Down 2 Lbs!

I weighed in at 119 today!! That's 3 lbs down from a week ago. Hooray!!! I'm pretty excited to be out of the 120's and now I have 4 lbs to lose in the next 5 weeks!

4 lbs = 14000 calories
14000/5 = 2800 calories per week
2800/7 = 400 calories per day
I will burn 150 calories through exercise each day.
400-150 = 250 calories less to eat
I burn 1600 calories a day just by living my sedentary lifestyle.
1600 - 250 = 1350 calories I need to consume per day.

And in reverse....

So... does the reverse math work?
1600+150 = 1750 calories burned in a day
1750-1350 = 400 calories lost each day
I need to lose 400 calories per day to lose the weight by my goal, so yes, it works! Hooray! I love it when math works.

So now I only need to burn 150 calories a day through exercise, which is much easier to maintain! And if I burn more, then I'll just lose it quicker, but I'm not tied to 350 calorie exercise a day. That's wonderful!

Feeling yucky...

Yesterday I felt pretty yucky after my flu shot. So, unfortunately, I didn't get any exercise in. But I didn't get all my calories in, either, so it's probably a wash. I'm feeling better today, so things should be back to normal!

MUFA

So... the MUFA post. I really thought I already wrote one, but I can't find it, so maybe it was just in my head!!

MUFA stands for MonoUnsaturated FAts. Supposedly "good" fats. The rumor is that if you eat a MUFA rich food with every meal (at least 4 each day) it will somehow magically help take the fat off your midsection. I'm skeptical about it, but it really can't hurt I guess. I'm still keeping my calorie levels the same, I'm just making sure to have a MUFA with every meal or snack. There are 5 sources of MUFA:

1. Avocado
2. Nuts and Seeds
3. Dark Chocolate
4. Vegetable Oils
5. Olives

I'm not big on avocado, but it's pretty easy for me to incorporate olives, chocolate chips, nuts, and olive oil into my diet. They're higher calorie foods, so you do have to compensate for them, but for me that pretty much means I just need to eat more vegetables. Not a bad thing!

So that's the scoop on MUFA. I'm giving it a try. Like I said, I'm skeptical (perhaps I should measure my midsection now and 6 weeks from now, as well as other areas to compare?) but so far (in the 2 days I've been doing this) I have noticed that when I eat a MUFA with every meal, the meal tends to stay with me longer and I'm not as hungry as soon. So, if nothing else, it's good for staying power.

I'll keep you updated on how the MUFA diet goes, but that's at least a general overview and enough to keep you in the know of what I mean by MUFA!

Back on track!

Well, I didn't do much today. I was pretty lazy, as I didn't leave the house until late this afternoon when we went to get our flu shots. I went to dinner at Mackenzie River with a friend and by the time I left the house at 6:15 for that I hadn't done any exercise or anything. We got the thin crust Thai Pie pizza and each had a salad. I love their salad! I was good and only put about 1 T. of dressing on (though I counted it as 2 on SP just in case it was more - kind of hard to judge when you're pouring out of a little cup) even though I absolutely LOVE their dressing. Then I ate two slices of pizza. I counted it as 2 medium slices of Pizza Hut thin crust pepperoni, and I think that's fair. Pepperoni is usually some of the fattiest pizza you can get, especially from Pizza Hut, so that's what I usually count pizza as on SP. It was a great dinner out and time with a friend (without kids!) and it's so nice to be able to do that without eating a ton of calories!

So because I didn't exercise before dinner, I knew I'd have to after dinner. I couldn't go two days in a row without exercise!!! Especially not my first week back to exercising and calorie counting! So I put on a movie from hulu.com (Bring it On - a cheerleading movie with peppy music. Peppy music is always good when you're exercising!) and I got on the treadmill and walked at 3.4 mph and an incline of 3-5 for most of the movie. I walked for 90 minutes and finally got off to watch the last 15 minutes of the movie in a chair. =D I figure that was PLENTY of walking. I ended up burning 675 calories in that time, too, so I guess I got my 350 in for today! Made up for yesterday, too!

I don't know what tomorrow holds. We'll have to see how Ellie is doing with her flu shot. Last year she was pretty miserable the day after. If she's that way tomorrow we'll stay home. Otherwise we'll go to playgroup!!

Pretty sure I went over my calories tonight....

I didn't mean to, but I think I did. By maybe a hundred calories or two. Nothing too terrible, but it's 10:00 and I haven't exercised yet.

We went to Over the Tapas for dinner and split an entree and two sides. Well, we split one side, I ate one side, and Leif ate the entree (the teeny tiny entree!). He wasn't a big fan of the creamy potatoes, which I love, but I was expecting to eat only half of them when I ordered them. Instead I ended up eating a whole bowl of the cream laden potatoes, which is where a lot of my calories for the night went. Ack! I went into dinner having 900 calories or so to spare, and I guess it wasn't enough! Sigh. But it's okay. We had a GREAT night out and I got some MUFA in with my dinner. (Have I posted on MUFA yet? If not, that sentence probably sounded naughtier than it was intended, LOL!) If I haven't written a MUFA post yet, I will. I'm giving it a try. But that's beside the point.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try to get some extra exercise in. If I get myself organized I can put Ellie in the stroller and walk over to Bible study. That will be something, at least.

Oh, we did walk around downtown (we parked at Over the Tapas, ate, then walked down to T. Charbonneau's and back the other direction to the Co-op, then back to our car, so however far that is...) so I think that should count as exercise for the evening. =D Maybe I'll still do some DDR if Leif will play with me, but we're both pretty beat, so I don't know. And it IS 10:30 at night already... maybe I'll just go to bed.

Date Night

Tonight we are going out on a date. I don't know where we're going, so it's hard to plan my calories. But I will be in town for a good portion of the morning and early afternoon, so I'm hoping that will make it easier for me to conserve calories. But I'm going to pack myself a bento and take it with me so I don't have to eat while I'm in town and that should help.

The hard part may be getting exercise (that doesn't use my already sore muscles!!) in today, but I'm going to do my best!

Oh, and I'm down a lb today! Hooooray!! 121 it is!

Wiiiiii!

I did housework pretty much ALL day today. I don't know if that counts as exercise or not, but I'm sure I burned more calories than sitting on my bum all day! We had a girls' night tonight, so I saved up my dinner calories and decided to eat dinner there. Because 3 of the 4 of us are working on losing weight (before our 30th, 40th, and 50th birthdays this year!) most of the food was healthy. That made it a little easier tonight! It also was good that I went into the evening with about 650 calories to spare... =D

Because I hadn't done any real exercise today and I didn't think I'd have the energy to once I got home (you know how it goes...) I decided to head downstairs and play some DDR on the Wii quickly to see how many calories I could knock out in the 25 or so minutes I had to spare before I needed to leave. I got about 215 burned, which meant I only had to burn 150 when I came home. Hooray! When I got home Leif was in the hot tub, so I changed and joined him for a bit, relaxing in the warm water and talking. Then he suggested we go play DDR, so I took the opportunity to burn those last calories of the day and maintain my goal. Little did I know that we would have so much fun and play for so long.... I ended up burning a total of 550 calories playing DDR today!!

Hopefully that will encourage the scale to move!!