The Weekly Update

It was a pretty good week on the getting healthier front. I was on the treadmill five days this week. Each day was for 45 minutes, with distances equaling 1.75, 1.93, 2.07, 1.95, and 2.05 miles. I was pleased with getting over the two mile barrier, particularly twice. It may be a bit of a plateau for awhile, as I have a hard time thinking I can accomplish more than that for awhile. Especially if I continuing reading part of the time while I am on the treadmill. The reading allows me to forget that I am walking and thus assists in spending more time on the treadmill. On the flip side, I think I can only walk so fast while reading. In any event, if I continue to stick with it, this problem will take care of itself, and for right now I just want stay focused and positive and keep at it rather than worrying about a small issue.

I've written here several times now about my exercise progress, and plan to keep on doing so. However, there is another part of getting healthy and losing weight that will require just as must work and focus on my part to truly be successful at this; making better eating choices. This is difficult in many ways; partly because I am used to eating a certain amount of food each day, and I need to cut that down to make progress; partly because I really paid no attention to what I was eating, so my food choices were not good healthy choices; and partly because, simply put, I love food. To address this, my dad turned me onto a website called myfitnesspal.com. What this allows you to do is enter your information, and it provides an estimate of how many calories you burn in a normal day based on your lifestyle, and then shows how many calories, carbs, fat. etc. you can eat in order to reach your weightloss goal. Its obviously not completely accurate, the weight loss it projects is based on the number of calories you have to burn over what you consume to lose a pound of fat, so there's some fudging in the numbers. But I approached as using just to figure out my diet if I were to be very aggressive and attempt to lose 2 pounds per week (thus thinking that if I continued to exercise regularly I would eventually see some results).

The site only works if you put the work into, being diligent about entering everything you eat; adding the information manually when they don't have the particularly food choice in their database. But it has made a couple differences in big ways. First, I have already developed a better awareness and sense of what I am actually eating. It creates a certain level of conscientiousness on my part when I am making a food choice, planning our dinners, or what I get at lunch. The other difference is the awareness of how bad eating out can be, primarily in portion sizes. I can cook a chicken breast at home and I know it is four ounces; when I go out, I can tell that the chicken I am getting is twice the size. So it takes a bit more effort to focus and order appropriately when I am lunch to make sure I am not overeating. For the last week, this has gone well for the most part, with a few hiccups. But generally speaking, the combined awareness that using the website has given me has really made a difference in my decision making progress, and that will be a good thing moving forward. I am still waiting and hoping to see certain results, but the combined eating awareness and the staying commitment to exercise gives me a bit more confidence that this will be successful in the long term.

The latter part of this week will present some difficulties. Starting Wednesday, my firm takes their annual planning retreat. We are traveling up to Union Pier to stay at a Bed & Breakfast. Thus, finding time and something appropriate for exercise on Thursday and Friday mornings will be difficult, as well as making good food choices when we dine out and some very nice places with excellent food. But at least going into it I am a bit more informed about food choices, and what can be good and bad due to my use of the myfitnesspal.com site, and I think that will make some difference.