Day 9

Hello friends! I am feeling good today. Even though I actually slept really poorly last night, I do feel that my body is adjusting to the new eating & workout habits and I'm starting to get my energy back again.

This morning I went to the gym for my arc trainer workout. I snapped this photo of the vending machine at the gym. Wouldn't it be great if you could find a vending machine like this amongst all areas with vending machines?!

Protein bars and snacks... and below these were all protein drinks and sports drinks.


I did the arc trainer for 40 minutes again on hill intervals level 3. Must've worked just slightly harder this time because I came out with 450 cals burned although I went down on my weight on the machine. You can only put in your weight in 5 lb intervals so last time I was closest to 215 and now closer to 210 so I put in 210. I know machines can be inaccurate but I try to at least get on the same machine when I go so I can compare to previous results on the same machine.

When I got home I made my 2nd  breakfast (1st breakfast had been the coffee protein drink). I was proud because I kind of invented something. I wanted eggs, but wanted meat, but not ham... what to do what to do. Cheesy eggs sounded good. I ended up creating kind of a "mexican scramble".... egg beaters, leftover turkey taco meat/refried bean mixture, a little corn and black beans we had in the fridge, topped with a dollop of salsa. It was DELICIOUS!

I used 1/2 cup egg beaters (actually the equivalent of the Lucerne brand), 1/4 cup of the turkey taco meat/bean mixture, and just sprinkling of the veggies. It was VERY satisfying. If anyone is wondering, my salsa is Safeway Brand Garlic Lover's Salsa. I HATE salsa... but I LOVE this salsa! I have been using it with a lot of things.

Today was Ian's dad's birthday and I knew we would be having dinner at their house tonight. A friend of theirs made the dinner since his dad is sick and his mom is busy taking care of him. We had a penne pasta casserole with beef & cheese, a salad, garlic bread, and dessert. This could have been a land mine but I kept my portions very reasonable and got my two workouts today, so I enjoyed my meal and have nothing to worry about!

I know it's hard to tell size in a photo, but the pasta is about 1/2 cup. I didn't finish all my salad, had the smallest piece of garlic bread I could get my hands on, and kept my dessert quite reasonable also. It was chocolate cake mixed with chocolate pudding and a whip type topping. I had about 1/2 cup of it I believe, about an hour after dinner. Sorry no photo of that one. It was delicious though. If it were anything else I would have skipped dessert but for his dad's birthday I just didn't want to make a big deal of anything... it may very well be his last birthday. He was able to eat tiny bit of the pasta and cake... hardly anything though :(

Ian's mom got him this Darth Vader pinata.... which she is saving until his birthday in September and is totally going to make him bust it lol.... we thought it was pretty cool:

That's my cute hubby. No you can't have him :) Although you may really want to after you hear this. When we got home he said he had a present for me! Guess what he got me.... for NO REASON at all?!?!?

BEAUTIFUL earrings!!! I couldn't get a better photo at night but the hooks have little crystals in them too... SO pretty! These were hand made by my sister-in-law's best friends and he bought them for me just cuz :) How sweet is that?!!? I just love him.

We also went for a walk tonight to get a little more exercise in!

Alrighty so stats for today....

I ate more calories than I have any other day of this so far (thanks to the bday dinner)... 1775 cals. But I burned 742 cals with exercise so my net is 1033. Hoping for a little lower calorie day tomorrow. But I'm really not going to sweat it, I feel good about  my day - and week!
It's only the 2nd day of the week and I've exceeded my exercise goal for the week (150 mins or 5 days of 30 min workouts). Already at 152 mins after just 2 days. And I have several more workouts already planned for the week.

Feelin' good :) But am icing my sacrum/lower back tonight. It's sore and that's why I'm having so much trouble sleeping the past couple of nights. Hopefully tonight will be better. I need me some Zzzzzzzzzz.......

Day 8, Weigh-In

Today's Food Diary

Today's Exercise Diary


First of all, today was my weigh in day. My weight today was 211.8 :) That's a loss of 1.6 lbs since I weighed in Friday morning and also gives me a total of 4.2 lost for the full week. Yeah! The best part is I'm less than 2 lbs from hitting my -100 again. Come on, let's get it. :)

I enjoyed my yogurt this morning SO much! It's a strawberry chobani yogurt. I put just a little bit of protein granola and some diced strawberries, layered it in my cup. It was pretty, delicious and satisfying!

 

Another one of my meals today was a gala apple with this protein granola bar. Can I just say these bars are freaking DELICIOUS?! omg I think it was my favorite thing I ate all day.

 

Other meals today include a Starbucks vivanno smoothie for breakfast, chili & fritos, and a chicken, artichoke & spinach  lean pocket with salad. 

Workouts today.... there were 2. I went to Curves this morning. It was my first day using Curves Smart. I plan to blog about it more soon once I can get some photos. But basically it's a chip I put into all the machines that tracks my progress and how hard I'm working. I get to look in the computer afterward and find out my calorie burn, how hard I worked each muscle group, etc. It's really cool!!! So today I know my 30 mins at Curves burned 440 calories.

Later in the day I went for a walk with my friend Jessica who lives in the next neighborhood over. If I went alone I wouldn't have gone as far because I was tired after my Curves workout. But walkin' and talkin' I was able to go for 52 mins, 2.55 mies, burning 303 calories.

I'm not gonna lie I was TIRED after all this working out!!! But in such a good way. I felt GOOD. I did take a nap though this evening :) And I'm still looking forward to going to bed a little early.

I was THRILLED with my FitBit stats today!!!! Check this out!!!!!!!

 All I can say is Woot woot!!!!! I feel just awesome about this! And I'm finding FitBit to be really fun. Yesterday I didn't come anywhere near this, it was kinda my lazy day. Today I was go go go. Besides workouts there was some errand running and I also did some chores at home that kept me moving around. Now that I think about it, no wonder I needed a nap :)

My favorite tidbit of today is probably the little stats I got at the end of completely my journal. MyFitnessPal told me "if every day were like today, you'd weigh 197 lbs in 5 weeks".... and FitBit told me "At this pace you will reach your goal of 180 lbs by June 30,2012"..... I find these things SO motivating!

A good start to the week. Bring it on.

Day 7 & FitBit Intro

Hey everybody. So today makes a full week of tracking my food and exercise. And so far I have to say, it doesn't suck :) I am adjusting and I feel good about myself knowing I'm doing the right things.

I'm a little concerned that I had a bout of dizziness this morning that lasted a couple of hours, even when laying down and sitting. I am worried it may be calorie intake related. I've had dizziness before, but only when first getting up... not lasting like that. It did go away but something i will have to keep an eye on.

We had a really lazy day today. Slept in, hung around the house this morning mostly because of the dizziness. I wrote a blog post catching up on some events of the last 6 months which I posted on Ian & Christie (the blog I share with my husband).

Ian's cousin ended up coming through town today with his new girlfriend we hadn't met and they were visiting Ian's dad on their way to Montana. So we went over there this afternoon to visit everybody and met the girlfriend (she was very nice).

We went grocery shopping and got things for a couple of dinners... decided to make turkey tacos tonight! We got some ground turkey and Ian made his own taco seasoning out of spices at home... did you know that the Ortega taco seasoning (and probably other brands) have a ton of calories? 120 cals per packet and we were making 2 lbs of beef so we would have used 2 packets... adding 240 cals total to the entire recipe. Because it's not just spices but contains corn starch and other things too. I had NO idea. SO.. we did without that. We did mix some fat free refried beans into our turkey mixture.

My two turkey tacos with 1/4 cup each of the turkey/bean mixture... lettuce, a little bit of 2% shredded mexican cheese and some garlic lover's salsa.... 280 calories.

After dinner I just felt antsy so I had to go for a walk even though today was supposed to be my day off from exercise. I just did a short walk... 27 mins and I forget the mileage offhand but it was less than 2 miles. We finished up watching a movie and then I wanted to get out of the house so Ian took me to Barnes & Noble and we browsed a bunch of magazines. By this time it had been about 3 hours since our tacos and we were hungry so we went to Chili's. I got a *cup* of chicken enchilada soup for just 190 calories :)

I ended up slightly over my calorie net today by just 60 cals but SO not worried about it because my cals are kinda low to begin with and I've had a defecit every other day all week long. Tomorrow is weigh in day!

So before I wrap it up.... for those who have never used a FitBit and are wondering what it's like... I wanted to share screenshots of all the cool stats I am able to see.

The top of my dashboard has the activity panel. Here is my completed one from yesterday:

 

When you are in the middle of a day and it isn't complete, you see progress bars for each category, like this:

 I didn't do nearly as much today as it was kind of a lazy day for me!

At the bottom of those two screenshots you'll see "You Have # Activity Records". If you click that link you can see detail for your activity records which are your exercise sessions.

The first activity record is from yesterday's geocaching/walking session. It shows the duration, the calories burned, how many steps I took (almost half my whole day in the workout.... shows how important they are).... distance, pace, etc. The bottom shows the time frame and calories burned across that. If you did things like intervals, you'd see the spikes of when you burned more cals.

 

This second activity record is for a fast walk I took last night.

The next thing on the dashboard is a graph section showing your activity throughout the day in two forms:

 

I find this so interesting!! I do hope to stride to have less sedentary time in my day when I can.

Next is your food gauge:

 

 

If you were only using FitBit, this is what you'd pay attention to for your calories... but because I use MyFitnessPal, it is more accurate there as FitBit makes adjustments to it for me so that is where I have to look. FitBit allows me to eat more than MFP does. Still figuring that out.

Lastly, FitBit can be worn in a wrist band at night if you would like it to track your sleep. I find this interesting, plus then it excludes the sleep session from your activity graph, which helps.

This one is also from yesterday. The top one is my night's sleep night before last. The 0 mins to fall asleep is not accurate (that's the night everything was coming up 0's)... but then yesterday's nap seemed to catch it pretty acurately. The pink bars show activity during the sleep period such as waking up, tossing and turning, getting up to go to the bathroom. You get a total of how long you were in bed (including what time you went to sleep) and how much actual sleep time you got. It's not 100% accurate as all it is detecting is movement... so if you are awake but not moving, it records it as sleep time, etc...but still very interesting data.

So that's a little overview on FitBit. So far I am really liking it and I've only had it for 2 full days! I love that Ian got into it too. he liked FitBit so much he got one AND started logging on MyFitnessPal now (he wanted nothing to do with it before).... so I am REALLY happy to have him back on this journey with me :)

Day 6...What Blister? Pshhh

No that doesn't mean the blister is gone, or even smaller... Lol. But basically I just didn't let it stop me from having an active day. Since I know this may be the beginning of a long road for me (the bump will keep growing and I may need surgery on it again).... I went ahead and bought some Crocs so I can have my heel exposed and nothing rubbing it.

So with my crocs on my feet... Hubby and I set out to do some geocaching. Seems we always start doing this again in March every year :) Today's weather was GORGEOUS! We found a trail around a lake not too far from home that had a whopping four geocaches right along the way. We found all of them in the beginning part of the walk and the just finished the trail as a nice brisk walk after that.





Ian along the trail to the first geocache.





Pretty spot!





The third cache was cleverly hidden in a log!





The lake and mountains :)

So that was our geocaching walk. Since the actual geocaching part slows you down because you're looking for the cache, writing in the log, putting it back, looking up where the next one is, etc... Our walk time is long compared to if we were just walking.

We were out there for 1 hour, 4 minutes. Total distance 1.8 miles. My calories burned, 340-something.

We were really craving pizza today, so after our walk we went to the nearby shopping area and finally tried Marco's Pizza which they offer by-the-slice. MyFitnessPal said 1 slice of pepperoni there was 290 calories. So Ian and I each ordered 1 slice of pepperoni. Problem was.... The slice size seems to be somewhat... Uh.... Haphazard? Unplanned? Undefined?





One slice was almost twice as big as the other!! Well I took the smaller one because I knew it would fill me up anyway and Ian ate the bigger one. Everyone has said the slices there are HUGE and mine was more average, what you would pull out of a pizza normally. But I still went with the 290 calorie count because who knows. By the way.... It was delicious!! I think it's my new favorite pizza. As long as I only eat 1 slice (which I always do) it will fit into my day. I think going out for a slice is so much better than ordering a pizza at home because.... No leftovers!! That's the key. When we have leftovers I end up having a slice for breakfast the next day... Then lunch.... Then snack.... Lol. This is much more reasonable.

After this we walked across the shopping center so I could go to Lane Bryant. Unfortunately, I had to buy a new pair of size 16 jeans even though I'm a mere 5-7 lbs away from fitting back into my size 14's... Why? Because it's my ONLY pair and today it finally wore all the way through on my inner thigh where my thighs rub together. Grrr! And even when I was in my 14's, I would wear the 16's on period week and stuff.... So yeah I definitely needed to just suck it up and by them. I also found a few v-neck t shirts there with sleeves at the elbow!!! That is SO hard for me to find, I bought it in 4 colors. Definitely want my arm surgery someday but for now, I have to hide the upper arms.

After all that we came home, hung around a while and decided on a nap. We had a few obstacles though...





3 cats on the bed!!! Sheesh!! But we kicked them all out and took our nap :) I am finally starting to sleep better than I was earlier this week. The nap felt so good!

And FINALLY.... An update on the FitBit. It worked today! Something must have fixed it when it reset itself at midnight, because this morning it was working AND filled in the stuff from yesterday that had been all 0's. Same for Ian's, his was working too. So today has been really fun and interesting seeing everything the FitBit says. However I think this post has been long enough already so I'll save more FitBit details for tomorrow!

But here are the basic stats from my day today...

11, 881 steps taken today
(I went for an extra walk tonight just to be sure I went over my 10,000 steps!)

5 floors climbed

5.41 miles traveled today

2702 calories burned


FitBit calculates calories a little bit more accurately. According to them, I sit ll have 570 cals I could eat today (but I'm done eating). It says "at your current pace you should reach your goal weight of 180 lbs by July 3. 2012"!! That would be awesome, but it's hard to believe right now!

Food today 1505 cals, burned 507 thru exercise, net 998 cals (well under 1200 goal).

TODAY'S FOOD DIARY     TODAY'S EXERCISE DIARY

Day 5... Snowhoeing & FitBit Drama

Well... today has been interesting!!!

First of all, I weighed this morning. I should have waiting a full week (Monday morning) but I had to peek. After just 4 days of tracking, I lost 2.6 lbs!!!!! So I will definitely say, this works. However... I have been hungry on just 1200 cals and I think this shows that may be a little low for me, so I will definitely consider bumping it up next week.

My workout today was snowshoeing. I met up with my friend Laura and we went up to the usual trail I've done. It was 45 degrees!!!! The snow was all melty and slushy... and on the trail was very hard-packed. I've never snowshoed in those conditions. We managed to do it though!

A couple pics from the beginning...

 

She is in a lot better shape than me, so she took off and found it pretty easy. But I liked it... I enjoy a challenge and did my best to keep up. We only went a little over 2 miles in 80 minutes... but at my weight I managed to burn a whopping 945 calories according to a few online calculators. Snowshoeing is very high calorie burn. I wish I could have gone more. My back & hips felt good!

 However... I had a bit of a problem. I have a bump on my heel (a bone spur) that tends to cause me problems. I had it "removed" surgically in 2003, they cut my achilles tendon to get to it... it was quite a healing process. Well a few years ago I saw a new podiatrist here in Colorado and I asked her about it  because I felt like it was growing back. She did Xrays and said yes it was growing back... and I have a bunch more in there too, they just aren't causing problems  yet. She said eventually it would grow back to the point it would start causing blisters again. Today, I think that may have happened...

Yep. I got this huge honkin' blister from just 2 miles of snowshoeing. :( Now... so far, I haven't had this from walking or regular workouts. Whereas before my surgery in 2003, I could no longer even wear shoes for a normal day of not doing much... I'd get a blister. So I don't think it's as bad yet as it was before my surgery... but I am definitely getting into problem territory. This is directly on the bump, and my other foot is fine... so it is completely a bump related issue... not my shoes or anything else. Moleskin padding might help next time I snowshoe but it might not. This bump is pretty big again. I'm afraid having the surgery redone is in my future. I am terrified of this because it means no working out for a few months. But... I'm not going to worry YET. Once we have insurance again next month, I'll make an appointment and see what she says. Not sure how I'm gonna put a shoe on and walk tomorrow.

Anyway enough about that.

We had a tasty dinner tonight. Hobo meatball stew. It was delish! Hubby made it in the crock pot since I was out snowshoeing. It was really really tasty.

 

It has meatballs (made with 97% lean beef), potatoes, carrots and onions in a ketchup-based broth. I got full pretty fast. What's interesting is I have a HUGE calorie deficit today... but haven't really eaten anymore than the other days. So I guess that's good!

TODAY'S FOOD DIARY     TODAY'S EXERCISE DIARY

Last but not least... my FitBit arrived today.. Not before snowshoeing though :( So tonight I worked on setting it up.

Initial impressions... it's small... I like it. Got it set up. Got it synced with MyFitnessPal. I like FitBit's website and dashboard. I take some steps around the house... get up to 353 steps. Sync it with the computer. 0's. Steps 0. Miles 0. Everything 0, even though it is successfully syncing. Leave the house for an errand. Come back with over 1,300 steps. Sync again. 0's. My calories burned are changing!! But everything else is 0's. Between a friend's reccommendation and some forum post suggestions... we tried everything... reset the base station. No change. Unplug the base station and replug. No change. Unplug again, uninstall and reinstall the computer software. No change. Ian bought his own fit bit because he wants to try it. He installs on HIS computer. He is getting the same thing, all 0's!!!! So right now he is doing research to try and figure it out. Other people with Macs and the newest Lion OS aren't having issues so we know it's not that. I hope we can get these to work :( I just don't get it!!


Finally, today's ending stats:

Ate 1518 calories, burned 946 through exercise, Net 572 calories (goal is 1200)... LOL!! it says "if every day were like today, you'd weigh 197.7 lbs in 5 weeks." IF ONLY I could snowshoe every day......

Day 4

 TODAY'S FOOD DIARY    TODAY'S EXERCISE DIARY

We were up in Estes Park most of today. I packed a couple meals in my lunchbox and didn't eat anything unplanned. Yay! That's the kind of thing I really need to get back to... being more dilligent about those things.

When we got home I crashed and took a nap, then got up and went for a walk with the hubby.
Walk stats: 38 mins, 1.84 miles, 243 calories burned.

We saw a pretty sunset as we were on our way back:

Dinner tonight was a tuna melt on a small tortilla (just half) and a really tasty orange. After dinner I put on my nerd pants and organized a charging station area in my office:

 

Very pleased with it. I have here the chargers for my two cameras, my work phone, rechargable batteries, iphone/ipod, ipad... and soon there will be one for my FitBit when I get it.

Now I wanna just say a quick blurb about my calorie intake. I am managing, but it's hard! I can't believe that even with my surgery, it's this hard and I'm this hungry. So far I'm getting by but only because I'm working out every day. I'm not sure when I have a day off of working out on Sunday, if I'll be able to stay at 1200 cals.

There is definitely going to be some experimenting because I am honestly feeling hungry most of the day... and I think I've been making really excellent choices and it's still this hard. I am giving it a full week on this, but next week I think I might bump up to 1500 cals and see how that goes. The most important thing will be tracking and creating these better habits. But I need to listen to my body, too. Right?

I don't have my exact total for today yet because I'm going to eat one more small meal tonight... but I have 300 cals left so I should still be under.

Mostly, I'm just really missing my Mom tonight. Can't get her off my mind. This pic made me smile and cry. It's from Christmas 2009.

Day 3

I think this might be a short one... I'm SO tired! Is it strange that I haven't been able to sleep this week? I don't know if it's the extra exercise (maybe I'm revved up?) or the change in eating habits or WHAT. It takes me forever to fall asleep, I wake up a gazillion times, and I lay awake for a good hour or two in the morning before my alarm goes off. I don't know what's up.... but I hope this phase passes soon. I'm TIRED!

So today was just one workout - Curves. My other days have been two workouts. Tomorrow will be just one workout as well because we will be gone all day. I'm really looking forward to getting my FitBit so I can see more accurately how many calories I burn when I do Curves. The lady who runs it thinks she is pretty sure I burn more than the 240 MyFitnessPal is telling me. They also have a chip thing you can use at Curves that will track that... and I might still get it because it helps you work harder and work toward goals on the machines. We shall see!

Food today was OK... just a weird, weird day. Dinner ended up being a disaster... recipe gone awry. I couldn't even eat it so only had a few bites. We then had to be out of the house for the evening because my dad had a photoshoot. (He is a model photographer). So anyway.... Ian and I were both so stressed after dinner. I had eaten some almonds before and ate a string cheese after since I didn't touch my dinner... so I wasn't starving.... and I decided to splurge on a Mocha at Caribou. Freaking 370 calories for a medium... but I wanted it and I sure did savor it.

Earlier in the day, Ian wanted to go to L&L Hawaiian BBQ. I thought... YUM a Loco Moco!!!!! But even the mini size weighed in at a whopping 900 calories. So I went to chick-fil-a while he and my dad enjoyed the hawaiian food. Had half a chicken caesar wrap with just a teensy bit of dressing on it and half a fruit cup.

Then dinner, since we were out for the evening and I was hungry... I ended up at Taco Bell. But I didn't do so bad there.

All in all, my calories for the day came out fine. Ate 1290, Burned 240, Net 1050.

TODAY'S FOOD DIARY    TODAY'S EXERCISE DIARY

I spent my evening out at Caribou surfing iTunes and downloading new music for my workout playlist. So I'm excited to go to the gym next! Which should be tomorrow unless I end up doing a class or something where I don't listen to my own music. Then Friday I get to go snowshoeing!