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.

Day 29 - September 25, 2009

2.5 POUNDS LOST THIS WEEK!

I did it again! Another 2.5 pounds! That makes four weeks in a row of consistent weight loss. I'm going to assume, then, that my of the 3 pounds lost after the first week, only 1/2 pound was water weight. Woohoo! This means I've lost a total of 10.5 pounds in 4 weeks! In theory (which is unlikely to happen, because I know how weight loss works), that means I could be down to my healthy weight by Christmas! My guess is, I'm going to hit my goal weight somewhere between mid-January and mid-February.

Wow, I'm just so pleased. Even though my mph has dropped a bit during my walks (by tenths of a point), I'm still clearly making progress! I think that means I can put off buying that weight vest a little bit longer. And I've not used my e-cigarette in a week! No smoking of any kind at all! Yay!

I'm officially "overweight" now; 1/2 a pound ago I was "obese." And I've lost 23% of my weight loss goal (10.5lbs out of 45lbs)!

I’ve been using an application on my iPhone to track my exercise (calories burned) and diet (calories, fat, protein, & carbs consumed) called Daily Burn. I’m using the free version, which basically does what I want; the “Pro” version tracks other things too: cholesterol, iron, etc. The application then syncs to a web account on http://www.dailyburn.com/ so I can see it on a bigger screen (and see more stats, too.) Well, Daily Burn just made my life a little bit easier. They have a new app (for $2.99) that scans barcodes! So instead of having to search for my food in their database (which can take awhile, depending on how many versions of blueberry yogurt Dannon makes, etc.), I just hold the barcode near the camera lens on my iPhone and it automatically scans it and searches for me! Then it syncs with my application and web account. Awesome! Now, of course, it won’t scan everything; my hard-boiled egg doesn’t come with a barcode, but really, if I got upset about that, I’d need my mental status “scanned.”

9:05 AM Quaker Low Sugar Instant Oatmeal maple brown sugar (I can tell there’s sugar missing; tasted like regular non-flavored oatmeal)
10:50 AM large hard-boiled egg
12:20 PM Lean Cuisine cheese ravioli (scanned with my iPhone, of course)
3:15 PM Dannon Light & Fit blueberry yogurt
4:20 PM 3/4 cup pineapple chunks
6:30 PM leftover McD's salad and 1 microwaved chicken breast (I know, sounds weird, but it's actually very juicy)
7:15 PM small bottled Starbucks mocha frappucino (so I could get cash back at Arco)

In general: 60oz of water

13 minutes of walking at 3.5mph
14 minutes of walking at 3.4mph
14 minutes of walking at 3.4mph

I'm not sure I'll be able to post this weekend: lots going on. But I'll do my best