An eye opening experience

I decided to start measuring and trying to figure out the calorie breakdown of what I'm eating.

Actually, the first thing I decided to do was calculate my calorie needs. Then I added up what I thought was the calorie composition of what I was planning to eat. My history with counting calories has been based on a whole lot of guessing- both in measuring what I eat and in how many calories are in the foods I eat.

But today I decided I'd actually bust out the measuring cups and spoons and the nutrition guides on the internet to confirm what I was sure was true... I knew about how many calories I was eating.

Long story short, I was totally wrong. I thought my lunch was about 300 calories. Nope, more like 500. And dinner. I would have estimated it at 500 but it's more like 650-700. Adds up to more than 2000 really quick- even with no munching on junk. No wonder I've gained so much weight.

So rather than even start trying to calculate how many calories I should be eating in a day according to formulas, etc, I figured I'd better get a handle on how much I'm eating right now. That means looking up nutritional information and measuring what goes on my plate. All of it. No eyeballing.

Once I have an idea of how much I'm eating, I can start to make small cuts in portion size and changes in what I select to eat.

I'm still in shock, though. I really thought I was a health conscious person who "knew this stuff." Turns out I have a lot more learning to do.

Workout: 6mi on treadmill, 30 min swim
Challenge: 2 veg down, 1 to go at dinner. Tonight will be hard as far as resisting the sweet stuff at Bible study, but hopefully having to look my calorie counts in the face will help me say yes to socializing and no to junk food.

Sunday on film

Today has been all about movies, not so much about housework, which is what I should have been doing. Anyway, I saw two good ones this afternoon.

The first was Lars and the Real Girl. It was about a lonely man who falls in love with a life-sized doll. Hilarity ensures. The second was Sita Sings the Blues. You can learn more about this one and view it on the internet by clicking here.

In other news, I got out and ran this morning. 7 miles in a light drizzle. It felt wonderful to run outside. I'll try again tomorrow, but we snow again today so it will depend on what the roads look like. I still have no voice, and my lungs are kind of congested so I'm not running fast, but at least I'm running.

Challenge-related, I'm happy to report 3 servings of vegetables: stir fry vegetables at lunch at Noodles and Co. and then carrots dipped in hummus and salad with dinner. No sweets today, but I just plowed through some raisins that probably aren't doing me any favors Le sigh. Actually, I had planned to make cranberry orange bread this weekend, but I decided that wasn't in line with my goals so I refrained. Hopefully I ate fewer calories in raisins just now that I would have in cranberry orange bread.

Well, this daylight savings thing is weirding me out. It was bizarre to eat dinner while it was still light out. And I'm getting sleepy even though it's only 8pm, which was only 7pm yesterday.

Tomorrow will be my big challenge with the no sweets thing because it's life group meeting night, and the host always makes something tasty. But I'll have a good dinner and keep in mind that I'm there for reasons that have nothing to do with food.

All right, I'm checking out. Have a lovely Sunday evening, everyone.

I ate a carrot

I got in a "better than nothing" 6mi treadmill run this morning. The topics on CNN were 1.How to fix your resume to get a job before the apocalypse and 2.Chris Brown and Rhianna: What's up with that? It all seems to stupid now. Not that it didn't seem stupid then. Hoping for 6 or so tomorrow. Probably not outside because it's still supposed to be raining, but maybe I'll get lucky.

For the challenge, I'm checking my Saturday post off the list. No sweets so far, but this is ice cream night. I've had two servings of vegetables- one at lunch and some carrots with homemade hummus this afternoon.

I needed to do something this afternoon so I put together some hummus and more tikka masala for lunch next week. I'll portion it out and stick it in the freezer once it's cooled off. I guess I'll wait on making more yogurt because we might go to the bookstore tonight, and I won't be around to tend the crockpot.

Hope everyone is having a relaxing Saturday. Only one full week of work before we head to St. Louis. I'm really looking forward to that.

This counts for Friday!

So challenge day 1 didn't go quite as planned.... at least the posting part. This post doesn't really count for Friday, but it's going to be my Friday update, and I'll give a Saturday update later.

Here's the Friday summary:

Workout: None
Challenge: Failed

I felt pretty nasty yesterday so I didn't run.

Actually, I think making Friday my day off is the right way to go. Even though there are some convenient things about resting on Sunday, my body has been telling me week after week that it needs to rest on Friday. So that's going to be the plan going forward.

As for the challenge, I didn't have any sweets (unless you count the Clif bar, but I'm not, even though they are pretty sweet). I did not partake in the soft serve ice cream at the cafeteria, so we'll count that as a success.

I got in 2 servings of vegetables yesterday: the toppings of my sandwich and the innards of my sushi. Yes, lame, but they count. I wasn't super hungry yesterday.

And I didn't post. I spend most of my day at work fighting with SAS/GRAPH, and I went to bed at 7pm due to general fatigue. I couldn't even be bothered to go out and watch the new episode of What Not to Wear, so you know it was serious.

Not wanting to be a total Debbie Downer, I will share two highlights from yesterday: The temperature was in the 50s yesterday afternoon so I walked home from work to enjoy the sunshine, and D and I went out for Sushi, which is always a treat.

Okay... I'm digested. It's time to spend some quality time with the beast in the living room.

Crap Free Challange

In the spirit of all the challenges going around the internet right now- the Yoga Challenge, and the March Booty Buster Challenge -for example, I thought I'd like to try my own challenge.

At first I thought I had a creative idea, but I quickly realized there were plenty of people out there with the same goal (and their name is so much better than what I was going to call it): The Crap Free Challenge.

It's wonderfully simple in that you get to decide what crap needs to be removed from your diet (ahem, Girl Scout Cookies), and then you challenge yourself to actually remove said crap. I've read a few challenge lists, but most of them were pretty long and complicated. For mine, I'm going to stick with a No-S approach and pick my 3 biggest vices to start with. Honestly, my big 3 aren't so much about eliminating things as making it a goal to incorporate three new healthy habits.

So my BIG THREE are:

No sweets except ice cream on Saturday. I don't think this will be too hard except when we have our Bible study on Monday nights when there are always goodies. But luckily no one there is a pusher or will even notice if I don't take anything.

Eat three servings of three different kinds of vegetable every day. Even on the weekends. I have no problem getting in enough fruit. Veggies- and especially variety in veggies- not so much.

Blog every day about my workout and how the challenge is going. Sometimes I feel like I can't blog if I have nothing interesting to write about. But I shouldn't worry about that. (Did I just hear a collective sigh of boredom from all three people who actually read this thing?) Reinforcing the habit of posting is more important than what I actually post.

So why am I doing this??? I realized last night (as I was watching My Name is Earl, eating 1/2 a sleeve of Thin Mints) that I've developed an "I don't give a crap" (just going with the theme, people...) attitude this winter or maybe even as far back as the move. And I do care. And I do know I feel better when I eat more healthfully. And I know it takes mindfulness and practice.

With that in mind, here's the stats for today:

Workout: Upper body weights and 45 min spin class

Challenge:

No sweets so far.

I had a large serving of leftover Tikka Masala for lunch, which I'm counting as two servings of two different kinds of vegetables (there was cauliflower, zucchini, and carrots in the mix). That leaves one more serving for dinner- either a salad or veggies in pasta, depending on what I decide to make.

I don't feel super awesome right now. I have a bit of a cough and some fatigue that may or may not be related to 1.impending illness 2.the crazy weather 3.PMS (sorry, TMI) so I'm not supremely motivated to make an involved dinner (although I have made two really good dinners this week, I should get back to that...). But I refuse to go out tonight. I've made dinner every night since last Saturday, and I'm not breaking my streak until tomorrow, the designated night out.

Okay... enough blathering. Time to go home!

Outside FAIL

Well, I didn't run outside this morning. I had good intentions... I got all my warm stuff together and even drank a cup of coffee, but -3 with the windchill won out. Actually, I was all dressed and ready to go, but my GPS's battery was almost dead, and I took it as a sign that I should run on the treadmill. I'm not sure why that should be a sign that I need to stay inside. I have a regular watch, and I know how far the loop I run is. Oh well, it can't be winter forever, right? Right?

Workout:
Run- 5mi progressively faster for the first 45 min then a 5min cool down
Swim- 30min with 4x 200 swim 50 easy

YAY! For not being totally out of shape

I ran outside for the first time in weeks yesterday. It seemed like every time I tried to go out, something prevented me- freezing rain, 7 inches of new snow, icy roads, my own complacency- but not yesterday. It was cool and sunny with a bit of a breeze, and the roads were 95% ice-free. I couldn't ask for better on the last day of February.

The best part of my run was getting confirmation that I'm not totally out of shape. I run much slower on the treadmill than I do outside, and I was afraid that the first time out, I'd be slogging along at that same treadmill pace. My legs did feel a little weird when I first started, but I got in the groove and finished at an 8:50 ave pace. Not breaking any land-speed records, but that's a good pace for a general fitness run for me. I finished it off with 5x hill repeats running up the hill to our apartment complex.

Warming, rant: I don't disagree that doing all your running on the treadmill is not the way to succeed at road racing, but- coming from one very warm and one very dry climate- I never really understood how unpleasant and downright unsafe it could be to run outside during the winter here. For me it comes back to the fact that I want running to be enjoyable, and if I'm going to be miserable outside because it feels like it's -5 and there's ice all over the roads and sidewalks, I'm going to opt for the treadmill. Sure there are people out there toughing it out, but I've come to the conclusion that's not for me. And guess what?!? I biked, I strength trained, I ran intervals, and I did 329847 flights of stairs, and I'm not any slower than I was back in December. Take that, treadmill haters! Getting faster does not have to equal hating your running life for two plus months.

Okay, I feel better now.

But seriously, I do want to get outside more. Tomorrow will probably work because it's not supposed to get above freezing today. Unfortunately the weather forecast for the rest of the week has snow and rain on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. Plus the high during the day is above freezing while the overnight low is below freezing, which means really nasty ice on the sidewalks and roads. Can winter be over soon? Please.