Tag: Six Days

Categories
General Weight Loss Tips

Finding My Groove

Today marks week four, day two of consistent exercise with Insanity. That is, 6.5 workouts, most of them are 40 minutes long. And I’m reminding myself that I’ve been here before. In the spring, I made it 14 weeks. I was seeing improvement and then it stopped. I don’t remember why exactly (something to go back and read) but I’m telling myself that this doesn’t stop when the calendar fills up or when 60 days are over. If I’m being honest, it will take a full year of consistent exercise for me to really be in a better place physically. Probably two. And then for the rest of my life.

In the past three weeks, my food intake has been hit or miss. I’ve been experimenting with different calorie counts, and I think I’ve found one that will work for me. On myfitnesspal (lorriebee) you work with net calories. This means if your net calorie goal is 1,400 and you burn 500 calories, you can eat 1,900 calories in a day. I think this is a great tool, but for some reason I’ve been struggling with the notion of eating all of my burned calories.

Myfitnesspal gives you an estimated calories burned, but I’m not convinced it’s accurate. I think I’m burning 400-600 calories during Insanity. But when I log it in, it’s usually more. And then I’d see this insane amount of food I could still eat. And for some reason that triggered me to eat beyond hunger.

So to calm my tender brain I’ve decided, which some research and calculating, that I will consume 1,600 calories a day regardless of how much I burn during exercise. Of course there will be some ups and downs with that number, but I feel good with that. I’m burning about 400 calories, six days a week, so that is a net of about 1,100-1,300 calories which is totally in the weight loss zone for me.

I also feel like 1,600 calories is a very reasonable amount of food for me. I can wrap my head around it and not be obsessive. I can move the numbers around easily to accommodate my day. It feels flexible to me.

If I know I’m going out to dinner or to an event in the evening. I can still have a 200 calorie breakfast and 400 calorie lunch with 1,000 calories to work with in the evening. Or if I’m in the mood for a bigger, 500-600 calorie breakfast/brunch sort of thing. I can make that happen too. It goes with my new mantra “I can have what I want, but I can’t have everything I want” which simply means that yes, if I want to go out to dinner with my husband, I can do that. But, it doesn’t mean I need to go out to eat twice in a day and then snack all day and have dessert after every meal. I just don’t need that much food.

Yesterday was my first day trying out my new set calorie count and it went so well. I even showed a two pound loss on the scale this morning from it. I woke up and had a serving of mexican chili for breakfast, and again for lunch. I measured it and estimated the calories. I hate two teas with milk and sugar. A small treat. And dinner was teriyaki chicken. I didn’t feel obsessive about anything and when I hit the 1,600 calorie mark I felt comfortable and done for the day.

I know this probably sounds like the ramblings of a man-woman, but I needed to share. Mainly to work through these fears I have of sharing and acting. I’m trying to change my inner dialogue and making this a positive journey. Not one of self defeating agony. Last night I was in that bed staring at my clothes hanging in the closet and I visualized what it would be like to fit in all of them, effortlessly. And then I visualized them being too big. I imagined that the sweaters looked like deflated balloons where my arms used to go. I realized in that moment that I can make all of these things happen, there is nothing stopping me.

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Categories
General Weight Loss Tips

Ya’Mon

I’m here today a little more tan and relaxed than I was a week ago. We spent the week at the Beaches resort in Turks and Caicos (in the Caribbean) where I ate, read, and swam in that rotation for about six days. We were totally cut off from cell phone service and internet for almost a week and it was fabulous. I thought I’d start twitching without the internet, but no offense to my beloved Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, My Fitness Pal and blog, but I didn’t miss it at all. Being totally unplugged is oh so nice and is making me think that I should do it at least once a week.

Vacation taught me to spend more time outside, to unplug, to sit and read and to embrace doing nothing. I also need to make jerk chicken very soon. I thought my trip would be spent eating sushi, but the jerk chicken won my heart. I love you jerk chicken. Let’s be friends.

And finally, can I just say that it feels good to have this year’s big looming dates done and over with? I’m horrible at losing weight for an event. I thought getting on a plane and stripping down to a bathing suit in front of people would inspire more weight loss, but it only stressed me out and made me panic. Stress+ panic does nothing for my weight loss. Combine that with a trip to the doctor who basically said in no uncertain terms “if you don’t lose weight, you will get diabetes”. I’m on it doctor. For reals.

I joined Zumba the week before I left and loved it. Our local gym offers it three days a week (monday, tuesday and wednesday) and I plan to be there for each one. Combine that with calorie counting, and strength training and I feel good about my direction.

Breakfast this morning is one of my favorites: 3/4 C whole, plain organic yogurt, all fruit blackberry jam, fresh blueberries and a little Ezekiel granola.

Categories
Weight Loss Exercise

Recap of the first six days


This is our first recap day. I am planning a few of these days as I know that some of the changes that you are making are tough and there is still more tough stuff coming to get you felling better and most of all getting healthier.

Whenever you make any kind of life changes there are a lot of tough times. There are days when everything seems to go right as well as days when nothing seems to click. The reason that this happens is that your attitude starting the day either tells you that YES you are moving ahead and the changes are great or NO everything was find before and the pain of the changes are not worth it. Hopefully to this point you are having more yes days than no days.

Our first day was just a subtle commitment to make changes without really know the impact that it would have in our everyday life except for the excitement that comes with changing for the better.

Our second day was adding more water to our diet and this I thought was a fairly easy start with a high impact result over the fairly short term.

Our third day was getting started doing cardio everyday. We did not go into any details on the cardio because the first most important exercise trait that you want yourself to get used to is some kind of movement. Just as long as you walk, dance, do yoga, run or bike you are doing great.

Day four was taking care of our meal sizes, far to often people eat to few meals and often to large to really give anyone the nutrition they need and giving anyone a great way to gain fat. Many meals are a great way to keep up energy and be more aware of the food you eat.

The fifth day was a day to learn how to stretch. After all that movement and cardio your muscles will be getting sore by this day and stretching is a great way to get the blood flowing to the fibers of your muscles to get rid of a day or two of extra muscle pain as well as giving you extra flexibility.

Day six is the first good nutrient day. Learning about carbohydrates is a great way to see how we eat when we are not conscious of what is an important kind of food. North Americans are really bad for eating a lot of sugars and then eating far to many carbs as well in each meal.

The next few days may be a little more difficult but I will try to keep a few easy days in as these changes are going to still be challenging. I am sure by this point that your new attitude and feelings are great. These 30 days are designed to give you not only a better feeling body but also a fantastic new outlook on life.