This has been an very odd day. I actually woke up without any plans for blog entries and as it turns out, I now have two. Unfortunately it is a situation of the Yang and the Um in the sense that a joyous blog topic was countered with a bummer of an entry. After an internal debate as to which topic to lead with, the decision was made to go with the order in which they occurred in the day. This means we’ll be starting with the happy event. So most of this year was spent rehabbing my messed up hamstring. With the exception of a few important races, there wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity to hit the pavement for any extended time. In fact, after the Bix7 in July I don’t think there was one run over 3 or 4 miles until October. Definitely nothing up to race pace which means it was difficult to keep the weight in check. By the middle of October I’d managed to gain 6 pounds putting me at 166 (one pound over marriage weight and 19 under my martial arts weight). This was pretty depressing and the scale was nagging at me every single morning. Something had to be done. At the same time a friend of mine (Pakage) had made a personal (and probably doctor approved) decision to reduce his weight and had employed an iTouch app called My Fitness Pal to help him do that. I was totally impressed when he showed me this app because it had an extensive DB of foods both from restaurants and grocery stores. Through a simple interface you were able to track your calorie intake, exercise along with a breakdown of key indicators like sodium, fats, vitamins etc. Oh, and the most important thing is …. it was FREE. All this brings us to October 20th when I made the personal commitment to getting myself back in running shape again. There was something coming up the week of Thanksgiving so decided that was going to be the target date to eliminate the unwanted 6 pounds. The software asked me a few questions regarding my lifestyle and goals and set a target calorie consumption of 1710 per day. From October 21st to present I documented every meal, every snack, all drinks and detailed my workouts as much as possible. First thing every morning I stepped on the dreaded bathroom scale and updated the app with the result. Curious as to the results? Let’s cut to the chase and show you the weight graph.
I wish there was a way to change the scale on the myfitnesspal website, but you should be able to tell that the goal was MET! Today’s weight was indeed 160 and even a few days short of the self imposed duration. In celebration I hit McDonald’s on the way into town and ordered sausage and egg bagel and a medium hot chocolate. That was one of the best tasting breakfast sandwiches ever. For now, I’ll transition to maintain mode and with the hammie finally coming around, the runs are already in the 4-5 miles range which means the daily calorie count will need to increase a little. There are some more details after the jump, but a lot of the graphs and such are more for me to analyze how things went. Honestly, this was not the easiest thing for me to do. We eat out a lot which makes healthy choices a little more difficult and there were some sacrifices which led to some frustrating moments. Swapping out my tasty muffins for oatmeal every morning was hard enough, but giving up some of my favorite desserts and reducing the portions on some of my favorite meals was a true test of the willpower. At this point, the hammie feels a lot better, my cardio is getting back to par (think there may have been only 2 or 3 days that I didn’t get a core workout in or a run) and can pretty much work out in the lot for hours and hours without tiring.
Some analytics after the jump
First off, I have to admit I am currently on a major sugar high. My wife and I tried out the new ice cream establishment in Peoria Heights – the previous home of delicious Spotted Cow. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of the establishment (two uncommon names), but apparently it is a small ice cream boutique chain out of Boston. We both decided to splurge and get the dipped waffle cones. Linda chose the nestle crunch with cake batter ice cream and I went with the dark chocolate cone with seriously chocolate ice cream flavor. Wow, that was tasty. Needless to say, my sugar level is through the roof, but it was totally worth it. A tad expensive, but we both agreed it was far better than our previous favorite Cold Stone.