dianaschnuth

Running Weight Loss Totals:

Official Tuesday weight: 209. My low weight for the week was 208, though, and I’ve been hovering between 208 and 208.5 all week (except for last Tuesday’s weigh-in, of course).

Last week, I declared that my strategy would be to eat out only once during the weekend, and eat the remainder of the weekend’s meals at home. I managed to successfully stick to my plan, only eating out for lunch on Saturday, after aikido. I also managed to track everything I ate over the weekend, including my lunch at the Reynolds Garden Café.

Next step: eat HEALTHY at home and in restaurants.

Lunch? At the Reynolds Garden Café? Racked up every last calorie I’d burned in aikido that morning, plus some. Ninety minutes of martial arts wiped out by one giant Smothered Chicken Omelet. And I knew better, but I ate it anyway. Dinner that night was Sweet Mustard Chicken and frozen green beans; still a calorie-laden meal, though, since I ate two chicken breasts instead of just one.

It was Sunday’s lunch that was really the kicker, though: I broke down and made alfredo sauce. With full-fat cream cheese, and butter, and parmesan, and 2% milk. Ate it with baked chicken over low-carb organic whole-wheat elbow macaroni. It was a great low-carb meal, but not so much a good balanced meal. Incredible amounts of fat and overall calories… and with no aikido to balance them out. Dinner was super-spicy Thai Coconut Shrimp over brown rice: still a little high in calories, actually. Or maybe my portions are a little out of kilter. Either way, Sunday was a learning experience. I guess I should count myself lucky that I only gained a pound and a half from Sunday to Monday.

As far as exercise goes, I’ve been doing OK. I take half-hour walks during my lunch most days of the work week (although I’ll sometimes work through my lunch one day a week as personal penance for coming in late, even though I’m salary). I went to aikido on Wednesday and Saturday (finally, a day of no bleeding!), plus I did some pilates last Tuesday, and yoga last night.

My goal for next week is going to be portion control, especially on the weekends. I want to make a concerted effort to eat small, frequent meals on weekends, like I do during the week. Weekend weight-gain is my biggest challenge right now; once I can maintain a steady weight from Friday to Monday, I’ll move on to another challenge, like exercise.

Week 1 Summary:
Diana: 0.5% body weight lost
James: 1.5% body weight lost

The good news is that I got back on the wagon. I lost one pound in one week, which is healthy and sustainable. I became more aware of my eating habits.

The bad news is that, while I became more aware of my weekend eating habits in particular, I failed to change them this week. This allowed James to pull ahead. Had I not regained weight over the weekend, I could have potentially tied James with a 1.4% loss (or more) in the first week. I did see 209 on Friday, but I said goodbye to it on Saturday with my day of Indian and Mexican food, and continued to wave farewell with Sunday’s lunch of Chinese.

My strategy for the coming week is to only eat out once over the weekend, and to make it lunch, not dinner. That will give me the chance to burn off any evilness during the rest of the day. Usually, Aaron and I will eat out for three out of four meals during the weekend, only eating Sunday dinner at home. That’s going to change. I’m going to be trying out some new healthy recipes this weekend, to make eating at home fun.

I’m going to continue my current plan of eating 1400 Calories per day, broken down into 40% carbohydrate / 30% protein / 30% fat. I’ve been doing fairly well with not overeating in the evenings, thanks to my DietOrganizer application. It’s like Deal-a-Meal: when my DietOrganizer Palm app says I have no calories left, I’m done eating for the day.

I’m also going to continue attending two aikido classes per week (Wed and Sat) instead of just on Wednesdays, although that has more to do with my upcoming test than the weight loss challenge.

I’m surprised at how much a challenge can motivate me. When I found out today that James had lost a higher percentage than I had, that immediately intensified my resolve to improve in the coming week. I know that I should be able to just compete with myself, go for a new personal best, make it a game, all that self-improvement stuff… but that doesn’t seem to work for me. I always rationalize that it doesn’t matter if I screw up, because it’s not like there’s anything at stake in the short run.

But now? Now, there’s bragging rights to consider. And a dinner. Preferably steak.

Starting weight: 212.5 lbs. That’s up fourteen pounds since August. My goal weight for this challenge is 202, at which point I will have lost 5% of my body weight. It’s a start.

I got James’s starting weight and calculated his goal weight; I’m not sure if he wants that posted here or not, so I’ll let him add it in the comments if he wants.

I had a good first full day of paying special attention to what I eat and how active I am. (I don’t want to call it a diet, per se — that has such negative connotations. Let’s just call it the Challenge.)

I look forward to getting back down to the weight I was, so I can start over and lose the weight I wanted to lose in the first place.

In other fitness news, tonight’s aikido gave me sore toes, skinned knees, and new mat burns. I plan to go more often this month, though, since I test for rank in only four weeks. I’ll be either adding to the collection of aikido-related almost-injuries, or figuring out how to avoid them. We’ll see…

I never thought of myself as competitive; in fact, I usually find that I’m quite the opposite. In general, I like to be behind the scenes, making things go, rather than vying for attention and praise or fighting to be seen amongst the elite.

Last March, though, when my co-worker James and I had a friendly fitness wager, I discovered that striving to prove that I had just a little more oomph than someone else really helped keep me on the straight and narrow, fitness-wise.

A couple of weeks ago, I proposed a new challenge to James, and he accepted. I had been going to hold off on announcing the challenge until January 1st, but I got to thinking of it today as not only a challenge, but a present to myself. It’s not even a New Year’s Resolution — it’s a present to myself. I will help myself to lose weight and get more fit; plus, I’ll do it before James does. 🙂

The terms of the wager:

• On the morning of January 1, 2008, each party will weigh and make their weight known to the other party. This may be done privately, via e-mail, or publicly, via dianaschnuth.net.
• The first party to lose 5% of his or her body weight AND maintain that loss for seven consecutive days wins the challenge.
• The party who loses the challenge must buy dinner for the winning party and the winning party’s spouse.

(I realized afterward that weighing on the morning of January 1st might help me avoid indulging too much on New Year’s Eve, too — bonus.)

After we agreed on the terms, I thought that maybe it would be fun to get our spouses into the challenge. After all, I know Christina was on a weight loss kick for a while, as was Aaron; plus, it’s always easier to keep with a program if your significant other is on the same program. I haven’t gotten a definite yea or nay on either spouse. If one or both of them decide to get in on the game, though, it’ll make winning and losing a little less clear-cut, as there will be a first, second, and third (and possibly fourth) place. Will the winner disqualify him or herself by gaining back a certain percentage of weight before one of the last two challengers loses their five percent? I suppose we’ll have to solidify that once we find out who’s in.

As it stands now, I’ll have to lose 10 or 10½ lbs to make my five percent. Expect a detailed post in one week for the beginning of the challenge. The participants are encouraged (but not required) to post their initial weigh-ins in the comments of that upcoming post.

As a side note: the aikido dojo is closed for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Since tonight is when I usually go to aikido, and my lower body is usually what’s sore afterward, I did a short lower body workout in lieu of keiko. My set consisted of 25 leg adductions with a resistance band, 25 wall squats with my balance ball (body weight only; no dumbbells), and 25 stiff-legged deadlifts with 5 lb dumbbells. I did 25 reps of each exercise in a superset (no rests), took one or two minutes for a drink of water, then did them all again.

My short but intense (for me) lower body workout promises to give me the weekly soreness I crave, in the absence of my normal aikido workout. We’ll see…