Fall For Fitness

My company is launching a fitness challenge - Fall For Fitness. Over the next 12 weeks employees across the states will join teams and compete for most weight lost, most steps walked and most exercise minutes.

I created a team, the Lake Center Loser Corps, to get people from my building to encourage each other and compete against all the other teams in this challenge. The website we're using will have a calorie tracker and allow us to enter our daily activity. Every 2 weeks is a round; round 1 starts on Monday, September 13th and ends Sunday, September 26th.

My goal for this challenge is to walk more (yay free pedometer from the company!), exercise every night after my daughter goes to bed (well, except Sunday night cuz that's just insane after Bible study ends at 10:00 PM), and lose 1-2 pounds per week. If I keep it up (which I should, since I'm the team leader), I should lose 12 pounds (if I lose 1 lb/week) to 24 pounds (2 lbs/week), giving me the chance to lose up to almost 50% of the amount I need to lose to be at my recommended weight.

So my real goals are to lose 2-4 pounds, exercise 360 minutes and walk 70,000 steps per round. That sounds sooo big! But breaking it down by day, that's 1/4 lb, 30 minutes of exercise (taking out Sundays) and 5000 steps.

My average # of steps this week has been around 5500 - 6000, so that shouldn't be too hard to do. 30 minutes of exercise hasn't happened every day, but I'll do my best to either force myself to do it each night or add extra time on some days to make up for the days I can't. If I do this, plus watch what I eat, which I've been doing (cereal with non-fat milk each morning, Eating Right lunches and mostly-healthy dinners at home), then I should have no problem losing .25 pounds a day. Thank goodness for my Wii, with the Wii Fit Plus, Dance Dance Revolution, and Sports Resort software to keep me from getting too bored with my workout routine. Plus, I use the Wii Fit Plus software to weigh myself each day, so tracking that will be a breeze, and motivation to step up my game if I stop losing weight or gain.

So, here goes. I look forward to updating here with my progress; I probably won't do it daily, but update weekly and include my team's progress and standing in the competition each round.

Hi, my name is Michelle, and I'm overweight

I am 26 years old and have a 5-year-old daughter. I have put on 40 pounds in the last 4 years. My BMI puts me in the "Obese" category. At a "Health Fair' at my company, I was told my body fat was at 40%. I don't exercise daily, if even weekly. I love starchy foods. I smoke about 12 cigarettes a day. Time for a change.

Health experts recommend losing no more than 1-2 pounds a week when engaged in a weight loss program. If I were to start losing 2 pounds a week now, I could be down to my suggested weight by mid-January. If I lose only 1 pound a week, it'll be the beginning of June.

My gym membership ends in early January. At home I have access to an elliptical machine, yoga DVDs, a bicycle, an exercise ball and "boot camp" DVDs. At work there is a small workout room with two treadmills, three stationary bicycles and a 4-piece weight system. There are also lunch-time yoga sessions in my building on Thursdays.

So why don't I work out? My daily schedule is as follows: 6:30 AM, the alarm starts to go off. At 7:00 AM I finally get out of bed. I have to have my daughter to school before 8:00 AM. I get to work at 8:30 AM. I take a half-hour lunch break so I can leave at 5:00 PM. I get home at 5:45 PM - 6:00 PM depending on traffic. Dinner needs to be ready before 7:30PM so that my daughter can be in bed by 8:30 PM. I'm in bed usually around 11:00 PM.

So, there are a few holes in my schedule where I could work out:

• I could get up earlier, but I've not been an early riser since 6:45 AM choir in high school. To workout and be showered and ready to leave the house by 7:50 AM, I'd have to get out of bed by 6:30 AM, which means setting my alarm for 6:00 AM (I know myself, and it can take up to 30 minutes to really wake up and be functional). It's doable, but would take a lot of work and determination on my part.
• I could exercise when I get home from work. But I like sitting with my daughter, going over her day at school and helping her with her homework (if any). Plus, there's always someone else home (see my other blog about my daughter's after-school care) and I feel self-conscious when I work out to a DVD in the living room, so I'd have to use the elliptical upstairs or go for a walk or bike ride.
• I could exercise after I put my daughter to bed, but the above-mentioned problem of working out to a DVD in the living room is still a problem, plus now it's dark outside, so I can't ride my bike or walk alone safely. Which leaves the elliptical.

I could mix it up: Monday, Wednesday and Friday I exercise after work, Tuesday and Thursday I get up early to exercise.

Of course there'll be days when I'll have to change the schedule, when I have after-work obligations or I'm up late the night before for legitimate reasons (my second job, dates with my boyfriend, etc.).

But I think I could make it work by changing up what I do each day and not force myself to get up early every morning, or say, "Sorry, Friend, but I can't come out tonight because I didn't exercise this morning, so I need to do it tonight."

As for the smoking, I'll be cutting waaay back. As of right now, I smoke 6 cigarettes at work. My employer is initiating a "Tobacco-Free" environment on September 1, which means no tobacco or e-cigarettes on company property, including the parking lot. If I can switch to using my e-cigarette when I drive, I might be able to cut out real cigarettes altogether, and maybe even stop using the e-cigarette eventually. I've been smoking for a total of 8 years, with a few breaks in between, like when I was pregnant with my daughter and when I had surgery. It won't be easy, but I can do it.

Eating healthier...now that will be a real challenge. I love pasta in all forms, and I love going to Chipotle; I go every Wednesday as a "treat" for making it through half the week at work. I also go to Pat & Oscar's with my cousin a couple times a month. I'm not a huge salad person, so it'll be better for me to completely avoid fast food/casual dining restaurants for a while so I can resist the temptation of getting that huge burrito or bowl of pasta with soup and 3 breadsticks. I do have Costco's version of Slim-Fast shakes for breakfast every morning, and sometimes for lunch too, but usually I take leftovers from home. I eat at my desk, then usually go out for a smoke. Since my employer is prohibiting that, I can take walks around the buildings during my short breaks and lunch. Meals at home will be a challenge, too. My whole family loves carbs, though some are better at portion control than I am. I read somewhere that if you downsize your dinner plate to a salad/dessert plate, you won't eat as much. I might have to give that a try. I don't usually worry about dessert, meaning that I don't usually have one. I've found that if I have dessert an hour or two after dinner, then I wake up hungry, literally feeling like my stomach is empty. My guess is that feeling happens while I'm sleeping and "goes numb" before I wake up on nights that I don't have dessert.

My basal metabolic rate (BMR) is 1637 calories; meaning that's how many calories I need to function properly. According to various online calculators, just being at my desk at work burns 600 - 700 calories. To lose one pound of fat, I have to burn 3500 calories over and above what I'm already doing (which is nothing). So to lose 2 pounds a week, I need to burn 1000 extra calories a day. Walking 45 minutes a day will burn about 274 calories. So if I already burn 600 calories a day just from working and add my walking, then I'm burning a minimum of 874 calories in one day (clearly I burn more than that just to keep my body working). The calculators say to add your BMR to the number of calories your activity burns: 2511. As long as I eat fewer calories than this number, I'll lose weight. What's scary is clearly I wasn't eating less than this, which is why I've been at this weight for so long. Keeping track of my calories will be hard, since not all of my meals will come pre-packaged with the nutritional info printed on the outside. But if I can keep my breakfast and lunch to less than 600 calories, then as long as I have a decently portioned meal at dinner, I should lose some weight.

So, my challenge to myself: Lose at least 40 pounds before my birthday in early April (factoring in that I will probably have a few weeks where I won't lose anything). I will hold myself accountable by updating this blog and my exercise and weight-loss trackers regularly; I anticipate blogging and recording my exercise daily, and updating my weight-loss once a week. I think I'll use the "post" section of the blog to record my food intake and how my body is feeling. I'll also post pictures of myself once a month, to see if I'm the only one seeing a difference, but also to see the changes in my body. I'll post a picture of my body as it is now after I get home.

Comments, tips and encouragement are always welcome. Please, nothing destructive, as I know that won't help my self-esteem or motivation. If anyone would like to be my workout buddy, I'd love it!