Finally Made It to the Gym!

Yesterday I actually  made it to my gym! I had some other errands to do, so I didn't stay long. But I managed to get one mile closer to Walden. Woo hoo!

My food was under goal, so that was great. My dinner was pretty high in fat with the Hollandaise sauce, but it's not something I make often. Eventually, I'll pay more attention to fat, sodium, and protein. Right now I'm mostly concerned with not binging, not feeding my emotions, staying under 1570 calories, and making exercise a habit. I definitely need more consistency on the last one.

Here is my food from yesterday.

Breakfast: Breakfast bar. 90 calories
Snack: Apple slices. 36 calories
Lunch: Cheddar, almonds, broccoli, and fat free ranch. 287 calories
Snack: Pretzel chips and hummus. 180 calories
Dinner: Chicken croquettes, turnip greens, and sliced tomato with Hollandaise. 856 calories
Snack: (not pictured) Lemon Italian Ice. 60 calories

Total calories: 1509 calories   Under budget!

As you can see in the photo, I also did 1.07 miles on the treadmill. I'm going for 2 miles tonight. There is one thing that bothered me about my workout last night. I wear a Body Media tracker. I'm supposed to get 45 minutes of exercise a day: 30 minutes moderate and 15 minutes vigorous. As much as I tried to push yesterday on that treadmill, I couldn't get up to a vigorous level. See:

That's my workout at 4PM. My normal brisk walking pace is 2.8 mph. I use 3.0 as my baseline on the treadmill, bumping it up to push myself, and going back to 3.0 when I need to. I thought that those high speeds would push me into the yellow, but apparently not. I've never been able to go faster than 3.3. Maybe I just need to build more muscle before I can go fast enough to be vigorous. I don't know. I'll try to stay in the higher speeds tonight and see where that takes me.

Tomorrow is going to be a challenging day for me. My husband's employer is throwing a huge picnic for all the employees and their families. There will be prizes given away, rides, and free concessions of hot dogs, pizza, funnel cakes, nachos, etc. for four hours. I really want to go and just not think about food, but I am committed to staying on track now. So my plan is to have a very low cal breakfast, a low cal dinner, and use the majority of calories at the picnic. I'm going to eat the foods I'd like to eat, but I'm going to eat small portions, track the calories, and not pig out. I'm going to focus instead on spending time with my husband, walking around and people watching, and getting to know his coworkers.

Wish me luck!

1307.51 / 1.07 / 1288.61 

Too Busy for My Own Good

I woke up early this morning feeling fully rested. I decided to make the most of the extra time I had. So I started a load of laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, woke up my daughter, vacuumed our living room, walked the dogs, and switched the clothes over to the dryer. I was so proud of myself. That is until I was almost to work and realized that I had forgotten to eat breakfast or grab the lunch I had planned to take.

This is the day before payday, so I have exactly $2.00 to my name. We have no vending machines near where I work. Luckily, I keep a cappuccino mix and a Rice-A-Roni meal in my desk most of the time for emergencies. They don't actually taste all that great, but they work in a pinch.

Since I didn't have much to eat during the day, I'm allowing myself a higher calorie dinner tonight: pancakes! Pancakes is our usual "nothing to eat in the house" meal. The pancakes themselves are not too high in calories (just 265 calories for three large pancakes). My problem is the butter or margarine. I like my pancakes almost soaked in the stuff. I usually use more calories on the butter than I do on the pancakes. I'm working on that, but for tonight, I should have enough calories to spare.

Here is my food from yesterday.

Breakfast: One mini bagel with fat free cream cheese. 135 calories
Lunch: Boxed mac and cheese with cheese slices and crackers. 830 calories
Dinner: Golden mushroom beef over rice and a Coke Zero. 795 calories

Total: 1760 calories

According to MyFitnessPal, I didn't actually go over because of the calories awarded to me for exercising. I've been trying to decide how to handle this. My armband syncs with MFP to log exercise, and MFP adjusts my calories to account for it. I'm not sure if I should count it or not. I'm leaning towards trying to stay under the 1570 baseline, but not feel too badly if I use up exercise calories--kind of a like a savings account. I don't want to dip into savings, but if I do, I'm not going to stress unless it becomes a regular thing. Does that make sense?

Just two more days until weigh day! I'm very curious to see what the scale says.

1307.51 / 0 / 1289.68

Went Wandering

Well, I'm back. The good news is I wasn't binging. I wasn't watching my caloric intake, and I did overeat, but I never binged. What kind of damage I did will be seen on October 1st when I weigh. I could go into the "reasons" I went off plan (sinus issues, migraines, etc.) but it comes down to laziness. I didn't "feel" like making the healthy food, so I didn't. I'm not sure how to change that.

Anyway, onward and upward!

This weekend is my anniversary trip. I'm going for 2000 calories a day for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I know I'll be getting in lots of walking, and the hotel has a pool.

I don't have a lot to share today; I just wanted to check in (does anyone even read these) and let you know I will be posting again. I'm back on plan. I will do this.


1307.51 / 0 / 1289.68

Rainy Day Blahs

What is it about a rainy day that makes me want to curl up and sleep. It started raining last night where I live. This made it terribly hard for me to sleep. For one thing, the noise of the rain was distracting. For another, my Great Pyr is afraid of storms, so he kept trying to climb into bed with us. There's just not enough room for that.

After a long, long night, I hit the snooze too many times this morning. In all my rushing to get my morning chores done, I forgot about breakfast entirely. That led to some not great choices at lunch today, but I'll talk more about that tomorrow.

The main thing I want to focus on today is that I finally got some walking done at the gym. I'm one and a half miles closer to Walden! I'm really dragging today, but I wanted to get that out there.


So here is my food from yesterday.

Breakfast: White chocolate cappuccino and grapes because I forgot my breakfast yesterday, too. 418 cal

Lunch: Whole wheat pita stuffed with black beans, hummus, cucumber, and spinach with eggplant patties. 485 cal

Dinner: Burrito made with a whole wheat tortilla, sweet potatoes, black beans, guacamole, and cheese, with a side of salad. I didn't eat the salad; it was too wilted. 426

Snack: Fudge Pop. 40

Daily Total: 1369



Not bad, really, considering my morning routine is all out of whack.

I also went to the gym yesterday. The bank of treadmills was completely empty, so I was worried they still hadn't fixed the power. But everything was running great! So I hopped on for 30 minutes of walking. I was hoping to get two miles in, but I guess that's what happens when you're out of the habit. Hopefully it won't take me long to get back up to a 15 minute mile.

Be sure to check back tomorrow to hear about what a train wreck today has been.


1307.51 / 1.5 / 1289.68

Fast Food Failure? Maybe not...

So yesterday was a frustrating day. Yeah, second one in a row. Sucks. My husband found out that the part he needs for his car isn't one he can install himself. That means the car will definitely be at the shop for a while. The good news is that the patch he did seems to be holding, so we have a little time to prepare for the inevitable. Still aggravating, though.

I was really looking forward to letting off some steam at the gym, not to mention getting some miles in for the blog. After work I walked across the parking lot to the gym. I decided to take a couple of photos since I had told you how dark and creepy my gym was. I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but my gym is in a historical building that used to be a movie theater in the 1950s. This is a picture of the ticket booth outside. It's okay during the day, but it's creepy once it gets dark.

Here is inside, from the balcony. You can see where the stage and movie screen used to be. All the weightlifting stuff is down there.

I'm usually in the balcony because that's where all the treadmills and ellipticals are. I didn't take a picture of that because it was full of people. I didn't want to add to the general creepiness of the place by being all stalkery. So what do you think? Creepy?

After I got my pics, I went to the dressing room to change. When I came back out, all the treadmills and ellipticals were empty. What luck, right? Nope. Turns out the circuit that powered that area of the gym blew or something. They were working on it.

Well, I was already there, so while they worked on it I went down to the strength machines and worked my shoulders a little bit. I have horribly weak shoulders. Seriously, it's hard for my to raise my hands above my head. So I did that. Then I went back upstairs to check the treadmills; they still weren't working yet. It's like the universe doesn't want me to get to Walden! I waited some more and tried out a few more machines, but eventually I had to go home. So I did go to the gym as promised, but I didn't get any miles in.

When I got home, everyone was in a bad mood: Michael about the car, my daughter because she had lost her mp3 player, and me because of the gym, the car, and one of our dogs had torn up the living room. Everyone wanted to eat out. We don't eat out too much. They wanted to go Long John Silvers for fish.

Now, I fully intended to get the healthy baked whatever with rice. But the thing is, I hate fish. I hate seafood in general. I always order chicken at seafood restaurants. The one exception is LJS's fish. I actually like it. So I caved. Now usually I would have 3 or 4 pieces of fish (drowned in lemon juice) and about 6 hush-puppies (also drowned in lemon juice). I knew I would be pushing it with my calories, so I only had two pieces of fish and three hush-puppies (and the lemon juice). I thought that if I skipped my fudge pops that evening, I would be under calories. I was wrong. When I got home and logged it, it put me 49 calories over.

Now, the old me would have quit the diet at this point. "Only four days in, and I've already messed up! This is impossible to do!" But last night I was able to look at the positives.

1. I ate much less at LJS than I normally would.
2. My calorie estimate was actually pretty accurate. 
3. I've done well for 3 2/3 days.
4. I've left the past 3 days with at least a few calories to spare.

So I wasn't even tempted to throw in the towel. I didn't have anything else to eat before bed. No fudge pops. Today I will stay under my calorie budget and carry on.

So here's my food from yesterday.

Breakfast: Whole wheat tortilla, two scrambled eggs, and 1/2 an avocado. 320 cal

Snack: Grapes. 29 cal

Lunch: Whole wheat pita stuffed with black beans, hummus, cucumber, and spinach with eggplant patties. 485 cal

Snack: Grapes 27 cal

Dinner: LJS--two fish pieces, three hush-puppies. 754 cal

Daily total: 1619

Bonus! I got 72 ounces of water in yesterday, and I'm still Co-Cola free!!

Today I'm hitting the gym again. Let's hope they have the treadmills working.

1307.51 / .5 / 1291.18