The past week was, for diet and exercise purposes, pretty much a write-off. I was sick with a cold that knocked me on my ass. I was home sick from work for the first time since moving here -- for three days. Went in the last two days of the week feeling and sounding like a somnolent bag of snot. Managed to consume some wholesome and healthy warm food during the time off -- beef stew and turkey soup with barley.
So, since there's not much to report, now's as good a time as any for a bit of in-depth reporting on my lunch. You've been reading each week that lunch is the "usual healthy fare". Well, what the hell does that mean, exactly?
Well, I start out the day at work with a 375mL 1% chocolate milk with extra calcium. 240 calories, 3.5g fat.
That goes with a wrap made the night before. The wrapping material is a spinach or garlic 'n pesto tortilla from the Presidents Choice people. Inside is some sliced turkey breast, a big leaf of romaine lettuce, a slice of Montarey Jack cheese with jalapeno peppers, sliced onion, red pepper, and mustard. I usually follow that up with one of Amanda's famous Colon Blow chocolate chip muffins, loaded with bran and flaxseed meal. We've switched from jumbo-sized to human-sized muffins. The recipe is from the fabulous book The Ultimate Healthy Eating Plan That Still Leaves Room for Chocolate by Liz Pearson. Fibre is my friend.
The noon hour is augmented by a can of Sugar Free Red Bull. 10 calories with no significant nutritional value, other than a blast of caffeine, 100% of my daily dose of niacin (an acronym for NIcotinic ACid vitamIN, did you know?), 80% of my B12, and 250% of my B6.
Later on, I consume yogurt or sometimes yogourt or perhaps yoghurt. The recent trend is Danone's Silhouette 0% in the 100g size. 40 calories, 0g fat.
After another hour or so, I mix up a bottle of Crystal Light in single-serving form. 10 calories there, and somehow it has 2% of my daily calcium.
I consume that with a William Shatner All-Bran Bar, valued at about 130 calories in the Honey Nut flavour. More fibre in that -- about 4 grams worth.
As I start to get hungry for dinner around 5 o'clock, I empty out the lunch bag by enjoying an apple. Honeycrisp apples have been appearing at the store lately. 80 calories there, with another 3g of fibre.
So, that's what I mean by "usual healthy fare" for lunch. Of course, that's sometimes supplemented by a cookie or Timbit if colleagues bring treats.
On to this week's weigh-in, as much as I'm dreading it ....
Start weight: 220 pounds
Last week: 219 (holy crap!)
This week: 215
Change: -4
Total loss: 5 pounds
Okay, so I dropped what I gained last week. No cheering though -- just probably a levelling out.
Update on last week's gym task ... Got in there this morning and signed up at Nubody's. Not free, but certainly cheap enough that it might as well be. They have towel service! So, a good half-step forward. Now I just have to get in there and do stuff.
So, since there's not much to report, now's as good a time as any for a bit of in-depth reporting on my lunch. You've been reading each week that lunch is the "usual healthy fare". Well, what the hell does that mean, exactly?
Well, I start out the day at work with a 375mL 1% chocolate milk with extra calcium. 240 calories, 3.5g fat.
That goes with a wrap made the night before. The wrapping material is a spinach or garlic 'n pesto tortilla from the Presidents Choice people. Inside is some sliced turkey breast, a big leaf of romaine lettuce, a slice of Montarey Jack cheese with jalapeno peppers, sliced onion, red pepper, and mustard. I usually follow that up with one of Amanda's famous Colon Blow chocolate chip muffins, loaded with bran and flaxseed meal. We've switched from jumbo-sized to human-sized muffins. The recipe is from the fabulous book The Ultimate Healthy Eating Plan That Still Leaves Room for Chocolate by Liz Pearson. Fibre is my friend.
The noon hour is augmented by a can of Sugar Free Red Bull. 10 calories with no significant nutritional value, other than a blast of caffeine, 100% of my daily dose of niacin (an acronym for NIcotinic ACid vitamIN, did you know?), 80% of my B12, and 250% of my B6.
Later on, I consume yogurt or sometimes yogourt or perhaps yoghurt. The recent trend is Danone's Silhouette 0% in the 100g size. 40 calories, 0g fat.
After another hour or so, I mix up a bottle of Crystal Light in single-serving form. 10 calories there, and somehow it has 2% of my daily calcium.
I consume that with a William Shatner All-Bran Bar, valued at about 130 calories in the Honey Nut flavour. More fibre in that -- about 4 grams worth.
As I start to get hungry for dinner around 5 o'clock, I empty out the lunch bag by enjoying an apple. Honeycrisp apples have been appearing at the store lately. 80 calories there, with another 3g of fibre.
So, that's what I mean by "usual healthy fare" for lunch. Of course, that's sometimes supplemented by a cookie or Timbit if colleagues bring treats.
On to this week's weigh-in, as much as I'm dreading it ....
Start weight: 220 pounds
Last week: 219 (holy crap!)
This week: 215
Change: -4
Total loss: 5 pounds
Okay, so I dropped what I gained last week. No cheering though -- just probably a levelling out.
Update on last week's gym task ... Got in there this morning and signed up at Nubody's. Not free, but certainly cheap enough that it might as well be. They have towel service! So, a good half-step forward. Now I just have to get in there and do stuff.
I'm trying the old school flavour All-Bran bars this week, having tried the nut 'n honey ones last week. I think they'd be better in bite-sized cookie form, like Teddy Grahams or something. They weren't as much of a cereal bar as I expected them to be (thought they'd be more akin to the NutriGrain bars, which are like giant Fig Newtons). Nice enough though.
ReplyDeleteSo you call this a lunch? Sounds more like a daily smorgasbord to me.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you pick a more attainable goal, say 190, and once you reach it, maintain it for a period of time. Then if you are ready, go for a new goal.
160 is a rather drastic goal, don't you think.
Yes, anonymous, it's "lunch" just in the sense that it's in a lunch bag. More accurately, it'd be called "everything for the day until dinner."
ReplyDelete160 is a rather drastic goal, of course. I've been around 190 before, and know that 190 is still pretty far off from my ideal healthy weight. 160 remains the goal, be it at the end of this six month project (looking less likely now), or a year, or a year and a half. I'm deliberately working to avoid the temptation of reaching a "better than right now" weight and giving up on finishing what needs to be done.
This isn't merely an attempt to be just a little less fat and decide I'm satisfied with that. I'm out to get legitimately healthy. Yes, it's a drastic goal, but being 5'7" and 225 pounds six months ago was a drastic point to begin from.
I vote with anonymous comments...make smaller (attainable) goals and reward yourself when you meet them.
ReplyDeleteAlso, some goals may be better (and in the long run more useful)than "I want to weigh X at time Y". For example, "I want to visit them gym 4 times this week, lift X amount of weights and increase my cardio workout from Y to Z minutes"
The are concrete things that you can aim for.
I started my "Un-Weight"ed experience a few years ago and found the weight goals very difficult. The reason is that, as Sandra said in an earlier post, muscle is more dense than fat and so if you really commit to gaining muscle mass (and if you are serious, you MUST do this), you may find it difficult to get to 160 - maybe you should try to aim for a BMI# or something, i dunno.
Jojo
Thanks, all, for keeping me on my toes .. I'll probably be putting some of this in next week's post.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, jojo, there are many goals to be had. The first chapters of the Hot Point Fitness book have an inspiring segment about how getting fit is a series of thousands of goals, big and small. From the small goal of getting up at a reasonable hour and getting out your gym clothes ... to the tiny goal of doing a single repetition of an exercise smoothly and properly ... to the larger goals of finishing a full workout ... to the ultimate goal of what you want out of it at the end. Ultimately the idea is to get addicted to accomplishing thousands of tiny goals, and the big accomplishments that they accumulate.
I agree, the smaller, say 10-pound increment (decrement?) goals are wise. Amanda's a fan of those, too. I think Dr. Phil endorses those types of goals. They can end up being useful along the way, especially in cases where people set themselves up for failure and collapse ... that whole "well, I couldn't do (x impossible task in impossible timeline), so there's no point trying."
160 pounds (or 170 in the case of this six-month project) could be seen as the "gimmick goal" -- the far-off target. But having the big target feels important so that I don't lose sight of what I'm actually trying to accomplish... and that's not just making some small changes, but some big changes.
Of course, the number on the scale isn't the ultimate determinant of my progress. Accomplishing the other small goals along the way is important -- getting to the workout .. doing the workout .. getting to various phases where I need to buy new clothes, and rewarding myself with new clothes .. increasing my intensity on the machines .. plus all those little qualitative rather than quantitative things I'd set out for in the beginning.
The 160 (170) pound goal is the big overarching target -- the umbrella inspiration, TV-show-style. And I don't recall many people on the TV show making it to their weight-on-the-scale goal. Most of the time, their goals seemed utterly ridiculous. But that's part of the schtick of the show -- come up with a goal, and part of the drama is the realization that a figure on the scale isn't the true measure of the journey.
The 160-pound figure started as a guesstimate of where I'd like to end up, but I did some math to go with it, taking into account body fat and consulting various charts and blabla, to see if it's actually a real, sensible number. It looks like a drastic, ambitious, impossible number, but the data suggest it's actually at the high end of where I ought to be (in the eyes of science anyway).
Yes, I will probably find it difficult to get to 160. It may not ever happen -- I may plateau at 175, and find that being a more muscle-y than I imagined but still a little pudgy 175 is about as far as I can go without my body giving me absolute hell in protest... and that'll have to do.
More thinkin' to do on this .. Thanks for the notes! The feedback is appreciated!