A New Me

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I downloaded the Lose It app on my iPod Touch. I’ve been doing pretty good keeping track of what I’ve been eating. And I’ve managed to stay under my calorie budget, for the most part. I have had my days where I’ve gone over, but it hasn’t been by that much.

This application has definitely helped me with my portion control. That’s the main reason I’ve been able to stay under my calorie budget. It has also opened my eyes to how bad my eating habits in the past were. On Friday I ordered a pizza from Papa John’s. I had had a bad afternoon at work (of my own making), and I didn’t really have anything in my apartment that I wanted to eat. So I ordered a large BBQ Bacon Chicken pizza. Papa John’s does have nutritional info on their pizzas on their website. So I found the one I ordered and entered it into the Lose It app.

I ate 3 slices of that pizza … I was hungry. I then added that to my food log. My reaction when I saw the calorie count for those 3 slices was “holy shit!! “. It was a little over 1000 calories for those 3 slices. In the past, I’ve been known to eat even 4 slices of pizza when I order one, depending on what kind and what size. No wonder I’m overweight. LOL

Needless to say, I won’t be ordering pizza again for a while. And when I do, I’m only gonna eat 1 slice and maybe have a salad on the side. I just can’t keep eating 2 or 3 (or 4) slices of pizza when I order one. That’s not going to keep me on track.

I definitely love that little application. It has helped me so much in my journey thus far. It’s not only helping me lose weight, but it’s also helping me with the way I see food. And that’s a good thing.

I just did my weekly weigh-in. I was down only 0.8 lbs this week, but it’s better than a weight gain, especially since I only worked out on Sunday and Monday of last week. That brings my weight loss for the first 2 weeks to almost 5 lbs. Considering my plan is to lose at least 2 lbs a week, I’m slightly ahead of schedule. So I’m not that upset about only losing 0.8 lbs.

My motivation definitely sucked last week. I just didn’t work out. I knew I should, but I still didn’t. I did stay on my diet (I hate calling it that … it’s more of a change in eating habits) … except for yesterday. Robin, Dannilynn, and I went out to supper at Chilis. I got the chicken fried steak (which was the BEST that I’ve had in quite a long time). I did have potatoes and broccoli along with that, and we didn’t get dessert. And we went out last nite, so add beer to that list (more wasted calories).

So … how would I rate my progress thus far? I think I’d give myself a B-. If I rate fitness and diet separately, then fitness gets a D and diet gets an A-. I really need to bring the fitness grade up. If I continue to eat the way I have been (eating normal sized portions and not snacking) and get on a regular fitness routine, I should easily make my goal of 2 lbs a week … maybe even more. I’m trying not to push myself or kill myself because if I do that, I know that I’ll just end up stopping completely. I need to stop being lazy though. I need to get a regular routine going and stick with it. So that’s my next mini-goal. Wish me luck.

Name: Lose It! iPhone and iPod Touch application
Homepage: http://www.loseit.com/

At the suggestion of epizoic, I downloaded the Lose It! application (iTunes link) on my iPod Touch. If you’re trying to lose weight, and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, I suggest you download it. It’s a FREE app, so you’ve got nothing to lose.

At first I was only going to keep track of my weight and exercise with it. But I realized that keeping track of what I eat is important too. And it’s easy to do with this application. All you have to do is search for the type of food you ate and enter how much you ate. And they’ve got supermarket and restaurant foods as well.

To start, you enter in some data such as height, weight, and birthday. You also enter in your goal weight as well as your weekly goal (how much you want to lose each week). The app then gives you a date where it estimates when you’ll have reached your goal weight if you stay on track as well as your calorie budget (by day). Then you just enter in what you eat and what type of exercise you do. The app lets you see where you are on your calorie budget for the day.

You can also enter in recipes to easily include meals that you make from scratch. I made potato and ham soup for dinner today, and it was easy to enter that recipe into the app (I had to guess at some amounts, but that’s because I just tossed stuff into the pot). And it saves the recipes, so if you make things on a fairly regular basis, you just have to enter it once and then select that as the food you ate. It also has the option to enter custom food and exercises (that aren’t in the app’s database), but I haven’t used that yet. But it looks like they make it easy to do.

I’m hoping this application will help keep me on track. I think seeing what I eat and how much I exercise and how that relates to my daily caloric intake will really help. I just need to make sure that I keep entering things in.

In my first post, I gave a really quick overview of what I plan to do around here. Now that I have the layout all tweaked out the way I like it, I thought I should go into a little more detail as to what my plans are.

First off, I didn’t come up with the idea to set up this site all by myself. I got the idea to set up this site from Elaine (or @cybertoad on Twitter). I had found her diet blog last year (via Twitter). She recently started blogging over there again. So I thought I’d follow suit since I just started on my plan. I hope she doesn’t mind that I did that.

I’m kinda swallowing my pride here. I wasn’t going to include what my starting weight was. I was just going to post updates as to weight loss. But I thought that including my current weight would keep me honest. And seeing it there on EVERY PAGE of this blog would keep me motivated to keep going to reduce that damn number. And yes, my scale measures to a tenth of a pound (it’s a digital scale). So I’m logging my weight at that precision.

My exercise plan is still in its infancy, but at least I’m starting. I bought an elliptical machine in June 2007. When I first got it, I actually used it quite a bit. Then I started getting lazy and then just stopped altogether. I did start up again last spring, but again, I didn’t last very long. This time, I plan to keep going. I’m also going to alternate that with my Walk Away the Pounds DVDs. I’ve got a set with 1 mile, 2 mile, and 3 mile walks. I really like that I can walk in the comfort of my apartment. I don’t have to worry about the cold or the heat or the wind or the rain or the snow. And I’ve got a set of 2 lb dumbbells that are used during the walks. The plan that I put together (about 15 minutes ago) is this:

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