Calorie Tracking... Day 3

Well, I'm 3 days into tracking calories and I've been within 15 calories of 1200 all 3 days now! I'm sticking pretty closely with the food pyramid, too, though I don't eat that many grains. 6-11 servings of grain a day! I'm more like 3-4 with 6-8 of fruits and veggies.

I haven't been getting much in the way of exercise, but I have been trying to make a point of walking around or standing during the day, more than sitting. So I think that counts for something. ;)

All in all the transition back to the world of calorie counting has not been bad so far. Usually day 3 is the worst for me, and all I want to do is eat. Today that wasn't the case so much, and whenever I wanted to eat something, I'd reach for a fruit or vegetable, which was great!

So... I guess this means I'm at step one of making this goal a reality. Today I weighed in at 128. Not the best, but it could be worse, I guess. That leaves me with 15 weeks (pretty much exactly) to lose 18 lbs.

*gulp* Here we go!

Boot Camp

Starting Sunday I'm going to be participating in Spark People's New You Bootcamp. It's 4 weeks of daily workouts, plus your own 30 minutes of exercise each day. And there are bonus challenges along the way. It starts Sunday, but to give us a heads up Coach Nicole posted the first day's workout and challenge already. It's a 10 minute kickboxing workout, which might be fun. No 30 minute cardio workout on Sunday, so the kickboxing covers it for cardio and strength training. As for the bonus challenge...

Your Bonus Challenge for Day 1 (optional) is to update your SparkPage or Blog with your starting stats--such as "before" photos, your goals for the month, what you hope to accomplish during Bootcamp, or any other measurements. This way, when you complete the Bootcamp you'll have a reminder of where you started and the progress you've made.

I knew it had to happen sometime... My "before" picture is still from when I was 131 in May before Eliana turned 1! And my "after" picture is from September of that same year... I guess I need a new "before" picture to keep me motivated since I have put back on a lot of that weight! So I'm going to be working toward that bonus challenge for the weekend. I weighed this morning (it was higher than I expected, too, which was not encouraging!) and took my measurements, so I'll post them at the same time. It'll be interesting to see if those measurements change in a month's time after the bootcamp.

(As I'm typing this, I realize that it sounds like I'm adding a lot to my exercise plate here... running, yoga, bootcamp... the truth is that my running will be my 30 minutes of cardio 3x a week, the yoga/stretching is really just a few minutes in the morning and nothing too serious, and the bootcamp fits right along with my goals, so I will only be doing their exercises and not my own in addition. It all goes together and should be nice having someone else telling me what to do... like when I took classes at the gym!)

Back on track!

Here I am, back on track, tracking my calories again. It's a new year and a new start and it's been a good day!

Of course, I've been starving all day, but that's just the lack of holiday junk food talking. The first day back tracking calories is always the hardest. Tomorrow will be hard, but easier than today. And if I can make it past 3 days of calorie counting, I'm golden. The it just becomes... routine. And really, I like it once it gets to be routine. I don't feel hungry, it doesn't take long for me to remember what a "normal" portion size is like, and my food scale and I become best buds again. It's great. Once I get past these first 3 days.

But the good news is that I drank a ton of water trying to curb my munchy hunger. It didn't really help with the hunger, but it kept me busy and I logged about 3 liters of water today. That's good news for someone with a pop addiction! Of course, it helps that we got a carbonator over Christmas, so I can drink fizzy water now. It helps curb the pop craving and it doesn't have any additives, extra salt, or artificial sweeteners! It's my new favorite thing.

I managed to get up this morning and do Coach Nicole's 12 minute Pilates ab workout, followed by 45 minutes on the treadmill (at 3.5 mph at 3% incline, for a 355 calorie workout), and I even tossed in 12 "real" push ups for good measure. Mostly I tossed those in to see how many sequential "real" push ups I could do. 12's the limit it seems. I'd like to build that number up. But that's not the point right now...

The point is that at the end of the day, eating 3 meals, snacking as needed to curb the hunger pangs of a belly that's been given anything it wants for a month, drinking water at every turn, and counting every calorie I put in my (not as) little (as I'd like it to be) body, I ended the day alright. Here are today's stats (with my goals in parentheses)

Calories: 1367 (1200-1550)
Fat: 29 (32-56)
Carbs: 224 (163-236)
Protein: 59 (60-127)
Fiber: 25 (25-35)

I even ate some MUFAs today, at least with breakfast and lunch. I don't know about dinner, unless whole wheat spaghetti has MUFAs in it. Hmmm....

So, I'll take it. If I can keep doing this I think I'll be on a good path to being in better shape. And I'd like to be in better shape. I'd like to be healthy, I'd like to be happy, and I'd like to look good.

Happy New Year!

She gets what I don't....

I read a blog post by one of the MT Spark Team members today. I think she gets something that I don't. Read on...

__________________________________________________________________

I had my first real struggle with my lifestyle change after being a Spark member for 8 months. Why did it take 8 months to really start struggling? I gained 5 pounds in as many weeks.

I realized that I let too many things get in the way of my workout routine. Instead of telling myself I could spare just 15 minutes every morning, I told myself I had too much to do first but would get to it later. Guess what? Later never happened. I went from walking an average of 5 miles a day to barely walking one mile.

Something else I learned, or actually was reminded of, was the less I exercised the more I wanted to snack. The more I wanted to snack, the less water I wanted to drink. I found myself starting to slip back into old and bad habits. No wonder I gained.

This is a new week and a new beginning. My new year's resolution is to be more consistent with my workouts even if it means I have to get up an hour earlier every mornig. And I started today. Why wait for the new year? There's no better time than right now.

I wish you all a HAPPY AND HEALTHY 2009!

___________________________________________________________________

Here's what I often fail to recognize... choices have consequences. If I don't exercise, I tend to snack more. If I tend to snack more, I don't want to drink as much. Bad choices, bad consequences. It has a domino effect and I often don't recognize that.

Last night I sat down and wrote out what my ideal schedule for a day would be. I'm not convinced that it's perfect yet, because there are things I'd like to do in there that aren't there yet. I just have to figure out how to factor Eliana in without sitting her in front of the TV for the whole time I want to do something without her. So... working on that. But what I realized in making my plan is that if I don't do the exercise first thing in the morning, I won't do it. It just won't happen. And when I don't exercise, well... it all goes downhill from there.

So it looks like I'm not just going to have to add some exercise in and take some calories out. I'm actually going to have to change my schedule (wake up in the morning! Ack!) and change my way of thinking. That will be a BIG challenge for me. I would appreciate any prayer and encouragement you can send my way!

Team Leader...

Once upon a time I joined Spark People. I love Spark People. I can use it to track my calories and my exercise and have some sort of accountability with people encouraging me along the way. When I am using it, it's great! Unfortunately, I get busy and then I don't even get on there for weeks or months. I just sort of disappear until I decide that I'm fat again and go back to tracking on Spark People.

I go through periods of high activity on Spark People, followed by valleys of absence. It's not a good pattern, but it's one that I follow and have followed since I first joined. It's sort of my pattern in life.

Well, during one of those periods of high activity, I was one of the more active members of the Montana Spark Team. It's a message board and I was on it a few times a week. Well... the team leader at the time decided to make me and another person team leaders, too, since we were the most active team members. I found this out after I had already been made a team leader, but it didn't particularly seem important at the time.

Ups and downs, ups and downs... fast forward to a busy fall and subsequent absence from Spark People followed by a desire to lose weight by the end of the year (which didn't happen, by the way). I returned to Spark People in November and signed into the Montana team only to discover that the other two team leaders were gone! So... I don't know how long the team went without a leader (since I was absent), but that left me as the sole leader for the team. Poor team.

Then, in December I got an email from Spark People saying that they are revamping the state teams and that our team (being the bigger of the two Montana teams, by just a few members) would be the official Montana State Spark Team and that all Spark People members who live in MT would now become a part of our Spark Team. The Spark Team that I am leader of!! New changes, lots of new team members....

Suddenly I'm thinking that I'm in WAAAAY over my head. And then I realized that if I work at being a good team leader, I will also feel like I have to be an example. And I will also have to get on Spark People a little more regularly. And perhaps that would be a good thing for me.

So, I'm not working on losing weight right at this moment. I think I need to step back and refocus first. Make a plan. Figure out how to stick to it. And perhaps make it a priority this time, as I think that's where I get fouled up.

Tuesday night at Mary Kay we're talking about goal setting and spending the time making goals for the new year and working out a plan to accomplish those goals. I've already done that for my Mary Kay business, but I need to do it for my personal life and weight loss, so maybe I'll use the time there to do that instead.

I keep saying I need to make a change, and the desire is there, but it boils down to time management. And I haven't really been managing my time at all. I just watch it slip away and at 1am I am kicking myself because I haven't exercised yet. So, make a plan. Make a plan. Make a plan. that's what I'm going to do.

Moderation is not my strong point.

If it's not the 3 glasses of eggnog in an afternoon (at 440 calories per glass!!) it's the other end of the spectrum with a dearth of calories....

I started calorie counting today. I think I might have hit bottom when I got on the scale and saw it up 10 lbs from what I was just a few months ago! So discouraging! But today I did something about it, and it didn't include comfort food!

I started calorie counting today. And I'd forgotten how hard it was to count calories! Not so hard to do the counting, as how hungry I got when I wasn't shoving food into my face every time I felt like it. I was away from home for most of the day, but I limited my beverage consumption to water and coffee (which is calorie free if I drink it black - and I did!) and so I wasn't snacking all the time like I would have been at home. That was a lifesaver! But I got home and entered everything into Spark People and learned that even after calculating my dinner calories (leftover tortilla soup - and I skipped the cheese on it) I was still only at 500 some calories for the day! Sigh... moderation is not my strong point. If I'm not over eating, I'm under eating. Will I ever learn?

The good news is that I'm now up to 850 calories, so maybe I have a little room for a snack later on. I did drink some full sugar pop with dinner, but I limited it to 8 oz, and I don't feel badly about the calories given the rest of my caloric dearth of a day.

So... 300 or so calories to go tonight. That's not too bad, and I will eat them. I also have 32 oz of water to drink still and something else from the fruit and veggie family to consume. I'm making apple butter tonight (because we're canning tomorrow!) so maybe I'll eat an apple.

Anyway, I'm back on the wagon. It's been too long and too many lbs and now I have 20 lbs to lose instead of 10. So... off to change some habits again and see where that gets me.

From SparkPeople

I just got this email in my inbox and it's got some things I need to remember, so I figured I'd share...

Squeezing in Exercise

Do you feel more like a chauffeur than a parent? We all know that exercise is important for us to stay healthy, but between cooking, cleaning up, budgeting, homework help, and--oh, yeah--sleep, who has the time?

Next time you feel too busy to exercise, try squeezing it in to your schedule with these tips:

During Drive Time
Try some isometric exercises: Squeeze your glutes, contract your abs, and work your calves by raising your legs up on your toes at red lights. Park far from your destination so you have to walk farther. Arrive early to your event, if possible, to allow time for a brisk walk.

At Programs, Practices, and Games
Walk around the facility before or after the event; look for chances to combine a class or activity with those of your children. For example, take aerobics while your daughter has basketball practice at the YMCA.

While Keeping House
Shop at big stores where there'll be lots of walking; do meal prep and cleanup with a little music and dancing. Clean to music, and shun some of your labor saving devices (like remotes). When doing yard work, keep moving! Use your leg and glute muscles (instead of your back) to shovel, rake, move dirt, etc.

When doing laundry, do squats to pick up unfolded laundry from the basket, and take fitness breaks during homework time, such as stretching or jumping rope for a few minutes. (Your kids will love it too!) Become your dog's best friend--most dogs are always ready to boogie!

For Play Dates
Keep in mind the old adage that children live what they learn. If you don't want your kids to be couch potatoes, be a good example. Walk to the library for story hour; plan regular play times at the park or pool; when snow keeps you home, go play in it. By making physical activity fun, you'll lay the foundation for your kids to have healthy, active lives. What's more, you'll rediscover that activity can be fun--not just another item to check off your grown-up list!

I know that I already know this stuff, but sometimes it is just so hard to remember! I feel like I need to schedule it in, but sometimes I just need to squeeze it in even if my schedule doesn't "allow" for it. Exercise is important, and I need to make it a priority.

today...

Today I am recording my food. So far it's 1:45 in the afternoon and I've had 235 calories, leaving me plenty for an afternoon snack and dinner. And actually, I'm planning on vegetable soup for dinner, so I'll have plenty for snacks this afternoon and evening, which will be helpful as I transition out of snack-mode and back into calorie counting mode. I'm over halfway through my protein for the day, but I really need to work on fiber, as I've only had 4 grams and I need another 20 or so more. Dinner will provide me with 180 calories and 8 grams of fiber, so... (thinking aloud here) that puts me at 355 calories and 12 g. fiber. If I add to that 200 g. of strawberries I'm at 415 calories and 16 g. fiber. Now... that leaves me in need of another 9+ grams of fiber and 685+ calories. I can get my 9 grams of fiber in one Fiber One bar, plus 140 calories. Or I could get 10 grams of fiber and 180 calories from 2 slices of Fiber Flax Bread. The Flax Bread would also give me 10 grams of protein, which would be helpful. And if I went that route I'd have 500 calories to blow tonight at Erika's party, provided there will be food there. Something to think about.

It's hard to get back into calorie counting mode.

It's also hard to get back into an exercise routine, but today is Wednesday so I ought to do my C25K run and then, if Ellie is still sleeping, perhaps some DDR. Of course, I could use the rest of her naptime to clean up the kitchen and put laundry away, too. I wish I were a little more productive and efficient with my time sometimes. At least I started my day out right this morning and did my devotions before I let myself check email or do anything else.

Okay... off to run.

The Bikini Workout

Having a baby killed any chances I ever had of wearing a bikini, but it is time for a change up in my strength training regimen, so this looks like a good overall workout to get me back in the groove, and hopefully looking GREAT by the end of summer. I need to tone a LOT, and I plan on wearing sleeveless and halter tops this summer, so I should do something! Plus, it's about time to start changing things up anyway to avoid plateauing given that it's been about 6 weeks on the program I'm currently using (even if I haven't been terribly consistent on the exercise).

The chart, like most of the resources I use, comes from SparkPeople. For the rest of the article, click here.

Muscle Group	Beginner	Intermediate	Advanced
Abs	Crunches	Straight Leg Raises	Kneeling Roll Out
Obliques	Crunches with Twist	Bicycle Crunches	V-Sit & Twist
Lower Back	Back Extension	Swimming	Back Extensions with Swiss Ball
Biceps	Concentration Curls	Alternating Biceps Curls	One-Arm Side Push Up
Triceps	Seated Tricep Extension	Skull Crushers	Dips
Shoulders	Upright Rows	Shoulder Press on Ball	Lateral Raises
Back	Boxer	Seated Rows	Reverse Flys on Ball
Chest	Chest Press	Push Ups	Chest Flys on Ball
Thighs	Forward Lunge	Wall Squat with Ball	Single Leg Squat
Hips	Bridge Ups	Skater Squat	Genie Sit

Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition

I finished reading this book over the weekend and there are a few things I want to remember for future reference.

The PMS Diet (recommended for more than just PMS symptoms):

• Limit consumption of refined sugar (5 T/day), salt (3 g/day), red meat (3 oz/day), alcohol (1 oz/day), coffee, tea, and chocolate.
• Limit tobacco use.
• Limit intake of protein to 1g per kg of body weight per day.*
• Rely more on fish, poultry, whole grains, and legumes as sources of protein and less on red meat and dairy products.
• Limit intake of dairy products to 2 servings/day.
• Limit intake of fats, mainly saturated and cooked, to less than 20% of calories from fat.
• Increase intake of complex carbs to 60-70% of calories.
• Increase intake of leafy green veggies, legumes, whole grains and cereals.
• Increase intake of cis-linoleic-acid-containing foods (safflower oil is an excellent source). 1-2 T/day of unheated, unrefined oil on your salad, for example.

* I should be eating 54g protein based on this.

One thing I don't think I get enough of is vitamin B, specifically B6. I've added that to my nutrient tracker on SparkPeople, so we'll see how much I get from my diet and prenatal vitamins. But if I don't get enough, I may add that as a supplement, though I don't see a need to add the others she recommends, at least not while I'm on the prenatals and eating plenty of fruits, vegetables, and complex carbs. They seem to provide adequate amounts of the vitamins I currently need, except for B6 (and maybe B12).

So there are a couple things I need to change to conform to the diet above. I need to eat a little less fat (I'm currently limiting it to 30%), more fiber, more complex carbs. So I'm off to adjust my settings on SparkPeople to reflect that.

Day 1. Again.

I think it's time that I admit that I can't lose weight without counting calories. And I can't count calories in my head. And so I am back to Spark People. Again.

I hate that I start and stop, start and stop... I'd just like to stick with it and get rid of the weight. I've been fighting with the same 5 lbs since January. Up and down, up and down. Just like a yo-yo. It's frustrating.

Today the sun is shining and I'd love to go for a walk. But it's supposed to be in the 30's all day and I've been sick. I've had a fever since Saturday. It was 103 Sunday. Yesterday it wavered between 100 and 102. Today it is 100 again so far. So I don't think it's a good idea to go for a walk in the cold. Probably not a good idea to go for a walk at all. I should take it easy. But I will record my calories starting today. Because today is Day 1. Again.

Back to SparkPeople

Today I start recording my food again. So I did. And I found out that the wonderful breakfast in bed Leif made me cost me.... 700 calories. Ouch. I'm not trying to limit my calories today so much as get back in the habit of recording. But I am pretty sure I gained about 7 lbs over the holidays, so I will eventually (and sooner, rather than later) have to cut back on the calories.

Perhaps if I cut back on the eggnog with breakfast... *sheepish grin*