Making a better me!

[p_wreath]

Today's a really big day for me. So big that it will actually culminate in a little party tonight. So, tonight will be a cheat meal for me.

I'm totally in pms mode right now, so it's discouraging to see the scale creep up when I'm eating well and exercising regularly. I know I shouldn't weigh myself everyday but I'm trying to learn about my body and how it reacts during different conditions.

[Amity228]

hey p get better!

[p_wreath]

Okay, I feel much better today! In fact I was feeling better last night. I'm ready to get back on track. I fell off the wagon but now I'm ready to jump right back on.

Thursday's menu
B: Morningstar sausage & egg squares; mock cinnamon bread; coffee & 3 tbsp ff 1/2 & 1/2
S:
L: WW Eng Muffin w/2 slices of turkey, 1 oz of apple slices & 1 tbsp lite blue cheese dressing
S: 2 oz of apple, 1 LC wedge
D: Cheese and crackers, fruit salad, veggies w/ranch dip. 2 slices of a seven layer chocolate cake. (This was at a party in my honor).

98 oz of water
A gazillion calories

Friday's menu
B:
S:
L: Chicken soup and crackers
S: reese's pb egg (leftover from my party)
D: turkey burger & some fries (ketchup and ranch)

100 oz of water
about 1900 calories


Lessons learned:

1. Sugar begets more sugar. And too much sugar after a long period of no sugar makes me feel terrible.

2. I'm not a total pig. My DH brought home GS cookies last night and I didn't have even just one. I just didn't want one.

I feel refreshed and focused--ready to finish the last week of school and get even more extreme!!

[p_wreath]

Saturday's menu:

B: Cheesy Frittata
S: Coffee w/ ff 1/2 & 1/2
L: RF Triscuits w/ff cream cheese and fruit spread
S: RF Triscuits
D: Turkey meatloaf; Just like stuffed potatoes; broccoli
S: Fudgsicle and LF cool whip

Cardio: 41 minutes of walking
Strength: Abs and arms
92 oz of water

Calorie intake: 1531
Calories burnt: 270
Total: 1261

[p_wreath]

B: Baked Oatmeal; coffee & 3 tbsp ff 1/2 & 1/2
S: Granny smith apple rings; 1 wedge LC
L: leftover turkey meatloaf; lettuce & 2 tbsp lite blue cheese dressing
S: Mock cinnamon cake; coffee & 3 tbsp ff 1/2 & 1/2
D: Salmon w/ apricot-almond meal crust; 1/2 cup brown rice; Just like stuffed potatoes
S1: Healthy Choice Bar
S2: Fudgsicle

87 oz of water
41 minutes of cardio--today I started Couch to 5K!!!
Stretching DVD

Calorie intake: 1500
Calories burnt: 172
Total: 1328

[Amity228]

Hey p--

Wanted to drop by and say hi! Ok see ya.



Just kidding. So you started C25K thats awesome. It gets kind of addictive.
Hope this last week goes well for you at school. You seem like you are doing a great job. Keep it up.

[queenoftheu]

Hey, P! Long time, no post on your journal!

I hope your party was fun... And guess what?!? I bought my 2000 Toyota Corolla yesterday! I got a dark blue one.

[p_wreath]

Hi Amity & Queen. Thanks for visiting. I'm in major stress mode until Thursday, so I'll come visit your journals then.

It's after 1am and I just got home from school a few minutes ago to> I was finishing grading a set of finals. Then I have to be back at school tomorrow to go over some other papers with my advisor and give a presentation in one of my classes. Wish me luck.

I did okay with food today. We had to eat in the dining hall because of our grading situation. I was surrounded by carbs and sugar but I stuck to more beachy things. I did have a half a pack of peanut m&m's at around 10pm simply for the sugar rush. It did the job and I didn't eat the whole bag. And I had a ton of coffee today. It really could have been a heck of a lot worse, but I know I won't win any medals.

B: 3/4 c. Uncle Sam w/ 1/2 cup berries & 1/2 cup 1% milk; coffee w/ 3 tbsp ff 1/2 & 1/2
S: Mock Cinnamon bread; Coffee w/ 2 tbsp ff 1/2 & 1/2
L: Salad (lettuce w/salmon, kidney beans & 2 tbsp lite blue cheese dressing); Granny smith apple rings
S: NF latte
D: Turkey hot dog (no bun) w/mustard; salad (lettuce w/tofu, a few peas, a couple of slices of beets, sunflower seeds, bac-o bits, a few of slices of olives, w/light french dressing); 1/4 cup cottage cheese w/ pears
S: About 10 peanut m&m's

42 minutes of walking
87 oz. of water

Calorie intake (approximate): 1628
Calories burnt: 198
Total: 1430

[Harley04]

Hello p_,

Just a quick hello and hope you are feeling better. It looks like you've been doing great and congrats on joining the C25K!

Harley

[Amity228]

Good Luck P!

[Aninha]

Hi there P! I just came back from vacation and I see there's a lot going on here!! You're doing great, keep up the good work!

I see you took up running too - Good for you!!! I loved the C25k program when I did it. Let us know how it goes!

[p_wreath]

Hi and thanks to everyone for visiting! I promise I'll get back to each of you by Friday (or Saturday, at the latest!).

Tomorrow is the day the last one of my big projects is due for the quarter. But yesterday in the middle of a meeting with a prof my throat started to get sore and swell a bit. After the mtg. I immediately bought some Cold-Eeze but then had to go give a paper presentation. Then my prof took as all out to dinner. So when I got home last night I was feeling terrible, but I let myself sleep until 10 o'clock this morning. I felt fine when I woke up, but around the same time as yesterday (2-ish) I started feeling bad again. I guess I'm just fighting something because I am exhausted but I have to crank out this paper for tomorrow.

I was supposed to do day 2 of c25k but I barely have the energy to type this.

Tuesday
B: Multigrain hot cereal made w/1 c. 1% milk, 1 tbsp pb & 1 tbsp ns fruit spread
S: Mock cinnamon bread; coffee w/ 3 tbsp ff 1/2 & 1/2
L: 2 mini ww pitas; turkey meatloaf
S: 1 LC; granny smith apple rings
D1: miso soup; caterpillar roll; a few edamame; tiny glass of sake
D2: turkey meatloaf
S: ns fudgsicle & lite cool whip

Calories: 1657
No exercise
90+ oz of water

Wednesday
B: Baked oatmeal
S: Mock cinnamon bread w/ lt. cool whip; coffee w/4 tbsp ff 1/2 & 1/2
L: turkey meatloaf; granny smith apple rings
S: low sodium chicken noodle soup
D: turkey sloppy joes over 1/2 c. brown rice; broccoli; healthy choice bar
S: ns fudgsicle, 1 tbsp pb, lt. cool whip

Calories: 1493
No exercise
90 oz of water


Also, I read a great article on carbs and protein. I'll post it later so watch out for it....

[Amity228]

That sore throat thing has been going on around here. It was a sore throat right before bed and it would really hurt, only lasted a couple of days though, then poof it was gone. Hope you feel better.

Don't worry about getting to my journal. Nothing too exciting going on over there. Just my usual realization that if I eat one grain in the morning and thats it, without cheats than I lose, oh also no dessert or third snack.

Just need to buckle down, I guess. Always nice to see the scale go down in the morning. It seems thats become more of a motivator for me than the challenge.

Have a good Thursday!

[p_wreath]

Today is recovery day. I'm recovering from a long and challenging quarter. I'm recovering from feeling sick. And, I'm recovering from eating too much last night celebrating the end of the quarter.

Today is about getting back on track and looking forward, not backwards. This has not been an ideal week, but I've had many challenges in front of me.

Thursday
B: Mock cinnabon
S: Mock cinnamon cake; coffee w/3 tbsp ff 1/2 &1/2
L: turkey sloppy joe; 1/2 c. brown rice
S:
D: At a lovely french bistro: small salad, cheese, bread, chicken in a mushroom sauce, tiny portions of zucchini, carrots & potatoes. Then I had some of my DH's fries, tarte tartin
S: But I was still hungry and my throat was hurting and apparently the only thing that made it feel better was cool whip. I had a sf fudgsicle, strawberries and far, far too much cool whip.

90+ oz of water
No exercise
A gazillion calories

The good news is that the scale still seems to be headed in the right direction, even this morning!!

[p_wreath]

I use a program to track calories and nutrients and it's been very helpful. However recently I've wondered what exactly does low carb/right carb mean and how much protein should I be eating? I found an article in Science News (I can't provide the link because I get it through my university's subscription) but here are some of the highlights:a

Science News
Week of Sept. 10, 2005; Vol. 168, No. 11
"Dieting? Don't Give Up Protein"
by Janet Raloff

The new study explored what would happen if the ratio of fats in the diet were held constant and the pared carbohydrates were replaced, gram-for-gram and calorie-for-calorie, with protein. This 4-month trial, conducted in 48 obese women between the ages of 40 and 56, also assigned half of the volunteers on each diet to a low-intensity exercise regime.

The findings, reported in the August Journal of Nutrition, showed not only that the dieters lost more weight on the low-carb, protein-rich fare, but also that they lost more body fat than muscle. Moreover, women on the protein-rich diet who exercised lost 20 percent more weight than did the more-sedentary women on this diet. That's a bit surprising, notes study leader Donald K. Layman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, because the prescribed exercise shouldn't have been enough extra activity to translate into any discernible weight loss. Indeed, the exercise regimen didn't provide any extra weight loss to the women eating the carb-rich diet.

What this means, he told Science News Online, is that the extra protein some women were eating somehow collaborated with exercise to reduce weight.
...

In the end, women on the high-carb diet ate about the same proportion of macronutrients as they had been downing before taking part in the study: 55 percent of their calories as sugars and starches, 30 percent as fat, and 15 percent as protein. It was the other group that made major changes in the ratio of these macronutrients. The high-protein group consumed only 40 percent carbs, 30 percent fat, and 30 percent protein.

Leucine, an ingredient in meats, appears to do more than just help preserve muscle in people who are dieting. Among women who engaged in mild exercise, it actually appeared to boost weight loss compared to dieting volunteers who ate equal-calorie meals low in this nutrient.

Moreover, the proteins included in each day's menus were dominated by what Layman terms "high-quality" protein—the type especially rich in the amino acids that build muscle. Some of these amino acids, such as leucine, aren't made by the body and must be obtained from the diet—primarily from foods such as meats, dairy, eggs, and soybeans.

Adding a little exercise to the diet regime helped keep a woman's metabolism revved up longer and her muscles conditioned.
The protein focus seems to have paid rich dividends, Layman says, since women on the protein-enriched diets preserved more of their muscle than the high-carb diners did. That means that protein and exercise combined to reduce the women's weight by burning body fat.

Both dieting groups trimmed more body fat when they undertook some extra exercise. Sedentary women on the protein diet dropped 15 percent of their body fat during the trial, and those who added in extra exercise lost 21.5 percent of their body fat. By contrast, those who exercised and ate the high-carb fare lost 15 percent of their body fat, while their sedentary counterparts on that diet shed only 12.3 percent of their fat.