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Losing Weight is still a game on day 2!

Well here we are. The second day of our  ‘walk’  together. I’ve been through this before, so I know that I should still be feeling motivated and excited. The drudgery of the day to day routine hasn’t kicked in yet. I am also somewhat obsessed (as I think many people are) with my weight, and body image, especially since I have started so publicly on my program. I go to sleep thinking about my fat, and wake up thinking about my fat. I am going to try to shift my thinking a bit. If I HAVE to think about it, I should go to bed thinking about my muscle! (more on that later!) I got a bit more of the website done yesterday and meant to get back to post what I did yesterday but didn’t get a chance. (TOO many things to do!) So I’ll just give you a run-down on how my first day went.

• Food -I made a decision NOT to diet! Been there, got the T-shirt (it’s too small now I might add). So I am trying to make a conscious effort to change my food habits and also my eating habits. See I work in my office pretty much all day long. Often when I get hungry I grab something quick, and take it back to my office. I eat while I am working on the computer, talking on the phone or whatever. Meal times have no real meaning to me at all.  So I’ve made a decision to eat ONLY at the kitchen table when I am home. I’ve also made a decision to try to make healthier food choices.
• Exercise - OK, well as I mentioned I spend all day in my office. I am a total workaholic. I love pattering away at the computer, I love my office, and I do not have any idea what to do when the power goes out! So sedentary is a mild word for what my life has become. I have to MOVE every day. I am going to work up to 3 planned exercise periods a day. It sounds like a lot right now since I barely move all day, but I think it is reasonable. I am starting with baby steps.
• Motivation - I need to do something to keep myself motivated daily, and I don’t want this to be as dry as a caesar salad  crouton for those of you who are reading, so each day 4 or 5 days a week I am going to try to do some research on a method, product, exercise, or anything else that would be helpful, funny, or interesting and we’ll collect them here as well. If you have suggestions as to what you would like to learn more about, let me know here.
• Support - I am very fortunate… I have a supportive spouse, and teenagers who don’t spend a lot of time at home, so there is no huge obstacle at home. Not everyone has that, so I am going to encourage you to join a support group, enlist the help of a friend, find an online forum or whatever you have to do to find a buddy to encourage you when you are down. I will have a forum here on the site eventually as our community grows.

So what exactly did my day look like yesterday?

Food- I didn’t do too badly. As I mentioned I am not dieting. I am just trying to make better choices overall, and become aware of the amount of calories I take in. I am going to be moving towards a mostly raw, live food diet, but right now I am about as "average North American" as I can get, so I think ’slow’ is the key. One of my biggest problems in the past has been that I tend to go full steam 100% and then crash because I can’t keep up the pace. The real secret is to gradually make changes and let them become a habit. All of the research I’ve done on diet indicates that we should be consuming an 80% raw diet made of mostly fruits and vegetables, so that is what my ultimate goal will be. The biggest problem I have now with that is that my blood sugar tends to crash if I eat just fruits and/or vegetables without protein. I suspect that by gradually introducing the new way of eating my body’s insulin response will adjust. Right now, it’s used to refined carbs (white sugar, white flour etc). I am going to be switching to protein shakes and I have ordered them. (I am not really into raw meat and eggs! haha)  I’ll tell you which company I chose for the shakes and why in another article. So on to what I ate:

I started the day with a glass of water, then my coffee! Give up coffee??? HA no way! I don’t put sugar in my coffee, just a bit of 2% milk. Breakfast was an orange, 2 whole wheat toast with real butter and an egg (poached yummy!). I had a big fresh salad for lunch, and some hard cheddar cheese. Supper was another huge fresh salad and a small fresh cut of pork grilled on the barbecue. I also had a granny smith apple, 2 tangerines, and a chocolate frozen treat on a stick (like a fudge-sicle only the no name kind. hehe) Then I had a bowl of cheerios in the evening with milk.  I am pretty fortunate that I mostly drink water all day anyway, and not a lot of anything else except my coffee (3 or 4 cups) in the morning. I am going to try to add green and herbal teas for health benefits, but summer in Canada is not a good time generally to want to drink hot beverages any time of the day besides morning.

Exercise - Man I am in SUCH bad shape. Just coming up one flight of stairs from the lower level of my house with a basket of laundry leaves me short of breath. I can hardly believe that I’ve allowed myself to get to this condition. This might be the time to confess that I quit smoking 4 months ago after smoking since my first cigarette at 12 years of age! So imagine my totally inert lifestyle, coupled with over 30 years of cigarettes and just imagine the shape of my body! I know I need to get moving, but again (for me anyway) the key is going to be slowly adding things that I can continue to do every day. I also don’t want to over-do it and pull a muscle or be so sore that I need 4 days to recover.

As soon as I got out of bed, and flipped on the coffee pot, I went to the livingroom and just did some body stretching. WOW I can’t believe how good that felt. After I felt ’stretched’ I did some simple marching in place while I moved my arms ‘jumping jack’ style. I did that for about 10 minutes. Then I did some stomach crunches with feet flat on floor. (I didn’t count how many… just did as many as I could…. a little less than 2 minutes) then I place ankle on knee of other leg and crunched across my body, then changed legs and did the other side. I then stretched out on my side, head propped, and did some lateral leg raises both sides.   Later in the day I did 20 minutes on my exercise bike. I have a recumbent stationary bike from Sears a couple of years ago. I paid around $400 for it so it isn’t ‘top of the line’ but it works great. I also have some hand held weights in a variety of sizes for strengthening. You can pick them up quite readily just about anywhere.

So that was my day yesterday, and I feel pretty good about it. I am going to try to weigh myself just once a week or so. I may not even remember to weigh myself regularly, and I am not going to focus on it. An acquaintance of mine says (wisely I might add) that we should not be concerned with weight loss, rather our focus should be ‘fat loss’. This is a reminder that our goal is to gain muscle, which helps increase our metabolism and in turn burns even more fat. Muscle weighs more than fat , and it looks nicer too. You can see why we have dimples on our rear ends from this piture! HEHE

Now I am going to go do my exercises for today. I am also going to write my first article on "WATER" so watch for that later today!

Many Blessings,

Shelley

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PLEASE SUPPORT US - BUZZ UP AND ADD TO TECHNORATI