Dec 23, 2011

Holiday Challenge Wrap Up

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That went by fast!

My Four Week Holiday Challenge is officially over. Let’s review my goal and action plan:

The Goal: Body Recomposition
I would like to reduce my body fat percentage from 21% to 18% by Christmas and 15% by mid-February. Right now, I look okay but I want the type of body that people look at and can tell I work hard for it. I’ve been settling for mediocrity long enough - it’s time to take it up a level.

The Plan:
- 3 Body Pump sessions per week
- 3-4 hours of cardio per week
- Eat 1400-1600 calories 6 days a week and enjoy a cheat day once a week where I eat around 2500 calories
- Eat 70-100 grams of protein every day

Results

I’m really bad at keeping track of my weight and body fat percentage because the numbers fluctuate all the time; all I can tell you is that I dropped about 4 pounds and my body fat percentage is around 19%. However, I did take progress pictures and I think these are a much better indicator of my progress over the last four weeks:

As for my plan, I followed it exactly as written.

I’m now taking a two week “maintenance” break where I’ll aim for 1800-2000 calories most days. I’m doing this for several reasons:
1) I want to fully enjoy Christmas, New Year’s and my 25th birthday
2) It will be a good chance to rev up my metabolism
3) I want to establish good maintenance habits that I can stick to for life

There’s a reason why I gained a little weight this year and it’s because I didn’t have a good maintenance plan in place. I really thought I could ignore my diet and maintain my weight loss, so long as I kept active. Not so. The said reality is that with my appetite and love of all things decadent, I will probably always have to monitor what I eat.

So for the next two weeks, I want to practice moderation and that will be the focus of my posts. My goal is to be at the same weight/body fat percentage after two weeks. Then I will do a final cut before my beach vacation in February.

Filed Under: Challenges ·
Dec 18, 2011

Holiday Challenge: Week 3 Recap

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Hello! First of all, I hope you like the new layout. I have all of next week off from work so I’m hoping to do some re-organizing around here, including better post categories (seriously, I have categories called “Food” and “Exercise,” which pretty much describes every post!).

Today marks the beginning of the fourth and final week of my holiday challenge. Here’s what Week 3 looked like:

Day Calories Workout
Sunday 1423 Body Step
Monday 1501 Body Pump
Tuesday 1793 RPM
Wednesday 1502 Body Pump
Thursday 1960 Body Step + Body Flow
Friday 1490 Rest
Saturday 1500 Body Pump

 

I’ll post final progress pictures and stats at the end of the week (before Christmas festivities begin, obviously). The changes from week to week are so small that I’d rather just do a final before and after.

Week 4 has gotten off to a good start. I had the usual for breakfast – peanut butter and banana slices on toast with a glass of skim milk. At 9:30 a.m., I did an RPM class and ran a few errands afterwards (and by errands, I’m referring to all of the Christmas shopping I’d been avoiding). By the time I got home, I was hungry but it was too early for lunch. I needed a quick tide me over so I ate the rest of the banana from breakfast, bringing my morning calorie count to 410 calories.

For lunch, I cooked up a quick tofu and vegetable stir fry. To make the sauce, I mixed almond butter (3 tablespoons), soy sauce (2 tablespoons), rice vinegar (3 tablespoons) and water (2 tablespoons) and cooked everything in sesame oil – so delicious and I have lots of leftovers to eat for the week. I was too lazy to cook the soba noodles that go with this recipe so I got my carbs from an apple that I ate right after lunch. Total for lunch = 391 calories.

For my midday snack, I got a nice dose of protein from tuna and crackers (190 calories).

For dinner, I ate a falafel pita with a Vitatop for dessert (450 calories).

Total = 1441 calories  

Now that I’m reviewing today’s eats, I can see that my protein intake was wayyy too low, mostly due to lack of planning. Most days, I’ve been good about getting around 25%-30% of my calories from protein but some days (like today) I just don’t feel like tracking. I don’t know how vegetarians manage – on days where I don’t eat meat at every meal or consciously make an effort to increase my protein intake, I struggle to get even 20% of my calories from protein, even when I add other protein sources (milk, nut butter, tofu, yogurt, beans, etc) to my diet. That is something I need to work on.

Here’s to a successful Week 4 – I really need to kill it this week to compensate for all of the extra calories I will inevitably consume over the weekend!

Filed Under: Challenges, Daily Eats ·
Dec 17, 2011

Cheat Day(s) Recap

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This week was the hardest so far of my 4-week Holiday Challenge.

On Tuesday, we had a bake exchange at work. I brought in Mars Bars Christmas Crackle and five other co-workers brought in an assortment of cookies and other baked goods.

As planned, I sampled one of each. The hardest part was stopping myself.

See, I have a major “all or nothing” mentality. Typically, I go way overboard on designated “cheat days.” I’ll have a massive dinner with generous helpings of wine and bread, then top it all off with a decadent dessert, not because I really want dessert but because I’m “allowed” to have it. 

Once I’ve started indulging, I just keep going until I feel sick. The greedy side of my brain knows I can get away with this kind of behaviour once every couple of weeks without gaining weight. Yet, the rational side of my brain still feels guilty afterwards for abusing my body by filling it with too much in one sitting.

So the fact that I stopped at 5 cookies is a sign of progress. Sure, I could have eaten all 36 treats (everyone took home six of everyone else’s treats), then returned to healthy eating the next day and nothing would have happened. I wouldn’t have gained weight. But I would have felt gross. And I wouldn’t have really enjoyed the other 31 treats.

After I’d finished my treats, I packed the leftovers away in my car, knowing if I kept them near my desk I would inevitably go for round two once the 3:00 slump hit. After work, I dropped them off at my sister’s house for her to enjoy. The remainder of the day’s meals and snacks were healthy and I got in a great spin workout in the morning. All in all, it ended up being a “maintenance” day rather than a cheat day, with my total calories hovering at around 1800.

Cheat Day #2 was yesterday. We had our staff holiday luncheon at Ruth Chris Steakhouse. We had a set menu with three courses so it was difficult to keep within a reasonable amount of calories for my meal. I mitigated the damage by making healthier choices and passing on “filler” like bread and wine. 

For my starter, I ordered the house salad and for my main, I ordered the 8 oz petit filet. There were also  a number of shared sides being passed around, including garlic mashed potatoes and french fries. I knew the steak would satisfy me so I stuck to a small side serving of sauteed mushrooms. 

Then there was dessert. They had so many delicious sounding desserts – chocolate sin cake, pecan pie, cheesecake, key lime pie. We all know I love me some dessert but I knew I was full and that if I topped my meal off with a giant slab of cake or pie, I’d end up eating the whole thing and feel bad about it afterwards.

So I ordered a boring  raspberry sorbet and suffered a few minutes of extreme dessert envy when the waiters brought out the other orders. During the ten minutes we were all eating dessert, I felt a little bummed out but I left that restaurant feeling good about myself for having respected my body; that feeling stayed with me the rest of the day whereas the joy I would have gotten from pigging out on dessert would have been fleeting.

That’s not to say I will never eat chocolate cake again (ummm, yeah right!). But I am working on indugling in moderation, even on ”cheat” days and events like parties, family dinners and other occasions I would normally give myself carte blanche to eat myself sick. 

Week 3 recap coming tomorrow!

Filed Under: Challenges, Moderation · Tagged:
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