Stopping the rot

Well, I’ve been letting it slide of late. Partly I had good excuses, but partly I just had excuses full stop. Being lazy may be an excuse but it’s not a good one. I weighed in this morning at 199 point something. That’s it. Time to stop the rot. I will never, ever be 200 pounds again. Back logging my food diary and just done my first workout in 9 days! Any of you who read my blog, please feel free to give me a kick up the backside if I do not keep this up !

Or not

Another dreadful week. Family emergencies, work dramas, assignment, the works. Only managed one of my weights workouts, didn’t log any food, and ate a lot. Of junk. This week off to a not much better start. Two days in and still haven’t done a workout and been out to dinner with desserts and several glasses of wine. Try and pull my socks up for the rest of the week.

Upping my game

This has been another dreadful week, food-wise. TTOM extended into a second week, along with my cravings, and hubby and I have just been gorging. But by the end of the week we had both had enough and are keen to get back to proper food. And exercise. I have actually managed to do the bare minimum of exercise this week, but having now finished four weeks of NROL4W, it is time to up my game a bit. I will be increasing to 3 days a week lifting, combined with HIIT, and I want to set my new ‘bare minimum’ to two weekly resistance, two weekly HIIT sessions, and a minimum 3-hour total exercise.

My workout schedule for the coming week looks like this:

Sunday	NROL4W Stage 1 w/o A5, HIIT
Monday	Badminton
Tuesday	Walk
Wednesday	NROL4W w/o B5, HIIT
Thursday	Bike
Friday	NROL4W w/o A6, HIIT
Saturday	Pilates w/o

My nutrition goal for the next week is simply (1) log everything at FitDay, and (2) eat clean, for one week, no cheating – my system needs a rest from all that junk.

Three-day Blowout

I’m not entirely sure what happened but I appear to have just woken up from a terrible dream. I was completely out of control, eating, eating, eating. Takeaways three days in a row. Fish and chips. KFC. Pizza. Junk. Chocolate. You name it. I didn’t even try to log it so I’m not sure what’s been going on with my calories, but I can hazard a guess – stratospheric. And I’m assuming carbs and fat way up there, protein somewhat lacking. It started with a bad day on Monday and pure out and out emotional eating, but I also started my period at the same time, so it was probably a combination of that and raging girl hormones. No workouts the last two days either. But I woke up this morning with the alarm (unusual enough in itself – normally hubby has to shake me out of bed), and despite having a late start at work, jumped out of bed, got into my sweats, and have just completed my outstanding weights and interval workouts! I think I’m back. Not sure who that other girls was, but I don’t like her much.

I have an excuse

Yesterday marks the end of week 2 of my new BBG year. Having spent most of it in bed with a horrible cold it is not really surprising that the stats are not particularly good. Nutrition-wise, I underate overall – a couple of days I barely ate at all and that was only chicken soup! Because of this, my deficit was around 800 cals per day on average, but my micronutrients weren’t great. I was under on vitamin E, iron, magnesium and pantothenic acid. Actually, I was expecting worse. My macros were also all over the place: 48% carbs, 30% fat, only 20% protein and 2% alcohol (all of it medicinal, I might add in my defence – actually hubby was right: port and brandy together really do dry up the sniffles! Who knew?).

On the exercise front, I actually did better than would have been expected, helped by getting off to a good start on Sunday and Monday before the cold hit. I did both of my resistance sessions, one of my interval sessions, 60 minutes of badminton, 30 minutes of Wii yoga, and over an hour of walking, for a total of 3 hours and 35 minutes for the week, and successfully achieving the bare minimum for weekly fitness that I set myself at the beginning of the year (2 resistance, 1 HIIT, 1 hour other cardio).

Here is my less than stellar Joe’s Goals scorecard for the week:

My workout schedule for the coming week looks like this:

Sunday	NROL4W Stage 1 w/o A3, walk
Monday	Badminton
Tuesday	Intervals
Wednesday	NROL4W w/o B3
Thursday	Bike
Friday	Pilates
Saturday	Dance w/o

Hopefully, I will be able to redeem myself.

Taking it easy

Despite feeling very well (and self-satisfied) after my workout yesterday, later on I had a bit of a relapse. Had a rough night and another day off work today. Will probably take it easy today, i.e. no HIIT! Food today has consisted of porridge (with blueberries), chicken soup, a baked potato, OJ, and hot chocolate. And a few grapes. What’s a protein???

Full of cold but lifting anyway

I’ve got a stinking cold and have been off work for two days, mostly spent sleeping and feeling sorry for myself. Eating has gone to pot and consists of whatever I can stomach of the starchy, energy-dense, comfort-food variety. I skipped my schedule workout (HIIT) yesterday, but decided to give my weights workout a go this evening having been feeling a bit better, and following the neck up-neck down rule. Warmed up more slowly than usual and kept an eye on my heart rate. As it wasn’t too elevated I went ahead with the workout. I managed to lift the weights I had planned to but did increase my rest time between sets. I’m still a bit snuffly and am weighing up the merits of doing my intervals today. May try and get some more fluids in me and see how I feel in about fifteen minutes. But I’m glad I did the workout – that’s both my scheduled lifting sessions for this week and next week I get to drop to 2 sets of 12 reps and up the weights. Woohoo.

Managed to squeeze in a short interval session – just four intervals of 1 min on 1 min off, with warm up and cool down for a total of 15 mins. Those 60 seconds of recovery seemed to get shorter and shorter. It was hard work but I’m proud of myself for doing something rather than nothing. Sipping a raspberry protein shake now just to get some nutrients in me today.

Good job it’s only once a year!

Well, the nutrition summary for last week is in and it’s not pretty: carbs (43%) and fat (32%) weren’t far off target, but I managed a measly 22% protein, with the remaining 4% being made up by alcohol calories! Oops. I also didn’t eat quite enough, averaging 1800 calories per day over the week. But that just slips in within 10% of my target (around 1950 averaged out over the week). Unfortunately, due to the contribution to those too-few calories made by booze, pizza, and chocolates (all on Friday/Saturday), my micronutrients weren’t great for the week, coming in short on the usual suspects – iron, vitamin E, and unusually, manganese. Still, started off the year with a one and a half pound loss so I’m not complaining.

Off to a mixed start

At the end of week 1 of my new exercise year, I have done surprisingly well, working out on 6 days and only missing my pilates workout. I didn’t play badminton but that was because there were no courts open and I did Wii Aerobics for an hour instead. I did both my weights workouts, my HIIT session, a surprising 20 mins on the bike, and shook my groove thang for over two hours on New Year’s. Considering I slept most of New Year’s day, and much of the following day too, I’m quite impressed that I managed to fit in a total of five and a half hours’ exercise for the week.

On the other hand, my eating was less good. The first few days I was a bit short on calories but my macros and nutrition generally were excellent. The two main problems were New Year’s eve and New Year’s day, when I went over and indulged in wanton dietary behaviours (!) and the weekend since, when I spent much of my time sleeping it off and ended up short on calories. I just didn’t eat enough, and my macros were also a little light on protein. I’ll have the full breakdown for the week tomorrow. But here is the overview :

I actually don’t know what effect all this will have had since I haven’t weighed myself for a few days. Not because I didn’t want to know, but because there didn’t seem much point in weighing myself when I got up in the middle of the afternoon when I usually do it at around 7.30am – the results wouldn’t tell me anything. Back at work tomorrow and official weigh day, so we shall see.

My workout schedule for the coming week looks like this:

Sunday	NROL4W Stage 1 w/o A2, walk
Monday	Badminton
Tuesday	Intervals
Wednesday	NROL4W w/o B2
Thursday	Intervals
Friday	Yoga
Saturday	Kickboxing w/o

Carb crisis – couscous, chocolates, and clubbing

New Year’s Eve. Last day of work. Got up early, prepared breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Put them on the hall table while I put on my coat. Left the house without them. Didn’t realise till I got to work. Uh oh. Had enough stuff at work to made do, but not really balanced in the macronutrient stakes. Definitely a bit carb heavy. By mid-afternoon, after reaching into a draw to get stationery and finding an open box of chocolates, things had gone from bad to worse. Got home and polished off a mini-box of Thornton’s chocs that the inlaws had brought round a few days earlier and that I had previously easily resisted, but stupidly not removed from the house. Slept a few hours. Decided to actually do something for new year this year. Hubby and I went to Jilly’s Rock Club in Manchester and par-tayed. Malibu and diet coke all night. Doubles mostly. Got home around 5.30am, starving. All the fast food restaurants open. Pizza. Fries. Bed. That’s gonna do wonders for my weekly averages. Happy 2010!