Week 2

As I posted earlier, I had some trouble waking up in order to exercise.  I've moved my alarm clock and have also set the timer on the t.v. to turn on.  I think it'll definitely help.  Yesterday was the first morning with the new set up.  I should also add that I always set my alarm a little early and plan to hit the snooze button twice just to kind of ease into the day.  Yesterday at 5:00 am the alarm went off (I also changed it from the radio to that annoying beeping noise), I got up, hit snooze and crawled back in bed.  I did the same thing the next time it went off and I was annoyed enough to know that I'd stay up when it went off for the third time.  I planned on getting up late this morning, but it worked equally well at 6:00.  I only exercised early 2 days this week, so I'm going to shoot for 4 days next week.

I like my treadmill.  It's comfortable to walk on and the controls are easy to use.  I consider it to be a mid-range unit.  We purchased it new earlier in the year and it has a few bells and whistles.  It works well and I'm pleased with most of it.  One thing I'm not pleased with, and this is a feature on most every piece of aerobic equipment that I've seen, is the calorie counter.  What a completely useless and discouraging feature!  I need to see if there is an available view that doesn't show calories burned.

Think about it.  I spend 30 minutes walking on the treadmill, increasing my heart rate, sweating, breathing heavy and it barely covers the calories in the 2 tbsp of peanut butter that I'll spread on my english muffin.  I realize that there are many more long term benefits to regular exercise other than the immediate calorie burn and those benifits aren't exactly measurable.  But what could be more discouraging to a person trying to lose weight? 

A person makes the decision to change, does their first work out and realizes that they've burned off enough calories to cover a grape.  Really?  That's going to motivate them to continue?  Especially on day 2 or 3 when they're a little sore?  I know because I've had that internal struggle in the past.  I realize now that the exercise builds muscle which raises my BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate - or the calories my body uses through out the day just keeping me alive) so I burn more calories through out the day.  It improves circulation, will lower my blood pressure, etc...  But I didn't always know that and it was disappointing the first time I calculated the calories burned. 

We need to stop worrying about calories burned.  I know some diet plans use exercise as an incentive to eat extra food, but I think that's counter productive.  I need to get to the point that exercise is just something I do, like brushing my teeth or taking a shower. 

If your actually reading this and also trying to make a change, forget about calculating the calories your burning!  Unplug, turn off or put a piece of tape over the calorie counter.  Don't go to a website and try and calculate a number.  Work out hard enough that your breathing hard and your heart rate is up.  Eventually everything else will fall into place.

I had some struggles this week and a couple days of feasting, but I still lost .8 pounds this week. 

Starting weight: 362
Last week's weight:  360.8
This week's weight:  360.0
Loss for the week:  .8
Total loss: 2 lbs