Day ... something or other

Well, exercising and eating normal (but healthy) didn't work for me. I felt sick almost the entire time, could rarely exercise, and constantly craved the grainy white stuff in various forms. My weight went up about 10 pounds, last I checked.

So I'm back on the low carb train as of 2 days ago, sans hCG still. I slept so good last night, and woke up feeling healthy and good. I'm not watching calories too closely, but being careful of what I eat and how much. Only one cup of strawberries per day for fruit, and always with protein or fat to slow it down. Low calorie proteins such as eggs, chicken sausage, and smoked salmon. Some cottage cheese, no more than a big mouthful of milk a few times per day. And as much veggies as I can force myself to eat.

I also researched wine in preparation of making a white wine sauce for dinner, and found that it has almost no carbs. Yay! It does have about 100 calories per half cup, but it sounds like the body has to burn some extra calories to process the alcohol. It also -lowers- blood sugar. I'm planning to buy some Pinot Gris and drink half a cup twice a day. I should be careful though, not to drop my blood sugar -too- low. Maybe it would help offset sugar rushes I get from fruit .... mmm, wine and strawberries.

Today I ate 2 fried eggs, 1 spinach cake, 6 chicken sausages (45 cal each), 1 cup strawberries, 2 tbsp peanut butter, a little milk, and chicken and mushrooms in a white wine sauce over tofu-shirataki noodles. It adds up to between 900 and 1000 calories. I'll boil up some eggs tomorrow so I can forego the oil calories :-P

Day 7

227.8, rowr!

I did an hour on my legs yesterday, which meant 6 sets each of 5 different exercises, then some DDR. Eating was bad, about 600 calories over goal ... eep! I wasn't feeling hungry like I would if doing exercise on 1500 calories, and I wasn't feeling blood-sugar induced cravings ... more like my body felt tired out and I wanted to eat to feel better. I may have come down with a cold though. My nose started running last night and got some congestion this morning. Ugh.

Today's plan is still for 1800 calories and 30-60 minutes of DDR. But if I'm feeling icky today I'll just take it easy I think. A cold usually means my asthma gets pretty upset due to the viral infection, and even walking up a flight of stairs gets me out of breath. I guess I'll find out :P

Day 6

228.2. Yay! Probably water retention yesterday, so I'll be extra careful about my water consumption. I did abs and arms yesterday for about an hour, and 10 minutes of DDR. But my abs just feel slightly sore today instead of uber sore like they did Tuesday after my last abs workout. Probably a good thing ... I did some longer sets at the end yesterday, when I felt like I still had the strength for it.

Eating was good ... a little fruit, some veggies from Lean Cuisine, protein, all whole grains, a couple servings of dairy. Calories were 20 over my goal of 1800, which is fine by me.

My plan for today is to do a full hour of legs, then 10 minutes of DDR. Last time 3 sets of 12 reps each for 4 leg exercises only took half an hour, and I don't think that was enough of a workout. So I'll do extra sets of everything. My food schedule and content seems to be working very well for both avoiding hunger and losing weight, so I'm not changing it.

Day 5

229.2. I was down to 228.8 yesterday, then back up today. I went over about 90 calories yesterday, so maybe that's the cause. My tuesday/friday workout isn't as rigorous as other days either, so maybe I'll add more sets or a long walk/run with the dog.

Stayed on target yesterday (I think) despite a trip to an Italian restaurant. I had a pasta with a very thin white wine sauce .... It added some flavor but not much calories I think. Tuesday I did legs but my knees don't like lunges so those are off the list. Half an hour of DDR Wednesday. Today's plan is 3 sets of 8 exercises for arms and abs, which took over an hour last time I did them. At least abs are almost done being sore from Monday :P

Day 3

229.2 pounds. Down nearly 2 pounds from 2 days ago. I had three eggs and a cup of cereal and a cup of almond milk for breakfast for about 400 calories. It felt like too much food in my stomach though, so I think I'll aim for 300 for breakfast and 300 for mid-morning snack or lunch.

My first real workout went pretty well. I found a website listing a lot of home exercises that target different body parts, and watched youtube videos of the ones I didn't know how to do. The breathing in an the easy part and out on the hard part took some focus, but generally went well. I had a lot of trouble doing the plank, only able to hold it for 15 seconds, and triceps dip, but the rest were doable, if hard. I used 3 pound free weights in each hand for bench presses, but they were too light for bicep curls so I'll use the 5 pound ones for that in the future. It took me about 75 minutes to do 3 sets of 12 reps for each of 8 exercises, doing one set of each exercise before starting over. My abs are VERY sore today :P

My aunt's puppy wanted to help of course ... after using a cushion for my knees to do girl pushups, she promptly plopped down on the middle of it and curled up. She's way too cute for her own good. Then I couldn't find the free weights when I was done ... looked everywhere, then found them on the couch under the puppy ... she'd nudged the blanket over them then laid down :P Oh, and I got lots of slobbery encouragement when laying on my back to do crunches. Ewww.

My eating was pretty on track ... good combo of meats, veggies, and whole grains. I planned for dinner out and a small hot fudge sundae for dessert, and got it in without exceeding my calorie allowance or feeling hungry. Yay! I researched a couple of my favorite dishes ahead of time to see how many calories I would be consuming and have left over for dessert. I timed my workout to end around snack time, since a small snack then can help with muscle repair and/or energy ... I don't think I work out hard enough to NEED it then, but since I have a 200 calorie snack scheduled for that time of day anyhow, I might as well eat it when it has the potential to be the most useful.

So today's plan is legs (yesterday was abs & arms, I might have mis-posted), with a little cardio at the end, and 1800 calories. Eventually I'd like to do longer work outs, but my abs are indicating that 75 minutes of strength training is quite enough for them.

Day 2 - Normal diet

Well, the last time or 2 I tried hCG it wasn't helping enough with the hunger, like it did the first time. So I'm giving ye ol' exercise and diet routine a try. Will be doing 3 sets of various exercises twice each throughout the week, and on the seventh day I shall rest! Previous diets had me sticking to 1500 calories even with exercise when I felt like it, which probably wasn't a good thing. Based on various calculations from online sources, I think I should be doing 1800 on workout days, and 1500 on rest days. But I'll keep poking around online to see what I can find that says WHY it should be 1800 versus 1600, etc.

So food will stay pretty healthy/natural ... unprocessed, whole grains, avoiding nasty preservatives, keep sugars lowish and spread out. One site said that someone trying to lose weight by working out needs to eat about 1 gram of protein per day per pound of current weight. Yesterday that was 231.0 (had a month of vacation, including a week on a cruise), and today it is .... 229.8.

What did I do yesterday to lose? Not a lot - it was my day of rest! I aimed for 1500 calories and ate 1750, mostly in a late evening hunger fest. I think I might try for a 700 calorie dinner instead of 500 calories then a 200 calorie dessert/snack a couple hours later. Apparently my stomach likes to get stuffed at night, even though it's happy spreading the calories out earlier in the day. I'll give that a try tonight. I went for an unplanned walk with my mom and the puppy, including a short run so the dog could sprint ... she loves that :-) But that could have caused the extra hunger I suppose.

Today's plan is to eat 1800 calories, 230 * 4 of that from protein. That comes out to 920 protein calories, almost exactly half of what I should be eating today. Maybe that much protein is only used when doing several hours of working out? No idea! Must research more. Today I'll be doing lower body strength training and a bit of cardio ... maybe 10 minutes of cardio to every 50-60 minutes of strength training? I'll be doing it all at home because I hate gyms. My lower body training will include squats, inner thigh lifts, outer thigh lifts, calf raises, lunges, and kickbacks. I'll be doing 12 reps per set, then moving on to a different exercise, then cycling back through the exercises as long as my ickle muscles can handle it. My goal is a least one hour of exercising today.

Day 336

216.8. Yay! Some of it might be dehydration ... it was 102 fahrenheit yesterday :-( I tried to drink oodles, but probably dried out over night with the heat and my fan running nonstop. Anyhow, I'm liking that number, especially since I've been eating homemade fat-free blueberry ice cream with splenda the past couple days. Going to make another batch this morning, as we'll probably hit 100 or thereabouts today. I'll take half to my parents this evening though, since they're puppysitting for me and my aunt while we do (air-conditioned) dinner and a movie. We don't want to leave the puppy home alone in this heat. Anyhow, I used too much splenda for the first batch of blueberry ice cream, will try none or very little with this batch.