3/27/09

Calories in: 1521

Calories burned: ??

So I just realized that I forgot to post last night!  Yesterday was a pretty unremarkable day; stayed more or less in my calories.  I had great plans for exercise but my energy simply wasn’t there, so I did my 10 minutes on the elliptical and packed it in for the day.  I am okay with that – I would love to burn a good chunk of calories every day but I have to be realistic about it.  Earlier this year I was hitting the exercise HARD every day and did great – up until the point where I totally burned out, crashed, and didn’t move a muscle for the next five weeks.  I guess it’s far better to have a moderate amount of exercise a few times a week on a steady basis than to go in cycles of working hard then crashing.  Slow and steady is good.  Listening to my body and being okay with its need for rest is good.

Also played basketball with my nephew for 20 minutes or so but I’m reluctant to count that as exercise at all.  But it was activity and I’m aiming to work more and more of stuff like that into my days.  I’ve lacked the energy for stuff like that for so long.

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3/26/09

Today’s calorie intake: 1484

Calories burned through exercise: ?? (myfitnesspal says 397 but I don’t trust it)

Net calories: ??

Today was stressful all the way around.  Work was stressful.  Home was stressful.  Normally a day like this – heck, even days a fraction as stressful as this – and I’d be stuffing myself with ice cream and donuts in order to cope.  Today?  Stress kicked in and all I wanted to do was grab my running shoes. 

Before I took a hiatus from exercise I was doing the couch to 5k running plan; I was on week 3.  It’s been a good five weeks since I’ve done pretty much any exercise and I know my fitness level has dropped considerably in that time (not that it was that high to start with).  So I planned on starting the c25k over again with week 1; but when I got on my treadmill I realized I had forgotten to swap out the podcast on my iPod and only had week 3 loaded.  So I gave it a try and I DID IT all the way through, which I am extremely pleased with – BUT it totally kicked my butt and I’m not eager to try it again.  I think I’ll drop back down to week 2 and stick there for a week or so until I start to get some endurance back.  I think I was pushing myself too hard.  So that was 9 minutes jogging, 15 minutes walking, for a total of 24 minutes.

And I did 10 minutes on my elliptical.  That’s my limit right now and it kills my legs even at my cheapie machine’s lowest resistance.  I used to be able to walk into the gym and do an hour straight complete with different resistances and such; granted I was slimmer then but probably only by 30 – 40 pounds.  I wonder if I’ve really gotten so far out of shape or if my machine is different than the ones at the gym.  I don’t remember it making my legs burn so badly.  Maybe I’ve lost a lot of muscle in my legs since then.

I want to aim to get my legs built up to where I can spend meaningful amounts of time on the elliptical.  I want to use my 10 minutes as a base and try to add 5 minutes every week until I’m up to 45-60 minutes a session.  The way the thing totally burns my legs, I can see it totally sculpting and toning my lower half nicely if I stick with it.

EDIT: I’m noticing a trend of being motivated to exercise at night.  More exercise: I did week 1, day 1 of the 200 Sit-Ups challenge, which didn’t amount to many situps at all but the fact that I could do the ones I did rather amazed me.  I haven’t tried full on sit ups in so long because I guess I assumed I couldn’t do them.  I feel rather motivated to kick this challenge’s butt now!

Then I got out the Wii Fit and did 10 minutes of adv. hula hoop and the 5 minute adv. step.  I feel absolutely awful now, not at all energized like I felt after the elliptical and the treadmill.  I pushed too far, not that I worked out particularly hard at the end but I kept going after I should have quit.  I’m exhausted and sore and I just want to crawl into bed.  I think it’s going to be a challenge, to find that optimal place where I get the most out of my motivation without overextending myself.  That’s rather why I want to keep the heart rate monitor I ordered, not to track my calories as I originally intended it, but rather I can make sure I stay in my target heart rate and not work out too hard, so I don’t end up hitting a wall like this for having delepted myself.

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3/25/09

Today’s calorie intake: 1420

Calories burned through exercise: ???

Net calories: ???

Argh!  I spent ten minutes on the elliptical machine (not much at all, I know, but all I was motivated to do, and at least it was a start) and I plugged it into the exercise diary at myfitnesspal.com – which calculated it at 162 calories burned, which seemed way high.  So I went to caloriesperhour.com and calculated it there, and it gave me a total of 42 calories.  The elliptical machine itself said 80 calories.  I have no idea which to believe.  Lol!

So I have gone and ordered this:

It won’t be here until next week so I’m stuck in limbo for a while more, but at least I’ll eventually be able to calculate my calories burned based on my body’s own performance and not some random average estimate.  I really want to get the science of this down so I’m not eating too much or too little.  Hopefully this becomes an invaluable tool for me and not something that gathers dust, lol!  But I’m hopeful that being able to see my calorie burn on my wrist as I work out will be motivating; I can see myself hopefully setting goals to meet X amount of calories or beat yesterday’s total or whatever and I think that will be good for me.  I’m really looking forward to its arrival.

I had a hard time meeting my minimum calories today.  I had a dentist appointment and came back feeling shaky and sick and had to force myself to eventually eat lunch.  I wish I’d been able to get more exercise in – but – given how I’ve felt today, I think I’ve done pretty well overall.  Not a bad start, at any rate.

EDIT:  Wow, where did that second wind come from?  I just spent 30 minutes on the treadmill at a pretty good (walking) intensity and I feel totally energized now.  Again with the calorie confusion though; MFP gave me 205 calories when I logged it but the treadmill says 147 calories (although it’s not programmable so that’s for a generic person presumably at a healthy weight, not for *me* exactly).  I don’t plan on eating those exercise calories tonight so I guess it doesn’t really matter, but gosh I’d love to KNOW!

MFP says I burned 367 calories today, without a whole lot of planning or effort; more than the 300 I figured I would have to burn in order to push my net calories down to 1200 if I aim to eat 1500 calories a day.  So maybe this won’t be as hard as I thought it would be!  I just hope that my heart rate monitor supports these calorie figures and doesn’t tell me I’m really burning some pathetically low number, lol!

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starting over

I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’ve made the decision to delete my backlog of posts and start anew with this journal.

I’ve hit, if not a roadblock, then a series of speed bumps in my efforts to lose my spare poundage. Lately it’s been such a struggle. I haven’t exercised in just a few days shy of a whole month. I’ve been eating too much and grazing nonstop. I’ve grown careless in tracking and have been letting things slide altogether too much. This simply isn’t working for me.

I’ve been doing Weight Watchers off and on for a very long time, but lately I’ve been toying with the idea of switching to purely counting calories. WW is wonderful but it’s too flexible for me, as absurd as that may sound. I’ve grown too adept at manipulating the system, and lately I’ve begun to worry about all the zero point foods and the things that get rounded down or not counted at all because it’s just a bite here and a taste there that are probably adding up to major calories. I’m going to start using a calorie tracker tomorrow and see if I see better results with that. I have three weeks left of my WW paper journal so I’ll keep tracking points alongside the calories and give it those three weeks to see if I’m ready to let go of the Weight Watchers system. I’m kind of scared by that; I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s so easy and comfortable and natural. But maybe that’s the problem; it’s too effortless by this point, and I’m not required to put any thought into it anymore.

I’m also going to go back to basics. Everything I eat is going to be weighed or measured out first, so I’m certain of my serving sizes and confident that I know exactly how many calories are going into my body. No more being sloppy and careless about what I put into my body and no more mindless grazing out of the cupboard as I go by. Maybe it’s crazy but I’m actually kind of excited about this, intrigued by the idea of breaking this down into pure science, of calories in vs. calories out. I’m hoping too that if I’m truly mindful of the math I’ll be less likely to graze, because I’ll be able to see the real impact of those extra calories I’m sneaking in rather than seeing it in the nebulous terms of being some random fraction of a WW point.

Along with this change I’m implementing a major change in the way I eat; I’m cutting way back on sugar, white flour and processed foods and am aiming to cut out HFCS and artificial sweetners as much as I can, putting an emphasis on whole grains, fresh fruits and veggies, and lean protein and dairy. This is not something I’m doing on a whim; this is a change that I’ve been slowly pondering, culling information and resources and slowly working towards equipping my kitchen for for many months now, and I simply feel like it’s time. I don’t expect to be perfect at this, but my old way of eating just had too many nutritional black holes in it and I just feel like I can’t do that anymore. If I’m limiting the food I’m taking in AND expecting extraordinary things of my body on the exercise front, then it’s important that every calorie I take in count for something.

Lastly, I’m approaching this blog differently in two ways. One, when I was journaling here before I was so worried about creating meaningful and polished posts and not boring people with the day to day details. But you know what – it’s MY blog and it’s only a useful tool as far as it works for me; and what I really need right now is a place to talk about the day to day details so that I stay mindful and present in this process every day. So maybe I’ll drive people away who don’t want to hear about what I had for lunch today or whatever but that’s okay; I’m doing this for my benefit first and foremost and I just have to use it in the way that will help me best without worrying about what anyone else thinks, even if it results in a blog that’s boring and unmeaningful to anyone else.

And two – and this is going to be hardest of all for me – I need to back off on all the tracking and charting and everything that I was doing before. I had my progress charted and graphed and my daily exercise logs laid out in a table and weekly and montly posts outlining goals and detailling results and … it just needs to stop. I NEED to break away from that mindset, as hard as it’s going to be for me to make that change. No more; I need to bring this process back around to something that’s going to be comfortable and sane for the long haul. If this is truly the lifestyle change that I want it to be, then I need to be less uptight about filling every slot in some chart or meeting some self-imposed deadline than about simply making things balance. I want to take the emphasis off of racing towards some imaginary finish line and make it more about eating well more days than I eat poorly and exercising more days than not; and while I will still weigh myself on a regular basis to stay mindful I want to get away from the ‘weekly weigh in’ mindset of beating myself up for not losing enough in any arbitrary seven day period, but rather focus on and be thankful for a gradual downward trend, even if it doesn’t get me where I want to be as fast as I think I should.

I know this is a lot to tackle all at once but I honestly am ready for a change.

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