Week 23, Day 7: The Wagon & Homestead

So...it's been some time! I messed up the title and said it was week 27 when it was only week 23 now the link to this post is going to be all funny!

We bought a new house and in all the confusion we fell off the wagon!

I had my first weigh in in about 2 months yesterday and I gained back 16lbs. Now this made me only a little sad considering that I had lost about 50lbs before falling off the wagon. As of this post I have been back on the plan for just over 2 weeks and lost at least 3lbs already!

The new house has stairs that our apartment didn't have so that's some extra exercise I'm getting while trying real hard to get home renovations done. Turns out I'm not a plumber!

All in all I'm back in a good place after getting the fast food and chocolate cravings/binges out of the way for the last 2 months. Eating out also does a real number on your budget!

I have decided to make the plan as easy as I can even though I know this may cause a plateau by eating the same meals everyday. All my meals are as balanced (1/3 carbs, 1/3 protein, 1/3 healthy fats) as I can make to help prevent cravings. Each snack is about 300 calories and each meal is only about 400-500 calories for about 1,800 to 2,000 calories per day. With my BMR at about 2950 right now 2,000 calories should allow me to lose about a pound each day! Also, I'm taking the vitamins supplied by the program...everyone should at least take a multi-vitamin everyday. My new basic menu is as follows:

Breakfast 6:30am:
Protein Shake - 1-3 scoops protein powder, 1 teaspoon flax oil, 1/2 cup soy or almond milk, 4-8 ice cubes & 1/3 cup frozen berries or 1 tablespoon coco powder NOTE: You will not need as many ice cubes if you're using berries!

Morning Snack 9:30am:
1 medium apple, 2 ounces of cheese, 10 almonds

Lunch 12noon:
6-8 ounces of protein normally skinless chicken breast, 1-2 cups frozen mixed veggies

Afternoon Snack 3pm:
1 medium apple, 2 ounces of cheese, 10 almond

Supper 6pm:
6-10 ounces of protein normally chicken, pork chops or steak, 1-2 cups fozen mixed veggies, 1-2 cups some other fresh veggies

Late Night Snack 8pm:
Protein Shake - 1-3 scoops protein powder, 1 teaspoon flax oil, 1/2 cup WATER, 4-8 ice cubes & 1-2 tablespoons coco powder. No soy or almond milk to reduce the carbs but still helps my chocolate cravings.

I will adjust my basic diet as need be to stimulate weight loss...this may even mean having a cheat day every few weeks to help reset my body.

And AND I will also try to hit my goal of 10,000 steps each day but I think this will be easy if I'm still doing renovations around the house!

-Ian

Week 4 Day 5: 8813

I'm excited this week because I'm getting new found energy and just a little ambition to do things. Don't get me wrong I will always love movies and video games but now I feel like I can start doing other things. Now this is just a feeling...getting up and doing things is still a mental fight.

Some fights I'm winning this week are: 2 lunch time walks, 22 to 24 cups of water per day, new hole on my belt.

Because of my first lunch time walk I got a new personal best steps in one day 8813! It really didn't seem that hard to do that much walking. I'm already thinking of working to 10000 steps.

On our Wednesday visit to the weight loss clinic I was informed that for my size I should be drinking at least 22 cups of water per day. That's over 5 L man this has been a challenge both for drinking and pee breaks! After upping the water intake over 3 days I lost 2 more pounds so I can't really complain.

Making the new hole so my belt was smaller was fun! This little win made me feel really good...because my jeans were beginning to slide down. Don't worry, Ethel didn't see anything!

I have decided to start tracking my Body Mass Index (BMI) as well. It can't hurt to track something else. So check out the stats page to see updates for that. Also, you can find some helpful links to Wikipedia to help you understand BMI and Body Fat Percentage.

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