dianaschnuth

In less than seven days, either myself or my co-worker James will be the winner of a $10 wager.

About three weeks ago, we agreed that we would compete for SparkPoints at SparkPeople.com, and whoever had the most points accumulated in the month of March would win $10. Right now, it’s still anybody’s game. I’m sure we’re both going to pull out all the stops this week, though.

The one major point-gaining strategy I’ve been slacking on is cardio. I can claim 1 SparkPoint for every five minutes of cardio, up to a max of 24 points (that’s two hours) per day. Usually, I only end up doing my 30-minute walk over lunch, and maybe some yoga in the evenings. (I’m not sure yoga should count as cardio, but that’s how they have it categorized, so OK…) This week, head cold permitting, I’m going to ramp up my cardio. I’ll do 45 minutes to an hour walk at lunch (which means I’ll have to get there and clock in on time in the morning), and I’ll do yoga and rebounding (trampolining) nightly. Hell, if I feel up to it, I’ll probably go jogging at Wildwood tomorrow or Tuesday, since the weather’s supposed to be so warm. That much activity in one week should not only kick up my SparkPoints, but also break me out of this goddamned plateau.

I thought before that maybe if I increased my fiber and protein, that would help. It doesn’t seem to be. So, this week, I’m also — no, wait. This week I’m already increasing my activity. I shouldn’t decrease my carb intake at the same time. I’ll hold off on that, and see if doing more cardio does the trick. If it doesn’t, *then* I’ll look at my carbs.

All righty. Wish me luck, both in my competition against James and in my battle against the neverending scale reading of 201.5 pounds.

I never thought I was much of a numbers person — not after snoring through a stats class my Freshman year of college, then struggling through other collegiate-level maths. I’ve discovered, though, that I enjoy finding and tracking trends, be they at work or in my weight loss.

I’ve been seriously bummed this week, and losing faith in the SparkDiet, because I’ve remained at 201.5 pounds for the past nine days straight (not counting one day when I lost half a pound, then gained it back the next). The only thing that kept me from totally giving it the big heave-ho was my $10 wager with James. For total SparkPoints earned, not for total weight lost, thank goodness.

At any rate, I have my own Excel spreadsheet and graph that I’ve been updating over the past, oh, more than four years, and I’ve incorporated weekly averages into it. I average my weight for the week, Sunday through Saturday, and subtract that average from the previous week’s average to help gauge my weight loss. I’d forgotten that last week’s average was 202.2, and it turns out that this week’s average is 201.4 (thanks to that one lower day), so I actually lost 0.8 pounds since last week. That makes me feel better.

SparkPeople, though not exactly the diet I would have chosen for myself without the online tracking, at least has some nifty graphs relating to food and exercise and goal-setting. It tells me that my recommended daily fiber intake is 25-35g, and informs me that I’m consistently below that level. I can also see that my protein isn’t as high as a former low-carber’s should be. So, my goal for this week is to meet my recommended fiber and exceed my recommended protein levels. Those things alone should push a lot of the evilness out of my diet.

Today will be fun. Today, Aaron and I are meeting Jason at the Happy Rose Buffet, where I will be selecting only the healthiest items possible, having only one plate of food, and sticking mainly to sushi. I will set a good example, and I will be proud of myself.

Damn these moods. I really, REALLY need to come up with the wherewithal to jumpstart myself out of a funk, once I recognize said funk.

Turns out that pulling a double-shift of sorts to complete a contracting project is A Bad Idea™, as the project will then have major issues and need to be fixed by someone else before going off to proof. Submitting B-minus work in Real Life has much different connotations than in college. In college, it’s just your grade. In Real Life, it’s your reputation.

Adding to my funk is the fact that my weight loss has plateaued before it ever really began. Starting March 1st, James and I have been having a friendly wager as to who can amass the most SparkPoints in the month of March. It’s less of a weight-loss contest and more of a contest of wills. Who is more involved in reaching their fitness goals? Right now, it’s James, totally. We were neck and neck for the first week of March, then I started lagging behind because of the same reasons I always stall out: I have other things to do, or I’m in a funk and can’t make myself exercise, or lack of planning convinced me to make a fast and evil dinner (like tuna mac).

My next dietary step is to increase my fiber and my protein. My next exercise step is to get back to doing it every day, like I’d been so enjoying for a week there. My next webstuff step is to do some minor updates on the LSM site, then complete a working demo of my freelance client’s website (the stylesheets, not all the content yet) by Sunday night.

Tonight was a night for myself to chill. And for cooking. Tomorrow’s potluck will have at least two reasonably healthy dishes: mine and James’s.

*le sigh*

As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to start being more diligent about my weekends. It’s really not that hard: take a scrap of paper and a pen along and write down everything I eat.

Saturday wasn’t all that bad. Lunch was Panera, and dinner was Applebee’s. Panera has their nutritional info online; Applebee’s was more of a guesstimate. I ended up at the low end of my recommended calorie range (by SparkPeople standards, between 1510 and 1860). Didn’t exercise, only drank six glasses of water. Still not horrible for a weekend.

Sunday was another story, and it was screwed by one poor decision: lunch at Red Lobster. See, Aaron had this idea that I could pay for lunch, since I had cash in my wallet leftover from an ATM run before a con back in January.* (I rarely use cash anymore.) So, since I was paying, I decided we were going all out.

I honestly didn’t make a very concerted effort to be good; I was kind of curious what kind of calories and carbs I’d end up eating if I just ate a nice lunch at Red Lobster. So, I did. And I ended up eating as many calories as I should have eaten in one whole day, from what I can tell. I tracked what I could; the piña colada dipping sauce was nearly impossible to track for nutritional info, as Red Lobster doesn’t publish theirs, either.

Dinner, while low-carb, was NOT low-cal. My half-pound Schnuth-made burger had more calories than the fried shrimp I had for lunch, and helped me rack up about 2700 calories today. Again, no exercise, but I did at least drink my eight glasses of water.

The lesson here, for me, is: 1.) always track my food on the weekends, because it makes me more aware of what I’m shoveling in; 2.) eat simple: just say no to the heavy sauces and appetizers; and 3.) look at the big picture. One day does not a failure make. I’ll get back to my normal, healthy groove tomorrow, and soon I’ll learn how to avoid losing my groove on the weekends.

Learning experience. Identifying issues. Planning solutions. I’ll see 165 lbs eventually, and it’ll be effin’ sweet. Hell, seeing 190 before our Japan vacation will be pretty effin’ sweet, for that matter.

*Turns out that I did not, in fact, have the fifty dollars cash on hand like I thought I did. I ended up paying with my debit card and leaving a hefty cash tip, instead. Still have a little cash in the wallet, which is good for emergencies, I suppose.

I allowed myself one week to keep eating as I had been, instead of jumping back into weight-loss mode right away. Figured it might be better on me both physically and mentally, being that my body was still pumped full of pregnancy hormones. This past week, though, I started purposefully increasing my activity level and tracking my food intake.

Monday: 30 min walk + PUSH DVD #2, Session #1
Tuesday: 30 min walk + 15 minutes of jogging on a trampoline (rebounding)
Wednesday: 30 min walk + PUSH DVD #2, Session #1
Thursday: 30 min walk + 10 minutes of DDR Supernova, workout mode (60 calories burned)
Friday: 30 min walk

I signed up for an account on SparkPeople, mainly because a.) I’d been tracking my food intake on their BabyFit website, and b.) I had previously been tracking my food using Diet Organizer on my PDA, but my PDA battery had died. I only recently replaced said battery, after I already got in the SparkPeople habit.

I’m planning to give my impressions of SparkPeople on an upcoming podcast, but I’ll mention here that I like it overall. It touts the “Spark Diet,” which is mainly just Eat Right And Exercise, but it’s really the tracking that does it. Plus, there are “trophies” members can achieve by earning SparkPoints online. SparkPoints can be had by entering food eaten, entering exercises done, tracking goals, reading articles, reading e-mails, logging in, and basically just surfing around the site. It’s an ingenious idea to generate return traffic, and to keep people entering their info daily.

My weight hasn’t changed this week; I’m still at 201.5 lbs. I’m OK with that, though — at least I’ve lost and kept off the few pounds I put on in those two months of pregnancy. Now I have the chance to lose at least ten more pounds before we try again. The healthier I am, the better… although going through the medical game of 20 Questions at the hospital last month made me realize that my only major health issue IS my weight. Apart from that, I’m good to go. No heart disease, allergies, high blood pressure, any of that. So, count me lucky, I suppose.

Next week, I plan to measure myself and compare to my last measurements from September (if I can find them… I think I inadvertently threw away the sheet I’d recorded them on, thinking they were also in my PDA).

Here we go, on another fun weight-loss adventure. The way I figure, I should be able to jump in where I left off in the Fall, and keep on losing half a pound a week, if not more. If I can do that, I can lose ten pounds by the time we leave for our trip to Japan (during which I may end up gaining it all back). 🙂