January 2012
81 posts
Hard Work & Dedication
Yup, I am being cheesy & quoting Dolvett from the Biggest Loser. Last Monday I said that I would track every nibble & bite both on MyFitnessPal & Weight Watchers. I struggle portion control and I had hoped that tracking my food intake this way it would help me stay on track.
It was tedious at times but I am so worth the effort. I found that by tracking calories as well as points, I was making healthier choices. This tracking technique paid off as I lost 3.4 pounds this week which makes for a 81.2 pound loss in the past 16 months. While I did make healthier choices, I never felt deprived during the week. I also worked out 5 days this week.
My plan for this week: repeat what I did last week. I have my first 10K race on Superbowl Sunday & I am nervous about it because my left foot has been bothering me a bit. But I got some gel insoles which I used yesterday for the first time & they seemed to have helped.
Here’s hoping for another great week!
Do Life Challenge Week 4 review
Christy is my buddy for this week’s challenge & let me tell you how much she rocks. I mentioned earlier in the week that she has lost 76 pounds so far. That’s so awesome.
All this week she has been very motivating & I am so lucky that we paired up. One of my biggest struggles is motivation. She posted on her blog all these reasons why she didn’t want to work out which is something that I can totally relate to. However, she worked out and didn’t make any excuses. That motivates me as well. She’s consistently beating her Monday Mile time & seeing how far she has come along in this weight loss journey inspires me.
She has set five goals for this & next week & I know that she will accomplish them:
- Lose 2 more pounds.
- Track every day.
- Schedule my 10k walk, no matter how many times I have to ask my hubby to watch the kids.
- Up my water to 100 oz a day, that’s 4 of my favorite bottles.
- Get back to reviewing 4 good things I’ve done instead of guilt tripping myself!
She isn’t making any excuses and is not only trying to get healthy for her family but also for herself. Go Christy!
Fun times in the city
Today the weather was fantastic so I spent the day in SF with my mom & her best friend. We walked around the Embarcadero to AT&T Park (Giants Stadium) and we shared lots of laughs & yummy food.
If you ever come to SF & are a coffee fan, you must try Blue Bottle coffee & Pepple’s Donuts if you want a delicious vegan donut. It was my first time trying it and I am hooked. I had the salted caramel & it was perfect. We also stopped at a frozen yogurt place where they were shaving chocolate. Can you imagine how many calories are in that huge bar? For dinner, I had a brussels sprouts salad with caramelized onion, bacon, hard cooked egg and grilled chicken.
I tracked every single thing I ate and I did pretty well. I didn’t get a hard workout but we did walk a lot as my trusty Fitbit tells me. Overall it was a great day.
Tomorrow I am getting up early for a 6 mile walk. I got some gel insoles and I hope that they will help with the annoying pain I’ve been getting on my left foot.
Tracking
After I finished my workout last night, I was in my car tracking it on my Runkeeper app & I realized that I use a lot of tools to help me stay on track. I decided to share them with you. I will provide a link to my profile in case you want to add me.
Runkeeper - I use this app to track all of my walks on my iPhone. When I first started working out, I downloaded the Nike+ app on my iPhone but I could never get it to calibrate correctly. I decided to try Runkeeper & I’ve been happy ever since. It can track your walks as long as it has a GPS signal & I can also do a manual entry for my treadmill workouts. It also tracks other activities such as cycling, skiing & snowboarding.
DailyMile - oh how I wish that I could sync up my Runkeeper stats to DailyMile automatically. I like the interface for DailyMile a lot better than Runkeeper so I am tracking on both. DailyMile does sync up to Nike+ & Garmin devices. I also like that I can keep track of any upcoming races on it.
Fitbit - I got mine as a Christmas gift & I am so happy with it. It tracks my daily steps, miles traveled, calories burned & even my sleep habits. Pretty cool!
Fitocracy - I got an invite to this a while back but haven’t explored it too much. For every workout you do, you get a certain number of points & achievements. It’s basically a game to improve your fitness. Right now it’s invite only so if you want a invite, let me know.
MyFitnesspal - I’ve been using it to track my workouts and meals. You can build a profile & based on what results you want it will tell you how many calories you should consume daily.
Earndit - I don’t know how I heard about this rewards site but it’s pretty cool. I have my Runkeeper, Foursquare & Fitbit tied to it. For every activity I do, I get points. Those points get me rewards such as gift cards for energy bars, discounts at TheClymb, vitamins, shoes, apparel & basically things fitness related. It’s free to join & they have weekly challenges as well.
I’m also on Twitter which I don’t use for tracking per se but I can talk to a people who have the same interest as me. And yes, I am also on Facebook. I have a love/hate relationship to this site.
Seems like a lot but it doesn’t take a lot of time & I find it useful to see how far I’ve come from when I first started losing weight & working out.
Do Life Challenge: Week 4
By Wednesday, share five specific goals with each other that will be reachable by the end of week FIVE. 12 days.
Christy (noquithouse) is my buddy for this week’s (and I think next week as well) Do Life Challenge. She’s lost 76 pounds so far. How awesome is that! Definitely check her blog & cheer her on.
Here are my five specific goals from today through the end of week 5.
- Track my food every day both on WW & MFP.
- Work out 8 days out of the 11 days remaining.
- Organize my house. It’s chaotic right now.
- Perform one random act of kindness.
- Drink at least 64 oz of water a day.
“
If you want to be healthy, you need to take care of yourself!
As I say, it is all about the small choices we make every day.
Every day, every meal, every minute is about making the decision to be a healthier you.
” —Via notovernightThe most important thing in your diet, aside for your adherence to it, is whether it’s easy or not to follow. Keep it simple and stick to it to see good results.
that is really interesting! i always thought about weight watchers but the points system never really clicked with me … while i understand why they wanted to make some foods 0 points, i can’t see not “counting” anything i eat/drink that isn’t water
What I hope that I can get out of this experiment is the ability to be able to control my portions. Binging is a BIG issue for me even if it is on fruits & veggies. Even with 0 point food, you are supposed to eat until you are satisfied & not full. I haven’t been able to get a handle on that.
