Here I Am

Okay, first to answer the question that's on everyone's mind. (Well, everyone that is participating...) Last week I ended up with -16 points, mostly because I managed to gain about 4 lbs. I was really good up until Thursday, which was our annual pizza/chicken nuggets/strawberries/birthday cake shin-dig. So, I blew it that night. Friday we went out to a Japanese hibachi-style restaurant. I felt pretty good about the fact that my willpower kept me from allowing the chef to spray sake in my mouth, so I was pretty much done for as far as food goes. Then we had the weekend, which sucked, too. In addition to calories not-kept-track-of, I had a lot of salty foods, which did not help me lose weight, either.

This week had a better ending, but was about as bad overall. I was only vaguely conscious of my calorie intake, and only recorded my food intake on 1 or 2 days. But I did end up losing 1.4 lbs (mostly water, I'm sure), leaving me at 252.6 lbs. Better, right?

Now -- today. I'm on track to be well within my calorie range for today. I don't know if I'll get around to actually exercising tonight, but I'm going to give it a shot.

So, who won this week? It's looking like Eva's the winner by far, unless Rody's got a big surprise for us. Good luck this week, everybody!

Road may seem MIA...

But he's just a bit busy with work and school to keep up on adding his stats to the spreadsheet. He is, in fact, still a participant. He picked up a couple of GoWearFit (the Pharmanex version of the better-known BodyBugg) from work the other day. He was so excited to get them. I got more excited after seeing how it works. Unfortunately, we still need to enter in every bit we eat, portion sizes, etc. It does have a lot of brands and some take-out food already built in, but there always seems to be a bit of entry needed for stuff not on there.

Somehow, after seeing it add up the calories I use throughout the day I am more motivated to go through the bother of entering in the info for the food. I was happy to see that you can put in your favorite recipe and tell it the number of servings and it calculates everything for you. This is especially nice since most recipes' serving size is a little smaller when eating the food by itself (I don't often add salads and sides to the meals we have at home unless we have guests). Though I bet that would help meals to be more filling in a volumetric way versus a caloric way. Hm. I should reconsider my meal planning. Anyway, some other nice features to this little gadget is that it recognizes when you are sleeping versus just laying down. It measures not only your heartrate, but body temp and 'acceleration', or movement. Seems pretty accurate - like Saturday night it showed a nice solid blue bar for most of the night, while the last couple of nights have been choppy. I was for sure more rested this weekend than I have been the last couple nights. It calculates your 'sleep efficiency' based on the amount you actually sleep. It's nice to have the validation that I did or didn't sleep well on any given night. My only complaint is the software seems finicky. Seems like the driver for the device isn't always found on our computers by the website. Not sure if it's our computers of the website. Sometimes it's a matter of switching the browser to IE from Firefox or vice versa, or closing your session out and trying again. It's annoying. I blame it on slacker developers somewhere :)

So this is Road's method of tracking right now. I'll try to get it translated to the spreadsheet. He's just the mystery competitor right now.

Congrats to Eva for being the winner last week!!! I found this forum on some fun tips on when to find little ways to fit in an exercise here and there. The site has lots of workouts too, if you like to change things up. And how is it that Rick ended up in the negative???

Slowly but surely...

So yay to both Rick and Eva!!! Good work on gaining those points. I guess I really need to outline specifics for me to be evaluating myself against. I guess at this point, my goal is to do any amount of time dedicated to exercise. I was doing really good a few weeks back before our official contest. Weird eh? I do have to say that I have been really good this week about NOT eating out. And making more than just homemade goodies, (That's good for both me and Road), at least nothing since Sunday's late night cinnamon meringues that I made with Lex :) I am also trying to make sure that I eat some protein every 3 hours or so. I even ordered some protein bars that I used to always get back in my gym rat days. I usually read a health article, am I supposed to post a link on here to the info or summarize or just indicate it on my spreadsheet?

Here's a nice short slideshow of "Diet Mistakes". We are all probably aware of most of them, but I am visually inclined, so I liked it. And here is a sample recipe that has had a 'makeover', I always like to find cooking tips for making something a little healthier.

Good Day

Hey, everyone. I'm going to see if can do three things at once (let me know if you think this isn't fair...)

First: I'm encouraging you all. Good job, Eva, on yesterday's performance. I also noticed when I updated the spreadsheet that you were on, too. Hope you got some good stuff to put in. Rody, where are you? You're not going to let me win this week without even trying, are you?

Second: I'm blogging, so this counts for that. I stayed within my calorie range and walked for about 40 minutes. (I'm going to buy some new running shoes eventually -- maybe when I lose 10-15 lbs.) I also kept my goals: Recording everything I ate and eating 5 fruits/veggies. So, I maxed out on points today. Well, I maxed the things that have limits, anyway.

Third: I'm giving a review of www.sparkpeople.com -- the updated site. If you haven't seen this, it really is a great tool. It lets you keep track of diet, cardio and strength training exercise. It has a LOT of articles (many of which I will quote as I post my articles in the future). Best of all, it is completely free. Its diet tracker is one of the easiest I've seen. The database has thousands of entries, so when you go to enter what you ate, you'll probably find it pretty quickly. If you can't find it, you can add foods yourself, which then become searchable by other users. When you first register, you set goals for yourself, and it gives you guidelines as to how to accompish those goals. And for motivational articles, it is excellent. As I said before, I'm going to find some of my favorites and send you the links. One thing, though: You do have to be a member to read the articles. Did I mention that it is free?

GAME ON!!!

Okay, after much discussion, we finally got the rules worked out, and we started the contest this morning. So, here I am writing about how everything worked today.

First, my starting weight is 250.2 lbs. I overshot my calorie intake by about 200 calories, entirely because I didn't plan well. I didn't plan breakfast well enough, so I had a granola bar. I didn't plan snacks well, so when I got hungrier than usual earlier than usual (see breakfast), I ended up going to the convenience store (conveniently located behind my building) and buying snacks. (I did manage to get trail mix, rather than Doritos, at least.) Finally, for lunch, I didn't plan anything at all, so when MB was at McDonald's with the kids, I had her pick up a burger and fries for me. (I think this one, by itself, pushed me over the edge easily -- even though I was relatively "good.")

I did OK in exercise. I pushed Aren on his bike (and ran along next to him) for about 15 minutes, and later on tonight (after the Amazing Whiny Baby goes to bed), I'm going to go on a walk for about 40 minutes.

How did you guys do?

Ice Cream for Breakfast!

Yes, I know this blog is all about me trying to become more fit, and that a big part of that is trying to eat healthy.

But every now and then, you just need to forget about it -- for a good cause.

When Aren went on his Make-A-Wish trip a few years ago, we stayed at Give Kids the World Village, which is dedicated entirely to children with life-threatening illnesses. Because it is all about, well, giving kids the world, kids who may not make it much longer (some have passed away just weeks after their trips), kids are encouraged to do things they would not get away with normally. The prime example of this is the Ice Cream Palace, which serves ice cream (free of charge) from 7:30 AM to 9:30 PM.

Tomorrow is Founder's day at Give Kids the World, so everyone with even a tangential relationship to the place is encouraged to eat ice cream for breakfast. Now, to be completely honest, the thought actually makes me a bit ill. I'm really more of an "eggs and bacon" kind of guy. Or if I really want something sweet, I'll have a pancake, or an english muffin with jam.

But for GKTW, and for the I will make the sacrifice.