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.

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.

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:

Sunday: WAtP (Walk Away the Pounds DVD) 2 mile walk
Monday: elliptical
Tuesday: WAtP 3 mile walk
Wednesday: day of rest
Thursday: elliptical
Friday: WAtP 2 mile walk
Saturday: elliptical

The amount of time on the elliptical will vary. I’ll go as long as I can before my legs give out. I’m shooting for time right now rather than distance. And I’m keeping things at a normal pace. I want to build up my endurance again before I push things. At one point, I was able to use it for 45 minutes. I wanna get to that point again and then start changing up the resistance levels. We’ll see how that goes. I also don’t want to push myself too hard. I don’t wanna pull a muscle or anything. Depending on how things go, I might add another day of rest, but I really don’t wanna. If I take too many days off, then I might get lazy again. And I don’t want that to happen. The lengths of the walks on Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday might change too. I know I won’t be doing the 1 mile walk … it’s just too short. I’ll go with this for a while and then possibly change it to do the 3 mile walk on all 3 days. I’ll just have to see how I progress.

In addition to exercising, I’ll be modifying the way I eat. I’m not saying that I’m going on a diet. It’s more than that. I’m changing the way I eat. I need to eat healthier, and I need to eat “normal” portion sizes. That’s one of my biggest issues. I also need to cut down on excess snacking and drinking pop. Drinking pop … that’s gonna be a hard one to kick, especially since there’s free pop at work. But I’ve taken some Crystal Light packets to work to put in my water. Hopefully that will help. The last couple days of the week, I actually only drank pop with lunch and with supper. So that was a good start. I need to attempt to completely cut pop out of my life, but that’s gonna take some time.

I’m adding new things to my diet as well. Last week, I bought a bag of baby spinach. I’d never eaten spinach before. I don’t know why because I really like it. I put it in a salad with some romaine lettuce a couple days this week for lunch. For next week, I’m planning to put it into some sandwiches for lunches. Today I bought some baby zucchini (well, maybe not baby, but they’re small ones). I’m not sure if I like ‘em or not. Mom used to fry up zucchini when she got some from friends, but I never really liked it. I’m hoping I like the little ones … or at least that my tastes have changed. I thought I’d saute it up and put it into some pasta with some chicken and some sort of sauce. I need to look up a recipe for a light Alfredo sauce or something like that. I spent more time in the produce section today than I think I ever have in the past. And I bought quite a few veggies and some apples too. And as for meat, I bought some chicken breast (frozen), ground chicken, and boneless chicken thighs. Now I just need to figure out what to do with that stuff. LOL

So … I think I’m well on my way here. I just need to make sure that I stick to it and don’t give up, even if I don’t see results right away. I’m never gonna get anywhere if I give up. Hopefully this blog will make sure that I keep going. My plan is to post at least once a week with updates on my progress. When I find recipes that I really like, I’ll share them as well as any tips I may run across.