With a new year, I'm starting over. I feel a little more motivated this time and I've changed things up a bit.
I'm still using MyFitnessPal.com as my food/exercise tracker and I'm trying to be a little more active in their online community. There are some epic success stories there and that helps. Today, I read a post from a guy that is in his 5th year of maintenance after a 120lb loss. Reading stuff like that helps.
Also, I put out a plea on Facebook, looking for a gym buddy. I still want to do it at my home, with the equipment I have set up so I was hoping that I could find someone willing to come to my house at least 3 times a week. My oldest nephew stepped up to the plate. Well actually, my oldest nephew's fiancee pushed him to the plate! They are getting married in May and he wants to look good for his wedding and wanted to start some sort of exercise program. We started this week and agreed on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. Eventually, I want to work myself up to doing some sort of cardio every day of the week and strength training 3x but for right now, my goal is to do strength and cardio 3x a week, every week for the rest of the month. It's much easier with a gym buddy!
I know it's hard for two people to meet consistently that often, but I'm hoping we can for at least 2 or 3 weeks without missing a day. By that time I hope to be seeing some good results and be motivated to go up and exercise by myself even if he gets tied up for a day and I hope he's able to do the same if I can't make it.
The next biggest challenge is packing my breakfast and lunch the night before. I've said it before, it's too hard to accurately count calories when you're not the one doing the cooking. I can get healthy meals in our cafeteria at work, they offer egg whites, turkey sausage, fresh fruit and yogurt for breakfast and have soup, a salad bar, a fish entree, turkey burgers, veggie burgers and fresh vegetables for lunch. There are two problems with that though, first it's expensive. I can easily spend between $15 and $20 a day on breakfast and lunch. An egg white omelet with a piece of whole wheat toast and a glass of iced tea is $7. A salad with tuna or chicken will run between $8 and $9. An entree or burger with a side runs around $7. Second, I have no clue of the calorie count. I don't know how much butter or oil the guy lays down to saute the vegetables for the omelet or cook the egg. I don't know how many calories are in their house-made light salad dressings. I could take a reasonable guess and that's fine every once in a while, but not on a daily basis.
It's much easier if I measure and pack my own. I packed it or cooked it and I know exactly how much fat I put in. To that end, my wife discovered a great product. A desktop crockpot. It holds 20 ounces of food in a stainless steel container that fits inside a mini crockpot. The unit is designed to heat food to 165 degrees, so you can't cook with it, but it is great for heating lunches! The unit has a screw down lid so no food odors escape and I don't disturb my cube-mates. At 165 degrees, the food doesn't cook, so it doesn't dry out. Yesterday I chopped up a pre-grilled chicken breast and tossed it in with a pack of frozen Green Giant mixed vegetables and cheese sauce. I plugged it in at 8:00 and at 11:30 I had a hot lunch, no line for the microwave and only 230 calories. Since the food container is steel it cleaned right up. Today I have left-over spaghetti reheating. My goal for January is to pack my breakfast and lunch 9 days out of every 10.
So two goals for January. Exercise 3x a week and pack lunch 18 out of 20 workdays.
On January 2nd I weighed in at 370.6 pounds
On January 7th I weighed in at 367.6 pounds
3lbs lost so far.
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