Diet update: Week 8

Monday, July 30th, 2007

I’ma mess with my presentation of the stats a little bit. Because I can, that’s why.

Weight: I am 2 pounds lighter than I was a week ago, a pound lighter than I was yesterday, and half a pound heavier than I was four days ago. It’s been a frustratingly irregular week, in other words.

Exercise: I swam for an hour and a half last week for a distance just under 3/4 of a mile. I jogged just under 11 miles at around 6mph (or for around 110 minutes). I walked the dog a little over five miles at just over 3mph (100 minutes). That works out to around 300 minutes of exercise, or just over 40 minutes exercise per day on average.

Intake: I consumed a little over 8000 calories last week, or around 1200 calories per day. Over 11% of those calories were from sushi, another 14% from Mexican food, 8% from pizza, and 8% from alcohol. I have a sneaking suspicion the alcohol percentage will rise a bit this coming week.

Eight weeks of the diet down… hopefully, not too many more to go. My goal is to be around 175 at the beginning of September, which is cutting it close but not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

I had an exciting revelation this weekend: I pulled some smaller-size shirts out of the back of the closet which I’d given up on ever being able to wear again years ago… and they fit! I’m wearing a shirt to work today that I last fit into prior to grad school. This excites me. :)

Diet update: Week 7

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

Diet updates are boring! I’ll keep this one short. :)

Weight: 185.5 pounds, down 2.5 from last week. Again on schedule, though I could’ve been ahead of schedule were it not for the pesky weekend interfering in all of my low-calorie plans. I had a birthday celebration, a dinner out with the ladyFriend, and a dinner with the grandparents. All are great fun, but hard on the midsection.

Exercise: Yardwork and jogging was the name of the game. I also managed to go swimming twice. That’s my new goal: I want to swim twice a week as often as possible, such that by the mid-fall sometime, I might not be so aquatically special-needs.

Intake: 900 – 1500 calories. Sort of all over the board. 1500 calories was due to coworker Jeremy’s birthday celebrations. 900 calories was Spanish class night, and I didn’t have time to eat much.

And that’ll do for now. I’ll give you something more to gnaw on soon.

Diet update: Week 6

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

Six weeks down, probably six more or so to go. Truth be told, I’m a little proud of myself. I’ve updated my spreadsheet thinger every single day for the last 40-plus. And more importantly, I’ve been generally honest when calculating my intake, exercise, et cetera. Who knew Excel could be such a fantastic motivator? :)

Weight (7/16): 188 pounds, or 2.5 lighter than I was a week before, or right on schedule according to my aims. It feels good to be under 190 - getting on the scale each morning is just that much more exciting when I get to see and eight in the middle instead of a nine. Makes me feel even closer to my goal, since when a seven replaces that eight, I’m practically there.

Exercise: Last week was pretty darn good. I averaged around 400 extra calories per day burned exercising, most of which came from jogging. I managed a little over 9 miles of jogging last week (at just over 6mph average), on top of 6.5 miles walking the pooch. I even managed to fit in 45 minutes of lap swimming, which it turns out hurts quite a bit more than a 2-mile jog. :)

Intake: Less caloric variance this week. I never ate more than 1500 calories in a day or fewer than 1100. Chalk that up to luck - I ate out at El Aguila Real one night, Court Avenue a second, Hickory Park a third, and Star Bar a fourth. Jeez… I didn’t realize how bad that sounded until I counted. :) But I was able to talk myself in to portion control each of those evenings, and took home half of my food each night to eat as lunch the next day. Asking for a box is starting to feel normal.

Stay tuned, sports racers, as I’ll have a rather important announcement tomorrow sometime. And no, Amanda isn’t pregnant and we’re not getting hitched - it’s a blog-type announcement. Chill.

Diet update: week 5

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

I’ma keep this brief, because I’m hoping to blog about other things later in the day. Also, I missed a week, so this post summarizes both weeks.

Weight (7/9): 190.5 pounds, or 8 pounds lighter than I was two weeks ago. That seems a little high, but I think a lot of the weight I had two weeks ago was water retention and so forth. I’ve been hovering just above the 190-mark for a couple of days now. The good news is, that means I’m roughly halfway through my diet, as I’m currently shooting for 175 as a cutoff point. The bad news is, the easy half is probably over. :)

Exercise: Has started to improve again. I’ve started jogging again recently, which helps quite a bit. I’ve actually managed to jog a little under 5 miles in the last 24 hours - 3.4 miles after work last night, and a 1.3 mile jog with the pup this morning.

Intake: My diet varies more widely from day to day, but I think I’m okay with that. The least number of calories I’ve consumed in a single day the last two weeks was 950 on the 27th, for no other reason than I wasn’t particularly hungry and I hadn’t exercised much. The most I’ve consumed was three days later at 2250, which was a result of Amanda’s parents being in town and taking us out to Cosi Cucina for dinner following a long day at the art festival where I partook in gyro goodness. Still, my average intake over the last two weeks has been around 1450 calories per day, which is just about where I want to be.

Diet update: week 3

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

So it’s been three weeks since I started my diet. Overall, my progress is decidedly so-so. Last week wasn’t the easiest time for a diet, since I ate most meals out and thus couldn’t really count calories. But here are some basic stats.

Weight (6/25): 198.5 pounds, which is up 2 pounds from 6/25’s low of 196.5. However, I actually managed to gain ~three~ pounds before I left for Seattle, meaning I was still able to lose a pound while noshing predominately on restaurant foods. I’m pretty okay with that.

Exercise: Worst week ever. I averaged around 200 extra calories burned a day. That average is sucked down by two exercise-less days: Wednesday due to 12 hours of travel on my way out to Seattle, and Sunday due to 11 hours of travel on the way back. The only exercise I got on the days between was walking around the city. I’m glad Justin lived a mile and a half from the convention center, or that average would have been a lot lower.

Intake: Also a pretty damn bad week, although the numbers are a little fuzzy because I had to estimate pretty much everything. I’m saying I consumed just over 1500 calories a day on average, but most of those calories were carb-heavy, and as such, more willing to turn into fat. Over 2000 of those calories came from alcohol alone. ;)

So my goal for this week is to get back to 196 or so. It’s going to be tough, as my diet of late as gotten a little more calorie-heavy, yet my exercise has also decreased. I’m going to have to do something about one or the other… I just don’t yet know which.

Oh, and I plan to blog about Seattle very soon, just not this moment. Probably tomorrow afternoon sometime.