I’m on week four of my calorie counting experiment, and it has been coupled this last week with a pretty laid-back running schedule. Since I don’t have a major race to train for, I’ve pretty much been running just for fitness. In other words, I’m running so that I can eat more food. 😉 I ran 6 miles last Saturday with Ann and Toddra, and it was damn cold! We started at 6am so Toddra would have time to make her son’s early football game. She lives in Wyandotte, and we agreed to meet at her house and run from there. It was 31 degrees when we started!
We just ran up the main road and back, which was actually kind of fun for me…I got to see Downtown from a whole different view! I even got my picture taken with the world’s biggest baseball bat!
Is it actually the world’s biggest? I have no idea, but it was the biggest I’ve ever seen!
When we finished, the sun was still 30 minutes from rising, so I camped out at the park and waited.
After that, it was family pictures at the Metropark. We definitely did not pick the best day, for weather or for fall foliage, but I know the pictures will turn out great anyway. My photographer is awesome! As soon as I get a sneak peeks, I’ll post them.
Sunday was an exhausting day. JJ and I were up at 5 AM and on the road by 6:15 in order to make it to Grand Rapids by 9 o’clock for the first of two hockey games. After the first hockey game, (which unfortunately they lost pretty big), we went to Dave & Busters. This was my first time there, and I found it to be a bit frenetic. :p But JJ had a good time, and I got a decent if not spectacular salad.
That’s a chicken Parmesan Caesar salad, and it was challenging to track. Dave & Busters seems to be one of the few big chains that doesn’t have all their nutritional information online, so I had to put the salad together in my My Fitness Pal tracker as best I could. Afterwards, I didn’t feel full, so I splurged and ordered a bananas foster pudding cake.
I know it was full of calories, but it was so good! I would definitely order it again in a heartbeat. Only the next time, I wouldn’t share any with JJ like I did on Sunday. 😉 Once again, I tracked it as best I could.
We finished the second game at about 5:30 (which unfortunately they once again lost big), and then we had to hurry up and get on the road to get home. That meant dinner on the run, and JJ asked for Jimmy John’s, so that’s where we went. I got the BLT sub again, and I was feeling kind of down because the kids had lost, so I splurged and got us a cookie. On top of the stress of just getting home, we also had to deal with a freeway closure, so by the time we finally did pull into the drive, I was tired and cranky. So of course I decided I deserved some of the chocolate cake I had made as a treat for my long run on Saturday. :p
Are you keeping track of all the food I ate on Sunday? Well, I did, and here’s what it look like when I was done:
Ha! Go big or go home, right? 😉 My fitness pal has a feature where you “complete” your entries for the day, and it tells you how much you would weigh in five weeks if every day were like that day. If I stay within my calorie range, it usually tells me that I’m going to weigh a pound or so less in five weeks, assuming I eat like that every day. For instance:
It’s actually fairly motivating, and it often keeps me from just mindlessly eating any remaining calories I have at the end of the day, because I like to have it tell me that I’m going to weigh less. On Sunday, after I completed my entries, it showed me this:
Bwahaha! If I keep eating like that, I’ll GAIN 9 pounds in five weeks! 😉
Despite my overindulgence on Sunday, when I weighed myself Monday morning, it wasn’t terrible.
That’s a loss of .6, which I was OK with. I still feel good, and as a bonus, when I weighed in at Weight Watchers Wednesday evening for my monthly weigh-in, I was delighted to find I had lost 1.2 pounds since last month! I stayed for the meeting, but I didn’t say too much, since I’m not actually counting Weight Watchers points right now. Don’t get me wrong, I think I still have a lot to offer as far as general healthy habits go, but I just felt like being quiet yesterday. (This is the point where you’re supposed to ask if there something wrong with me. 😉 I actually had a headache most of the day, which stems from an unfortunate run-in with Jason’s leg press machine when I was working out last week.)
Although I was trying to be quiet, the leader, who always recognizes me, had an opportunity to point out that I’m a marathon runner, and she asked me to give my thoughts on exercise and weight loss. I offered a couple of comments, and then, when I was done, one of the other members, a man, looked at me and said, “I just want to thank you. You came to our meeting last November, November 11th to be exact, and when I heard about your running and exercise, it really inspired me. I went out the very next day and bought a Fitbit, and now I’m up to walking as much as 9 miles at a time.” What a surprise! That made me feel so good. 🙂 He’s a bigger guy, and I assume he still on his weight loss journey, but he mentioned that with the weight that he’s already lost, he’s gone from four diabetes medications down to one, and it made me happy to know that I inspired him to take positive steps. I’ve mentioned several times on my blog that my friend Katie inspired me to get healthy and start running, so it was nice to know that I’ve paid it forward for at least one person. 🙂
So, with week four of calorie counting in the books, I’m going to continue on this path. However, I did make one change this week: I’ve lowered my daily calorie goal from 1500 to 1300. I’ve only lost about 2 pounds over the last four weeks, and I feel like I could probably due to eat a little bit less. I’m on day four, and I haven’t died yet, so I’m hopeful that this will help me jumpstart my weight-loss a little bit.
In my next post, I’ll do a review of the calorie tracker I’ve been using for this weight-loss cycle, compared to the one I used a couple of years ago when I was trying to lose a little bit of weight using calorie counting. I’ve had it written for about a week, but I just never seem to have the time to post it, and then when I do post, I always have so much to say about something totally different! 😉
Thanks so much for reading!
What a terrific post this week! You have been successful in tracking your food during the past four weeks. Even with a busy and hectic schedule you have maintained your weight, and by utilizing a healthy combination of calories and exercise while allowing occasional indulgences this month you have managed to lose weight. The best non-scale victory is learning you have inspired another member at Weight Watcher’s to challenge himself to move more than he had been doing and hearing the impact it has had on his life. By reading your blog and Katie’s blog, I was inspired to start tracking calories on MyfitnessPal. Yesterday my husband told me I was looking good in my jeans which is the best inspiration to keep going!
Thank you SO much for the nice words and thoughtful post! It is greatly appreciated!