April 30, 2013
The results are in … what’s the verdict?
Well, it’s done. I am closing the books on my experiment. The results have been … intriguing.
I decided to blog about my effort to lose the 10 pounds I brought back from a Walt Disney World vacation because I felt like so many people I know, especially women, tie their happiness and their self-worth to a number on the scale. I wanted to find out a few things:
1. Would a system of “Eat clean – drink water – burn calories” work to reduce my weight?
2. Which of those factors would be most influential in my day-to-day weight change?
3. How much would my weight fluctuate from one day to the next?
4. What kind of influence would my morning weigh-in have over my eating, water intake, exercise and attitude each day?
Exactly 24 hours after I started this experiment, I stepped on the scale and saw that five pounds had vanished overnight – from 145 to 140. Whaaa? How could that be? I certainly didn’t expend 17,500 calories in a day. The explanation? Lots of salty food, diminished fluids, and the cabin pressure on the plane ride home had contributed to my retaining lots and lots of water. One day at home, eating my normal diet and drinking plenty of water, flushed (literally) that excess fluid from my system.
After that initial drop, I fluctuated between 136 and 141 for the next 30 days. There didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to gaining or losing a pound or two from day to day … maybe the only trends I noticed were that I tended not to lose weight if I hadn’t drank enough water the day before, and I also tended not to lose if I had eaten heavy or salty food late at night.
But I also would see gains of one or two pounds after days of eating sparkling clean and drinking plenty of H2O. Maybe that was muscle? Perhaps.
I came away from this experiment with two new realizations:
1. We
ighing yourself every day makes you crazy – and miserable.
At 6:30 a.m., seeing a loss of a pound or two gave my day a positive start. But this would sometimes backfire, as I’d have the opportunity to munch on a cookie or extra handful of crackers, and I’d think, “I can afford this.”
No loss, or a slight gain, only brought frustration. What was I doing wrong? I would renew my commitment to my regimen, but under a negative impetus. If I faced a choice during the day of healthy vs not, I wouldn’t choose based on my own well-being, but on whether I thought it would move the needle on the scale.
This is not what motivates me. Wearing clothes I’m happy in, seeing nice muscle definition, feeling energetic and strong – that’s what I want more of, and that’s what makes me work harder.
2. Blogging about your diet and exercise makes you hyper-aware of everything you eat and do.
I used caloriecount.about.com to look up the number of calories in my food and also to estimate the calories I burned with my activity. This was eye-opening – I hadn’t known that sesame oil was so calorie-rich, for example. But it was also a royal pain in the ass.
It did play a role in the choices I made, though. Should I eat that donut, knowing I’ll have to fess up to my readers?
And here was my other dilemma. I make a living as a fitness support coach, so I do feel like I should be walking the talk. But I’m also human, and part of me feels like my customers might relate to me better if they knew I was struggling with the same temptations. I decided to stay completely honest about my habits and how I felt about them. I hope those of you who’ve been following my progress have recognized some of the same habits and weaknesses in yourselves. You’re not alone!
So no, I did not ever see 10 pounds gone in the month of tracking my efforts. Am I happy with my nutrition and exercise over that month? Yes, very much so. Blogging helped me stay the course and keep myself accountable to my goal, however irrelevant that goal actually was.
Because the whole point of this experiment – the thesis I secretly wanted to prove – was that you should NEVER TRUST THE SCALE. The number of pounds you weigh is not a reliable indicator of your overall health and fitness. It can give you a general range to shoot for based on your height and body composition, but obsessing over 5 pounds one way or another just isn’t necessary unless you’re a high school wrestler.
What’s my next goal, then? I’ll take the advice I give my customers and coaches on my team: Don’t set a results-oriented goal. Set an action-oriented goal. Instead of saying, “I will lose X number of pounds” or “I will wear a size X,” I will keep working on increasing my water intake and gaining more muscle tone in my legs. I have to say – 135 or not, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with my physique. And it would be an honor and an inspiration to help someone else get to where they can say the same.
April 26, 2013
Day 28, 29, 30, 31: Am I on the right track?
Starting weight: 138/138/136/138
Eat clean. I’ve skipped too many days of blogging to even have a chance at remembering what went down the hatch … It’s mostly been good. There were some chocolate-covered almonds and cinnamon-sugar pita chips in there … a little champagne to celebrate Tom coming home and our reaching a milestone with our Beachbody businesses … and oh yes, I did have a Wendy’s single (no bacon) Wednesday night. But otherwise, I’ve made very good choices at home. Edamame and fruit for snacks, small portions for meals. Keepin’ the faith.
Drink water. I now take a 16-oz. cup everywhere with me. I’m finding it more of a subconscious habit now to reach for a drink often. (Yay!)
Burn calories. I kept up with my Turbo Fire schedule, and even took a 2-mile walk with Tom on my rest day.
Ending weight: 138/136/138/141
So, it’s been a full month, and I still haven’t gotten rid of the 10 pounds I set out to lose. What are your thoughts? Am I being realistic? Do you think I’m going about this the right way? What do you do when you’re stuck at a certain range on the scale?
I’m debating a few options: 1) a 3-day Shakeology cleanse (3 shakes plus a salad with lean protein for dinner each day); 2) the 21-day Ultimate Reset detox program (during which I lost 8 pounds last time); or 3) just the Ultimate Reset meal plan for 21 days, without taking the supplements. What say you?
April 22, 2013
Day 27: Grazing – I think the cows are on to something
Starting weight: 138
Eat clean. Another positive report on the food side of things. Grape Nuts with strawberries, my original recipe for German Chocolate Shakeology (walnuts & flaked coconut), edamame, a small piece of leftover lasagna, Shakeology cookies … I didn’t really even classify a “breakfast,” “lunch” or “dinner” – I just ate a little throughout the day to keep my energy up. Love that system.
Drink water. Getting better and making conscious effort to get that 64 ounces down each day.
Burn calories. Today’s workout was Core 20 and Stretch 40. Core 20 is not what you’d call strenuous, but you definitely feel your abs working and getting stronger – and no crunches! Ordinarily, I would not look forward to Stretch 40. Most of it is yoga-based – strengthening and stretching and holding. I understand its importance, and I appreciate its effects, but … sigh … to me, it’s just boring. Today, however, I decided to take a dose of Energy & Endurance drink beforehand. I normally only use that before high-intensity cardio workouts for the mega-boost, but I found it really did help with the yoga moves today. I was able to put more energy into the strength moves and had more control, and I could focus on extending my stretches more too.
Oh, and I also finished sanding the main floor of our upstairs room. BOO-YAH!
Calories eaten (approximate): 1,675
How clean? (1=crap, 10=pure): 9
Water drank: 60-ish oz.
Calories burned (approximate): 2,890
Ending weight: 138
Want to join me on my quest to get back to 135? Post a comment!
April 21, 2013
Day 26: You win some, you lose some.
Starting weight: 138
Eat clean. I wish I could have eaten more throughout the day – had a fruit plate for breakfast, Shakeology for lunch, edamame for a snack and some fairly wholesome lasagna for dinner. With a couple of small slices of garlic bread.
But the highlight of my nutritional day – SHAKEOLOGY COOKIES! I used superhero-level restraint and only had 4.
Want the recipe?
1 cup chocolate Shakeology
1 cup dry oatmeal
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
Mix ingredients in a large bowl and roll into small balls. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.
Drink water. 😦 I need to find a way to increase my water intake. Any good suggestions?
Burn calories. I did HIIT 20 and Sculpt 30 today – a good combination of intense cardio and resistance. I also packed several trips’ worth of boxes and equipment to and from my car for a booth at a fundraiser fair today. I forgot to bring a chair, though. So I stood or strolled around for 5 hours. The fair was a total bust from a business standpoint, but at least I burned more calories than I would have if I’d stayed home. Oh wait – I would have spent that time sanding my floor, so nuts to that too.
Calories eaten (approximate): 1,823
How clean? (1=crap, 10=pure): 8
Water drank: 60-ish oz.
Calories burned (approximate): 2,520
Ending weight: 138
Want to join me on my quest to get back to 135? Post a comment!
April 20, 2013
Days 24-25: Oh yeah, I rock.
Starting weight: 140
Note: SOMEHOW I have missed a day in here. Which baffles me, because I have a certain order in which I do my computer work in the mornings, and blogging is right in there along with leading my challenge groups and posting on my business page. So what follows is only for Day 25 … I know, I know, how will you ever get along without knowing my every move from Day 24?
Eat clean. YES! This was probably my best day for nutrition in a long time. Started out with a nice hot bowl of Cream of Wheat for breakfast, sweetened with Simply Fruit strawberry jam and sprinkled with some walnuts for crunch. I took a shake with me to run errands; then enjoyed a bowl of Grape Nuts (my fave cereal) for an afternoon snack.
Julia decided to hang out at her boyfriend’s for dinner, so I made an evening meal of Burritos de Leftovers (ground turkey and wild rice/quinoa medley, with a splash of liquid aminos for flavor), with some fresh strawberries and mandarin oranges. Om nom nom.
It had been a taxing day, so I unwound with a bowl of popcorn and a glass of Gewurtztraminer while watching Glengarry Glen Ross.
Drink water. Glug glug. I feel like a fish.
Burn calories. Oh Chalene, how I hate and love you. Fire 55 EZ is lots of fun, but I reach my limit of bobs, jabs, kicks and “pump-its” at about 45 minutes in! I bet even Shaun T couldn’t keep up with your full 55-minute Turbo workout. (Ever notice how many breaks that boy takes to walk around and “coach” his Insanity people? Pssh.)
Calories eaten (approximate): 2,126
How clean? (1=crap, 10=pure): 8.5
Water drank: 60-ish oz.
Calories burned (approximate): 2,470
Ending weight: 138
Want to join me on my quest to get back to 135? Post a comment!
April 18, 2013
Day 23: The balance board
Starting weight: 138
Eat clean. My downfall today was letting my tastebuds dictate my diet. I COULD have had the same lunch as yesterday, but I chose to eat something different for flavor’s sake, and that was a definite uptick in calorie count. And I COULD have just had turkey patties for dinner instead of engulfing them in whole wheat buns with gouda cheese and a trace of ketchup and mayo, and I definitely SHOULD have left the second helping of baked sweet potato fries alone. So again, I’m eating fairly healthy foods … I’m just allowing myself to eat more of them than is necessary.
Drink water. Probably didn’t get as much water in me as I should have. Must continue to work on this.
Burn calories. This was a weird day … I tackled a floor sanding project that left me with aching hamstrings and lower back, and dripping (yes, literally) sweat even though the room was cold. I had planned to do my scheduled HIIT 20 workout later, but I got a call that I might need to be at a meeting involving our Band Boosters group, so I stopped sanding and took a shower. It turned out that I didn’t have to go, but sheesh, now that I was all clean and showered I wasn’t going to go get all sweaty again, especially since I did have another meeting later that evening. Short story – no Turbo Fire workout today. Tomorrow is a rest day, so I’ll just flip-flop my calendar and HIIT it tomorrow.
Before I did the Ultimate Reset last fall, my baseline body weight that I always seemed to center around was 142. Now it tends to hover near 138. Some days it’s a pound one way or the other, sometimes two or three. There never seems to be much rhyme or reason for why the scale drifts toward heavier or lighter in those tiny increments. Remember doing balance boards when you were a kid in P.E.? You’d stand on a short plank that was set on top of a wooden cylinder, and have to try and keep your balance as the cylinder would roll a couple of inches one way or another. The shifting of your weight would bring it back to the center. The thing was, it was impossible to get it to stay perfectly still. No matter how motionless you tried to stand, there was always some factor exerting just enough force to tip the board a tiny bit, and then you had to readjust your weight again.
That’s how I feel about these one- or two-pound losses and gains. They’re just small adjustments to the true center. But my goal isn’t to make the board balance … I want to move the cylinder. Can I reach down and grab the plank and then jump with it, like a skateboarder? It’s gonna take some new tricks like that, I think.
DAILY TOTALS:
Calories eaten (approximate): 2,820
How clean? (1=crap, 10=pure): 8
Water drank: 60 oz.
Calories burned (approximate): 2,292
Ending weight: 140
Want to join me on my quest to get back to 135? Post a comment!
April 17, 2013
Day 22: Eyes stinging? Good workout.
Starting weight: 139
Eat clean. OK, today I felt very good about the content of my calories. Shakeology, homemade trail mix (almonds, walnuts, dried cherries, dried cranberries), burritos made from leftovers (ground turkey, wild rice/quinoa, sauteed asparagus = really good burritos), and crunchy sandwiches for dinner. “Crunchy sandwiches?” you say. The kids made up that name – it’s just sandwich fixings (lunch meat, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, whatever else you like) atop Wasa light rye crispbread. Outrageously healthy and very delicious.
Drink water. I’ve stopped keeping track of exact ounces, but I consciously reach for my 16-oz. cup all the time and find myself refilling it several times a day. I could probably do better still.
Burn calories. I had to wait until 7 p.m. to do it, but I got my Fire 45 workout in. Is it silly to pretend that Chalene is grading me on my moves, like I’m auditioning for her next video? Maybe so, but it makes me push harder and focus better. My eyes were stinging by the end from so much sweat running into them. And I can’t wait to do it AGAIN.
DAILY TOTALS:
Calories eaten (approximate): 2,411
How clean? (1=crap, 10=pure): 8.5
Water drank: 64 oz.
Calories burned (approximate): 2,470
Ending weight: 138
Want to join me on my quest to get back to 135? Post a comment!
April 16, 2013
Day 21: Too much of a good thing
Starting weight: 138
Eat clean. On the one hand, I had chicken & rice for dinner, which is probably not great. (Brown rice, 1 can cream of mushroom soup, 1 can cream of chicken soup, 1 can of chicken = awesome comfort food) But I didn’t eat a lot of it. On the other hand, I had one of my all-time favorite snacks as a side dish – rye Triscuits with Tillamook cheddar cheese – which is not terribly unhealthy, and I did eat a lot of that.
Finding out that rye Triscuits actually fit my requirements for “clean” eating was one of the high points of my health and fitness journey. Here’s what’s in them: whole grain wheat, soybean oil, whole grain rye, caraway seeds, sea salt. And I love them so. I know the Tillamook cheddar is high in fat and sodium, but I slice it thin, layer a 1-inch square atop each Triscuit and munch away. It’s a damn sight better than goldfish crackers or Chips Ahoy.
Drink water. Yes. Drank lots. I feel quite recovered from my dehydration weekend.
Burn calories. Fire 55! This workout comes the closest to the Turbo Kick classes I’ve taught … a warmup, three sections of punches and kicks, two Fire Drills, a recovery section, then two finales and the cooldown. It’s the longest workout in the program but the pace allows you to work hard and then gain your energy back in time to hit it again.
DAILY TOTALS:
Calories eaten (approximate): 2,077
How clean? (1=crap, 10=pure): 7.5
Water drank: 64 oz.
Calories burned (approximate): 2,478
Ending weight: 139
Want to join me on my quest to get back to 135? Post a comment!
April 15, 2013
Day 18, 19, 20: Surviving the American schedule
Starting weight: 138 / 140 / 141
Eat clean. Unless I get flooded with protests, I think I will discontinue the bite-by-bite commentary on my food intake. It can’t be that interesting. Plus, I haven’t made the time to blog for the past three days, and dang if I can remember everything I ate.
My challenge Friday was finding healthy eats at the Riverview Buffet, a place we’d heard about but never tried. It turned out to be standard Chinese buffet fare … orange chicken, broccoli beef, with some regional seafood (crab legs, salmon), soups and desserts. I played it safe (skipped the sauteed octopus) with a little sushi, some fruit, chicken skewers, some fish labeled salmon that wasn’t, and udon noodles with veggies. I did go a little over my normal sugar intake with the dessert bar … a palmier pastry (I had to Google that to learn what it was called), a mini cream puff, and something else bite-sized I don’t remember.
I knew Saturday would be rough. I had to be in Vancouver, Wash., for a Beachbody Super Saturday event at 9:30 a.m. Tom and Julia needed to leave at the same time for the high school’s winter percussion show, and we were running late – no time to make shakes. I was groggy from a long day and not enough sleep, so halfway to Vancouver I pulled into a mini mart for something to pick me up. Made the disastrous choice to get a mocha cappuccino from a machine. Once I deemed it cool enough to sip, my first mouthful tasted like mocha-flavored motor oil. “It’s just the foam,” I thought. Four or five sips later … nope. That was the nastiest stuff I have imbibed in quite a while.
Super Saturday was great – I brought three of my coaches with me who had never been to one before, and it was awesome to see them taking notes, meeting other coaches and soaking up all the Beachbody vibe. One Vancouver-area coach was celebrating her birthday and brought – get this – CUPCAKES! (I would have brought Shakeology cookies myself, but that’s just me …) I politely took a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting, and yes, it was delicious.
Then I had to book it across the Portland metro area to get to Sherwood High School in time to see Astoria’s drumline compete in prelims. They had a great run! And Subway sandwich platters afterwards. I had one snack bag of Cheetos and stayed away from the granola bars, which are usually my downfall. Domino’s delivered dinner, and I do believe I was content with one or two pieces. So I was fairly happy with my diet for the day, compared to the disaster of a typical show day. The drive home was another matter … again, needing something to keep me awake, I bought a Coke Zero and a bag of trail mix (no chocolate chips or M&Ms this time, but it did have yogurt raisins). I woke up the next morning with cotton mouth and feeling as dehydrated as I would after a night of mixed drinks and bad karaoke.
Sunday was my chance to reel it back in and focus on good nutrition. I’m happy to say I feel much better now that I have control over my meal choices.
Drink water. Friday I’m sure I did OK. Standing out in the chill wind of the Sherwood HS parking lot all Saturday afternoon must have whisked all the water out of my cells … even though I grabbed a bottle of water here and there, it clearly wasn’t enough. I was back on track with hydration Sunday.
Burn calories. I deliberately planned for no Turbo Fire workout Friday, since we had committed to tackling a project we’d been putting off for months: hauling out all the scrap wood, wallpaper and flooring we’d torn out of the upstairs office/studio room. I figured it would mean multiple exhausting trips up and down the 43 stairs between the scrap pile and the truck at street level, carrying heavy or awkward loads. Surprise – the job wasn’t nearly as extensive or taxing as I predicted. Which was great for crossing it off our to-do list, but disappointing as a workout.
I had thought that Super Saturday would include a workout, so again, didn’t plan for one at home – but found out that morning otherwise. However, seven hours of shivering, jumping up and down, moving percussion equipment and tearing down our tent and tables has to count for something!
Aaaaaaand I was looking forward to working up a good sweat on Sunday, after taking care to get plenty of rest and relaxation, but guess what? Unexpected circumstances conspired against me and once again, I did not get to Turbo that day. Haaargh. Renewed commitment in 3…2…1…
DAILY TOTALS:
Calories eaten (approximate): Too many / Good in number, bad in quality / Much better
How clean? (1=crap, 10=pure): 7 / 7 / 8.5
Water drank: Enough / Not nearly enough / Enough
Calories burned (approximate): Less than I wanted / Probably more than I imagine / Not enough!
Ending weight: 140 / 141 / 138
Want to join me on my quest to get back to 135? Post a comment!
thehealthymuse 