Chris Reimagined

Forgive me readers, for I have slacked.  It’s been 3 days since my last post.

A lot of that, quite frankly, has been due to me just feeling like poopy.  Normally, when I have a cold the thing I try to do is hibernate for about 2 days straight and come out feeling better.  I didn’t do that this time for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I wanted to keep working out. 

Which I did.

In fact, from Jan 2 to Jan 9, I worked out non stop.  That’s 8 workouts in a row!  Granted, most of those workouts were 30 minutes on the Wii and not full 1 hour to 90 minute workouts in the gym, but I’m going to give myself a pass since I do have a cold and I still burn about 340-380 per 30 minute workout.  Plus, that’s not bad, right?  30 minutes a day?

However, today I took my first workout day off. Everything I’ve read about working out says that you go 6 days and take the 7th off.  I have found that in general, for my schedule, taking Sundays off works best because of Church and other obligations on my time.  Plus, it allows me uninterrupted writing time on Sunday nights, which I tend to use for writing personal “fun” stuff.  (My novel and non-freelance stuff.)

Today was also my bad meal day, which I somewhat regret and somewhat don’t.  I had planned to muscle through today and save my bad day for next week some time, but my schedule just didn’t facilitate that.  In fact, I only ate twice today.  I had breakfast when I woke up around 11:30 (thanks to my wife for letting me sleep off my cold) and then I had a small 140 calorie snack at around 2:30 because I was HUNGRY.

The plan was for us to have dinner around 4:30 right up until the boy put a small piece of rubber in his nose and I got to take him to the Emergency Room.  By the time I got out, I was starving so when we went to eat a Mongolian BBQ, I decided to go back for another plate.  (Incidentally, the take away is that I need to keep up on eating every two hours and perhaps do a better job of keeping healthy snacks handy.)

The good news is that my bad day is bad in quantity only since a lot of what I ate was vegetables and brown rice, but since one of my aims is to force myself to follow good portion size, the meal was an utter failure.  Fortunately, there was no fried foods, no soda, and minimal unclean carbs.

I own that.  But frankly, the fact I burned at a minimum 2,950 calories last week off cardio alone (not counting weight training) I’ll take it!

Which reminds me….VICTORY DANCE (my friend Rob’s term).  I went 7 days of straight working out and eating well.  That’s one week of my year down!  I’m doing it.

And you know what’s weird?  Food isn’t on my mind ALL THE TIME like I was afraid it would be.  Sure, there are times, especially coming back from the gym when all I can think about is food.  (For instance, there is 1 BBQ restaurant, 4 Italian restaurants, 2 Chinese Places, 1 Panera, 2 Sandwich shops, 1 Mexican Place, 1 Chipotle, 1 Thai restaurant, 1 Japanese Restaurant, 2 Sonics, 1 Popeyes, 1 McDonalds, 1 Mediterranean place, 2 grocery stories, 1 Chilis, 1 Bob Evans, and a Papa Johns on the way home visible from the street…what can I say, on the 3rd I was HUNGRY.)  On the other hand, I am finding that as long as I eat something every 2 hours, I don’t worry about it.

Quick week in review

The hardest moment this week:

When my son asked for a chocolate chip cookie for a snack.  I never knew how good a chocolate chip cookie could smell until that moment.  But I didn’t take one for myself.

The best moment this week:

I thought it was going to be when the button didn’t open up on my shirt last week, but instead I’ll take this week when I had to move a second notch on my belt.  It’s probably only water weight, but who cares?!  Go me!

Okay, here’s to another 7 days of healthy eating.

Oh, and I weigh myself on Tuesday.  I am dying to know how much I’ve lost.