An Interesting Day One

Hi everyone! So how was the first day of your official Monday start to your resolutions? I'm going to begin today with a statement: If you started your "resolution" to lose weight, please please realize that weight loss is not quick and again, it is not easy. To lose weight in a healthy way and to more importantly keep it off, you should only be losing 1-2 pounds per week (maybe a little more if you have a substantial amount to lose). Slow and steady wins the weight loss battle.

You are also NOT on a DIET. Don't ever ever utter that word. Again, you are NOT on a diet! "Diet" is a 4-letter word and we all know what category of the English language that can be put in! Eating healthy and exercise is a life-style change. I know it sounds cliche, but it's true and if you don't have that mindset from the beginning, you are setting yourself up for failure. Plain and simple. All diets fail, yes, all diets fail over the long run, but life-style changes have long lasting impact and success!

With that said, my day one was...well...interesting. Matt & I spent the majority of the night in the ER with Nicholas as his breathing was simply put: not normal. This was nothing new for our little guy who, whenever he gets sick, ends up needing a nebulizer treatment. Being concerned though, we brought him in and the verdict was pneumonia. We caught it very quick though and he is going to be A-OK! Praise God!

I was sitting there in the ER watching the clock tick by and while my baby was sleeping and the clock struck 11:00 PM I started thinking about a lot of things, but one of them was "ugggghhhh I so do NOT want to do my workout tomorrow. I'm exhausted, I'm not going to sleep tonight, I haven't had a chance to prepare my meals for tomorrow, I'll just start on Tuesday." THEN I remembered this blog and the fact that I have to stop making my lame (because that is what they are) lame excuses! I've made all the excuses in the past on my weight loss journey, (much like the health insurance commercial full of excuses as to why the couple couldn't fit in their exercise)...I have actually left the gym because I forgot a hair elastic!

Raise your hand (really...raise your hand) if you have set your alarm with every intention of going to the gym early and you keep hitting snooze and you say to yourself, "Ohhhh....I'll just do it tonight." Zzzzzzzzzzzz and you go back to sleep. Keep your hand up if you don't end up actually working in that workout at the end of the day.

Okay, you can put your hand down now. Think to yourself; how did you feel when you made those excuses? I can tell you how I feel when I make excuses for not working out. I feel like a fat blob of flesh (to put it bluntly). I feel like I let myself down. I feel lazy and I feel disappointed. Most importantly though, those bad feelings sometimes carry over to the next day and the next day and the next day and then what.........I (you) end up right where I (you) started. It then becomes Friday, the weekend is upon me (you), I (you) certainly aren't going to "get back on the wagon" during the weekend so you say what? "I'LL START AGAIN ON MONDAY!" Well, now is the time to stop that thinking!

Be like Nike and "just do it"! I (and you will) always feel so accomplished, successful, amazing, energized, etc...every single time I (you) finish my (your) workout! You will feel so refreshed and accomplished and that feeling my friends is addicting. You will succeed and when you start to see the pounds melting off, you will be PROUD!
So, to track my calories I use an online program called Calorie King. You can go to www.calorieking.com for all the info you'll need!

I have been using Calorie King for a number of years (minus the 41 weeks I was pregnant and the year after) and when I use it, it works! It's simple simple simple. There is a small fee for this site, but there are others out there like Sparkpeople that are free. You log in your food AND the portions for the day. (I do it the night before so that I don't make excuses for not doing it the next day.) You also log your exercise for the day. Before you even start the tracking on the site, they ask you a myriad of questions so that they can tell you how many you should eat to get to your goal because everyone is different. Did I mention that it works!

I entered my "stats" and to get to my goal I am able to eat 1,350 calories a day. When I exercise I can "eat back" the calories I burned. It works because I am still at a caloric deficit. Many of you may be thinking that 1,350 is a lot, but trust me...it's not hard to get there!

Did you know that a SMALL caramel swirl nonfat latte from DD has 180 calories!? Or have you ever actually measured on a food scale how small 1 portion of pasta is? It's amazing what you realize when you start measuring your portions instead of just thinking you know what a portion is. It was a huge wake-up call for me. Portions portions portions are key! You can eat "healthy", but what do your portions look like? Are they too big, too small? You won't really know until you start to log it all in and monitor what you're eating. Don't say you don't have time, because it literally only takes 10 minutes to do it the night before and once you get in your groove of doing it, it becomes second nature and part of your routine. It is SO worth it!

Also, again, I am not a Nutritionist, but I can tell you what has worked for me. Eat a carb and a protein at every meal and eat balanced meals with snacks throughout the day. You should be eating 5 to 6 times a day! I can hear the excuses coming into your head now. "Well, I don't have tiimmmeeee to eat 5 or 6 times a day." Or, "I can't eat that much/I can't eat that little." Or, "I like my wine!" Okay here are my answers, you do have the time to prepare your food the night before so you don't have an excuse. You can eat that much/that little because if you want to succeed you will and you can still have your serving of wine, just log it into your diary and you will succeed. I am NOT a believer of depriving yourself from things that you enjoy because the minute you do that, you're going to want it more. (It's like a child...tell them not to do something and they just want to do it even more. Right?!)

Okay, so what did I eat today and did I exercise??

Here is my meal plan for today:

• Early Morning: 12 ounces brewed coffee, 1/4 c fat free milk, 2 sugar packets-48 calories
• Breakfast: Fiber One whole wheat english muffin-100 calories, 1 whole egg with the yolk-54 calories, 3 additional egg whites only (51 calories), 1/2 ounce slice Boar's Head american cheese (50 calories) Total for breakfast: 256
  
• Morning Snack: Trader Joe's granola bar-150 calories
• Lunch: Organic Amy's black bean vegetable burrito-280 calories and 1 small apple-77 calories Total for lunch: 357
  
• Afternoon Snack: Wallaby organic strawberry yogurt (150 calories) mixed with 1 teaspoon chia seeds (35 calories) Total: 185
  
• Dinner: 1 serving (3 ounces) 85% lean ground veal burger with some spices-146 calories with purred cauliflower-10 ounces is 71 calories and cannellini beans- 1/2 cup is 100 calories as a side. Total for dinner: 327 calories
• And yes I will have a glass of pinot noir (5 oz-yes I measure) during the premier of The Bachelor-Calories-117
  

Total for the day: 1440 calories! :) Because I did my exercise today I am well within my caloric needs.

....and yes, I did exercise! Because I had today off from work, I am blessed to be home with Nicholas. When he took his nap at 9:30 this morning I did my first day of Insanity which was just the "fit test". It took 25 minutes with the warm up, exercises, breaks between exercises and the cool down. However, when I logged my exercise in to my diary I only counted 8 minutes of Insanity because there were only 8 exercises for 1 minute each. The rest was not really calorie burning in my opinion, so I did not "count" it towards calories burned. I burned approximately 88 calories doing this. (The rest of the Insanity workouts will NOT be like this; they will be much more intense.) So, when Matt got home, I got on the treadmill for 25 minutes. I ran for 5 minutes, paused the machine and did 12 pushups, got back on, ran for 5 minutes, etc...and burned about 225 calories.

*Note: the most accurate way to see what you as an individual are burning when you work out is to purchase a good heart rate monitor with a watch that reads the calories. They aren't cheap, but if you want to know then it's worth it! I hate to burst your bubbles, but when you're on the cardio machines, they have a "calories burned" display right? Well, again, I hate to tell you this, but those machines OVER estimate the calories burned by about 20%! So, if it says that you burned 800 calories in the hour you were on the elliptical, you really probably only burned 640 at the most and if you were reading a magazine while you did it, it's probably a lot less.:)

Honestly, you don't need to be working out for an hour a day. As a general rule, you should get 30 minutes a day. If you set your goals too high at getting in an hour a day and then one day you don't do an hour, you're setting yourself up for disappointment and then you're more likely to quit. I've been there, I've done that and I don't want you to do the same thing.

So that's it for today...I hope you come back tomorrow for more:) Please feel free to leave comments; I'd love to hear from you!

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” – Jim Rohn