full depressive funk.

I went to the Mayo clinic weight loss site yesterday (some great and useful information) and according to their stats, I should be eating 1200 calories a day. That's so little food it's not even funny.

Today I was looking at my standard "breakfast" for FitDay (I eat the same thing for breakfast every day) and I realized that I hadn't been logging it right. I had the wrong sizing in for how I take my coffee. After I fixed it, I'm eating a bit over 400 calories for breakfast. For a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal. That's 1/3 of what I get to eat a day.

The coffee is gonna have to go. I know that most healthy eating programs tell you to cut caffine out of your diet and I take my sugar with coffee and cream (that's a shout out to the Beastie Boys). So a sugar substitute? skim milk? or just cut it completely and switch over to tea? (I don't drink my tea with anything...) I would save over 100 calories doing that. Can I do that? Am I serious enough to give up my morning cup of coffee?

I'm not sure I am. I've given up so many things that I truely love and my coffee is the one thing I haven't been willing to sacrifice.

Well, I guess I should head to the grocery store to stock up on some fresh veggies... I need to get more fruit and veggies.

The Weekend Report

It was one of those weekends... some good things, and some not so good things.

Saturday I made the decision to start adding some jogging/light running to my treadmill workouts. For a couple of reasons. It'll give me a goal to work towards plus I want to be able to be more efficient with my workouts. I'm also seriously considering a 5K this summer (might not "run" it, but it wouldn't hurt to jog to get more endurance).

I'm doing it slowly. My treadmill gives me "laps". Just like a track, 4 laps is one mile. So I start with a warm up lap: a slow walk that I gradually increase until I hit "brisk". I then keep that brisk pace until I hit the 1/2 mile mark. I then crank it up a little and see how much I can job. My goal right now is to try to do an entire lap (1/4 mile). I'll then set a new goal once that's done.

I do need more goals like this, and I need to do it slowly, as every time I've ever tried to add jogging, I've pushed too hard too fast and usually end up hurting myself. I'm trying to keep it to a comfortable pace right now, more concerned about distance than speed. After I can jog for an entire mile, then I'll work on my speed.

As for the not so successful part of my weekend, I ate crap food on Sunday. I went yarn shopping with friends and had a great time. We went for lunch and I made bad decisions, ate too much of my bad decisions and felt like crap the rest of the day. Bloated and uncomfortable. Today I feel like I'm hung over (probably from the high salt content of the food). Argh. So screw the thinking of "get back on a regular workout schedule then worry about the food". I'm going to do that today.

I'm going to do 1500 calories a day. I'll also make sure I'm getting better balance (ie: more fruits and veggies), watch my saturated fat intake and my sodium intake. More water, less diet sodas.

So that's the goals... I know I can do it, just need to stay focused!

Today's goal. I think I'll use Monday, Wednesday and Friday as my Yourself!Fitness workouts. That will cover my weight training, then I'll work on the treadmill on the other days to reach my jogging goals.

So 45 minutes with Maya is the plan.

Friday

Yesterday's workout went great! I got my 45 minute Y!F workout in. I'm still not sure why she doesn't like me using the weights. I've tried upping the difficulty level, but then she makes it too hard for me to finish. I need something in between.

So what's on schedule for today then? Hmmmm... an other attempt to get three miles on the treadmill, perhaps? Okay, that sounds good. I'm trying to mix up my workouts a bit more.

So far, I'm keeping to at least being active every day this week. Hopefully, I'm getting back in to the swing of things... then I've got to tackle the reduced caloric intake (yuck!)

Food Labels

I'm usually a meticulous food label reader. I try to track my calories and my fat (I glance at the other info... especially the fiber/protein content, but it's the cals and fat that are my priority). I don't usually buy a new product without first checking to see if it fits with in my calorie budget.

I didn't the other day. I bought some Weight Watchers desserts. They sounded like a fun treat, and hey, it's Weight Watchers so it's got to be low calorie, right.

Nope, not at all. I get it home pop it in my freezer, eat one, then think, oh, I've got to check the label so I can track it. 190 calories. For a so-so dessert. A serving of premium ice cream (1/2 cup of Turkey Hill's peanut butter cup) is 180 calories. What???? Now, there was difference in fat, with the WW desert having about half the fat, but when you come down to taste and preference, there's no reason to waste 190 calories on them.

Lesson learned... just because something is marketed as "healthy", I still MUST read the label.

Okay, now let's talk about my workout yesterday... it was an "eh". I did do a mile on the treadmill, but thanks to "one of those days" I never got back to do the other 2 miles.

Today's workout goal:

45 minutes with Maya upper body concentration

So that's the plan for today...

Today's Goal

Okay, I was going to bring back Weigh In Wednesday, but I've been bad about remembering to actually weigh myself. I want to keep it to Wednesday (as it just sounds good, no?) and I want to be consistant on what time of the day I weigh myself.

Since I'm trying to add a little accountability to my workouts, here's today's goal.

1 hour on the treadmill (=3 miles). I do not plan on doing this all at once, but rather in 3-20 minute 1 mile walks.

I did a "weight loss" focus with Maya yesterday and it was a good workout. The day before I used the Eye Toy: Kinetics game. I set up a personal workout with nothing but some of the combat moves. My room is too small for it and the background stuff in the room throws it off. Still don't think I would recommend this program to anyone, but I'll still play with it now and then (and I do like the stretching much better than Y!F).

So for now I'm going to work on keeping to a workout schedule, then I'll start the food reduction. For now, I'll keep on my 1800 cal/day schedule, but probably in a week or two, I'm going to drop that down to about 1500.

Try, try, try again... then try some more

I'm stil looking for my magic bullet and I simply may not find it, but that doesn't ever mean that I'm ever going to throw the towel in and allow myself to go back to the sloth and junk food junkie that I used to be (however, those Baked Cheetos might be too hard to resist).

I'm really going to try to set up some daily goals and accountabity again. The Get Fit Challenge has sort of faded away, but I think we all were successful while we were doing it. It's hard to keep that kind of thing going, so I'm going to try to do it here.

I'm going to try to set up daily goals here and admit if I make them (or not). The whole reason I started blogging my fitness struggles was for accountability. Oh and the "realism" that you don't see the average person dealing with when they decide to change the course of their life.

I really hate those "before and after" things that they use to sell products on TV or even in magazines like Shape. They tell you what they were like before, what was the "trigger" to get them to change lifestyles and what they used to lose the weight and/or become more active. They never mention the tears, the aches, the pains, the setbacks, the challenges, the nasty comments from "helpful" people or those days when you just simply don't want to do it.

That's why I started journaling the process. I had already started the weight loss journey when I started the blog. I had lost maybe 30 lbs or so and I knew that we rarely get "the whole picture". I started 100 lbs overweight and I've lost about 60 lbs of it. It's been tough. Sometimes it's been tougher than others. Sometimes I get super motivated and really focused. I make great food choices, weighing and tracking everything I consume. I track my workouts, I put in a hard effort and I feel great about myself for taking great care of my body.

Then something happens. A plateau? no matter how hard I work or how meticulous my food choices, my weight doesn't budge. I then lose motivation, the workouts are as a high effort (why bother, I don't see them working), I'm not as particular about my food (why can't I just eat what I want. Plus I'm hungry... maybe I'm under eating and that's why the weight isn't coming off). Or I get some kind of injury... pulled groin, twisted knee, back spasms? that throw off my schedule, then I struggle to get back into a regular routine. Or I simply get tired of it being my entire focus and I want to focus on something more fun: like knitting or game playing.

Who knows, but I never completely throw the towel in. I don't suddenly eat bunches of junk food (mainly because I don't buy it... well, except for Baked Cheetos) I still do a minimal workout. It is a lifelstyle change and some of the changes have stuck.

I also think that I need to evaluate my expectations. Now that Matt is at a healthy weight and racing, I've added extra pressure to myself to "catch up" or to justify my weight to him. That's not right. I've got to go at my own pace and lose the weight as my body allows. My body is different than his, and yes, every year it has gotten harder and harder to lose the weight.

My goal of being 125 lbs before my 40th birthday is still a very reasonable goal, but I can't wait until the last year to lose these last 30 lbs. Right now I just want to break that 150 lb plateau before the end of this year. The question is now that I know how much work and sacrifice it takes, can I find the strength to do it?