Week 24: Day 6: Work Events & Good Friends

I'm down 4 lbs from last week! This is good but not as good as I was hoping...so what went wrong?

Last week was the Employee Assistance Program Week so don't you think this should have helped me? Their idea of assisting the employees was by giving us muffins & Belgian Waffles first thing Monday morning and then cake Thursday afternoon! My problem is my addiction to carbohydrates (donuts, baked goods, chocolate etc.) so where they not helping me with this issue? I find it funny that these work place help programs encourage unhealthy eating. I guess they know that unhealthy food is a comfort to me!

The second event was a dinner at our good friends place. They are vegetarian and they're always making good food...we love visiting them! They know we're trying to lose weight so they always have a challenge on their hands when we come because I'm also a bit lactose intolerant so large amounts of dairy products our out of the picture. If I can keep to small portions then a visit to their place is OK but the food is always so darn good! We have decided we will not be sacrificing these dinner parties with our friends so I will just have to work harder to keep the portions smaller and drink more water while we're there.

These two minor brakes in my program caused me to get cravings at least 2 times last week in the evening. I had to have an extra chocolate protein shake on those nights. This extra food didn't make me gain weight overall but it did slow my loss this week.

I have one major goal for this next week and that's to get my food journal done everyday so they have a look at it next week. This may be able to help me out a bit so they can give me some tips. They're already a little worried about me because I'm not eating a variety of meals and the meals I'm eating are simple. Keeping the meals simple and the same is important so I can have continuity in my daily tasks because of my personality.

Have a great day!
-Ian

Week 2 - Day 4: 5000 Steps

 So I wanted to tell you about the exercise the program is having us do…not much right now.

For the first week they didn’t want us doing much at all as we did the detox phase of the program. This is because after a day or two we would feel tired and possibly have headaches or a foggy brain. The toxins in our bodies were being released at this point helping to improve our liver function and the function of our body in general. They really stressed the need to drink a lot of water during this phase to help flush our systems.

Not really a fun time and certainly not a good time to begin a hard core exercise routine. I spent too much time trying not to give in to my chocolate and ice cream addictions in no way would I have had the ability to concentrate on exercise.

This week as we started phase to we started taking metabolism boosting vitamins, we got pedometers and a Yoga DVD. The vitamins are giving us our energy back thank goodness! They didn’t tell us to start using the Yoga DVD yet but they did tell us to use the pedometers.

My pedometer reading today!

5000 steps per day is the first goal they gave us. Sounds like I lot and my wife though she would have trouble getting to that but I thought it wouldn’t really be that hard. Well it turns out my wife is getting 6000 to 7000 steps per day easy making me look very bad. I’m barely getting over 4000 steps on days we don’t go shopping and just under 5000 on shopping days.

I have decided I need to add some extra steps somehow:

• Short walk a lunch time
• Short walk during my 15min brakes
• Short walk right after work because I have about 5-10min I have to kill so I don’t show up to soon to pick up my wife from her work.

If anyone has any simple ideas please post a comment!

Today I feel good but at our visit to the clinic today I only lost 1lbs and my wife stayed the same. I think maybe it’s our activity level and maybe a few small changes we can make in our food. I’m trying to avoid any changes to our food so more activity would be better.

Have a great day,

Ian