Getting Stronger

I sort of eliminated Rest days. Maybe it's a function of wearing the bodybugg, but I find a body at rest tends to stay at rest. And eat cookies. Yet if I commit to doing an at-home workout ("it's only 20 minutes!") I'll strap on the bodybugg and get some positive reinforcement in terms of calories burned, steps taken, and minutes of physical activity. And that spurs me on to head out for a long walk or do something else to get to 10,000 steps, 2400 calories, and at least an hour of physical activity. And not eat cookies.

So it's not that I don't mix it up for my body, like I rarely run on consecutive days, but I'm no longer taking a day of Sloth. It's more like intense workout days and less intense (or active rest) days. Today, for instance, I'm meeting a friend for a run, then we're headed to a yoga class.

A note to Ishmael: I was going to post a more elaborate view of my bodybugg contraption, but had all sorts of trouble trying to get the screenshots I wanted to show. So in typical FitFunk fashion, I abandoned the whole effort. And had a cookie. (Just kidding there.) For me, the bodybugg keeps me accountable, appeals to my geeky/analytical side (32% of my calories came from protein yesterday, fascinating!), and motivates me to move, as indicated above.

When I first got it (as a gift, it is pricey, I probably would have gotten one myself eventually, but it was an awesome gift!), I felt a little overwhelmed with all the screens and set up and was therefore a little overzealous. There's a screen where you set your shorter-term goals, say, 10 pounds in X weeks, and you just move this little cursor to how many pounds you'd like to lose per week and the dates and calorie deficit required. It all looks so easy when it's numbers on a pull-down menu...sure, let's aim for 2 pounds per week...burn 2900 calories per day and take in 1900 calories per day, that's a deficit of 1000 calories per day, or 7000 per week and voila! 2 pounds.

Yeah. Except. I have had days where I burn 2900 or even more calories in a day, but it's so not sustainable for me to achieve every day. After much trial and error (mostly error) I had to go back to the control panel and lower my expectations to one pound per week. So now I aim for a 500 calorie deficit per day. I like how my little 'bugg beeps it's little messages of "Activity Target Met!" (one hour), "Step Count Met!" (10,000), and usually bringing up the rear, "Calorie Burn Target Met!" (2400).

Something I've been refocusing on lately is actually meeting that 2400 calorie burn target daily versus on most days. It's a reasonable target. That's why I ended up doing The Shred on 3 days this week. I did my 30-minute run for One Hour Runner at the gym due to rain, but was happy to do the whole thing at 5.2 mph. I also took the run outside once the sun reappeared and did 5 miles in Central Park (though that was on a 4 min run / 1 min walk that allows me to get some faster - higher calorie burn - segments in), and I'll get yoga in as well. Woot! Woot!

Unfortunately I also had about a vat of wine last night (that was fun to plug into the bodybugg) Trying to seriously rehydrate/caffeinate before this run. 10,000 steps forward, 10,001 steps back? Oh the struggle is eternal I tells ya! These are the moments when I have to console myself with the knowledge that I'm learning what maintenance will require of me.

Running on (away from) St Patrick's Day

No, I did not eat this cupcake!

I just thought it made a better image than snapshots of the happy (drunken) revelers outside my building all along Second Avenue. It's sunny and in the 60's here in NY today. And the celebrants have been belly up to the bar since the dog's first walk a little after 8:00 this morning. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

So of course I wanted to take my run outside on this fine day. And where better to run than Central Park? Except the parade route lies between me and the Park, so I had to head east instead and run along the East River. It's "a-ight"...the path is nice, but while the river flows calmly on one side, there is a highway on the other side of you. (Cough, cough) I was so dehydrated. Like, couldn't swallow level of dehydration. I may have to get one of those crazy velcro belts that hold the little water bottles.

I have been taking my run outside the last few days now that I'm feeling better and the weather is warming up. And now that the awful cold and the dreary rain are behind me, I've also just noticed how bright and sunny it is later in the day, which translates to even more time to wile away the day reading blogs and stuff before I realize it's time to hustle to get that run in before the freaks come out. (Just kidding, there are absolutely no freaks in New York.)

Other than that, I've been really focused on my food choices and tracking my eating and using the bodybugg to track my daily caloric deficit. I'm feeling pretty good about this because in the past I've typically treated each day in isolation as opposed to keeping tabs on the running total overall. Which is a better gauge since of course there are higher and lower calorie input/output days and how they average out is more important than any given day alone.

Bad Blogger

I think I started out with a vague goal of posting something about once a week. Yeah...

My workouts have been fairly consistent. Getting up to 25-30 minute runs of varying speed in the C25k program. Still making it to weekly yoga and strength (Body Conditioning) classes. 1 or 2 days rest in a typical week. Sort of suffering from the winter blahs though. My eating has been ok, but my tracking of said eating has fallen a bit by the wayside. 

Just typing that makes me want to log into my Bodybugg software and put in the 2 pieces of wheat toast I ate for breakfast today. At least I've been wearing the Bodybugg gizmo on my arm and meeting my activity goals most days. The contraption works on the basis of calorie deficit. Mine is currently set for a 500 calorie daily deficit. My caloric intake goal is 1900 and my caloric Burn goal is 2400. (I also have a 10,000 daily Step goal and a 60 minute daily Activity goal.)  There is a watch that syncs with the armband and beeps with a happy little message when you meet each of your set goals. The cool thing I have been monitoring is the breakdown of the physical activity after I sync it up on my laptop. There is a graph that captures the caloric burn throughout a given day. So I can hold the mouse over the time I was doing yoga and see I burned about 3 calories a minute on average (which is cool, caloric burn not being my main motivator for yoga) and sometimes I hit 15 calories a minute on my runs.  Which is probably why yoga lasts an hour and a half and I can usually run 20 minutes before I need a walk break!

I know I need to focus on both sides of the equation - the calories in as well as the calories out. I also know the perfectionist in me gets caught up and bogged down in the details of calorie tracking. "If I don't know exactly how many ounces of turkey were in that sandwich I ordered, why bother tracking...?"  And once you skip tracking one meal, the whole day won't add up, will it?? One day last week, I just overestimated everything. That was a little depressing. I need to just do it and make peace with entries being a best estimate of what I consume on a given day. And stop overthinking it!

I'm also editing the layout here, since this will likely be a loooong journey (and I'm ok with that, really!  ok, mostly...) I weigh in every Tuesday and track it here and on my own spreadsheet and on my Bodybugg software. I've decided to track it here monthly. I think that will help me see the forest/big picture more than the smaller, weekly ups and downs. I need to get a better feel for the trend and this seems a good vehicle for that.