Change is Good

We've decided to change some things up a bit, starting this week, which led to changing things up a bit more...starting from now until we change things up again.

We were going to do a workout schedule of every other day (eg. M W F Su Tu Th Sa...) but the funny thing is...we kinda like the gym (how sad that I've become one of those people.)  So gym schedule has changed to Su, Tu, Th, Sa - which will be great this week, but will be a bit hard next week while we are in Pacific Grove and Santa Cruz ... and also the week of the Family Reunion.  We figured that next week, though, we would make a HUGE effort to get to the Monterey Sports Center twice next week (as well as drag my mom with us) and we are looking for walking buddies while in Oregon...bring your walking shoes.

Yesterday was the same ol'...we did 40 min on the treadmill and 35 on the elliptical trainer...I am SO enjoying ditching the bike.  75 minutes never went so fast.  We've decided that we are going to start adding the weights portion of the workout when we return from Oregon...as vacation week with be our two month marker.

Not much going on...going to head out to the library to pick up the books on volumetrics to read more about what my aunt Amy was talking about...I also need to review this other book that I...well...I'll talk more about it later.

We had an artichoke for lunch today...mmmm....forgot how much I LOVE artichokes.  If anyone wants us to bring some back from Castroville, let us know.  Good in fiber, calories, not a lot of sodium (and I do love them with mayo, but I gave myself 2 servings of mayo and only used 1...so, that's good).

We've learned a couple of things so far this week.

1. We intake entirely too much sodium, but it is not completely our fault.  I have never realized how much sodium is in most processed things.  We made pasta for lunch yesterday and the S&W organic tomato sauce has 340 mg of sodium per 1/4 cup.  So, I need to go through my big Martha Stewart book and learn how to make some of this stuff myself to hopefully cut back on sodium.

2. We took this personal diet evaluator on WebMD and given my age, weight, height, what I'm looking for, etc., I can eat 3065 calories a day to maintain my weight, reduce it by 777 calories per day through diet and/or exercise (which is what they calculated as my deficit if I want to lose 20 lbs in the next 90 days) to lose a pound a week.  That is insane!!  Yesterday I burnt off almost 700 calories at the gym and still barely ate 2200 calories, which is my on-day goal.  Its not like I was hungry, I just chose better.  So, I don't know what to think of this evaluator...but it has said similar things to other sites I've calculated from, which leads me to find some truth in it.

Anyway, we are off.  Hopefully the day stays relatively rain free so we can walk the dogs soon.

Tried To Be Good...It Didn't Really Happen

So...yeah.  That's pretty much the day in a nutshell.  I'll give you the slightly abridged version also.

Got up...breakfast...did some Wii Fit.  Tried out the new feature where you tell it what you want to work on and it gives you 3 things to do to focus on it.  The one I built for myself is a little more intense though.  I might stick to it on the off days.  Had a light lunch and an afternoon smoothie...and that's where it kinda went downhill from there.

We were just going to have a light dinner, some cereal and fruit...but the want to be bad sort of overwhelmed us this evening...once again, you see the pizza, you want the pizza.  Now, today is one of our off days (on days - gym; off days - dog walks), so the calories for today that we gave ourselves are lower.  For me, for on days I chose 2150 calories (based on what i calculated from the Mifflin-St Jeor formula) and 1800 calories for off days (Kurt chose 2200 and 1900 calories respectively.)

So because of a decent morning we had a little wiggle room, and for 45 minutes we discussed and researched what we could get away with for pizza (and steak fries, because I love their steak fries) and still not go over too much (keep in mind, we are only talking about calories...fats, sodium, carbs, etc. - we're not even considering those anymore)...and with the order of a small cheese pizza and a side order of fries, we decided today would be a cheat day.

It was fabulous!!

At this point, we both are about 800 calories over our allotment for today...which is kinda sucky...but we knew what we were doing, we thought about it and chose it - and that's one of the differences between before and now.  Before, there was no hesitation.  So we're growing :P

We did take the dogs for a ±1.6 mile walk about and hour and a half after dinner...which at least burned about a quarter of what we were over today...and tomorrow will just have to be a new day.

Anyway, more tomorrow of course. Amy, thanks for the link...we will definitely take a look at it and see if it'll work for us.