Weigh In #1

Well, it's Friday and that means time for weigh in #1 for 80-60-40. What's 80-60-40? In short, it's my quest to lose at least 80 pounds during the 60 weeks before I turn 40 years old. You can read more about it over at this page.

Over the past week, I've grown very fond of the Daily Plate with it's database of food items and record of my eating. Just making a daily habit of entering everything that I eat or drink and seeing the nutritional values add up has made me very aware of what I'm eating each day. I would say that, previously, I was neither intentional about nor conscious of my daily choices in this area. Now I'm planning ahead for the day, in some cases, so that I am not caught in a situation where I am stuck with bad food choices. Being aware of what i've already eaten in a day and what the totals are so far for calories, fat, carbs, etc also allows me to make better choices at the end of the day. That period from dinner to bed time has traditionally been the hardest time for me.

LiveStrong.com also has the ability to help determine your daily caloric levels needed to get you to your goal. Using an estimate of your body mass index (BMI) based on height and weight, you age, level of daily physical activity, and weight loss/gain goal, you can get a daily calorie amount. This amount is your target for caloric intake each day such that you should be on track. I listed my goal as "Lose 1.5lbs per week" and my physical activity as "Light Activity (Seated or standing, e.g. computer use)". To my surprise, the calculation for me came out to be around 2500 calories per day. Kinda high, I thought.

Over the past week, I pretty much didn't really come close to the 2500 calorie mark. My daily total calories usually came in between 1800 and 2000. I noticed that my real struggle this week was with sodium. While I was consistently under the daily allowance for calories, fat, cholesterol, and carbs, I was over on sodium just about every day. Sometimes over by as much as 50%.

On the exercise front, I walked about 5 miles total, in 1 mile increments over the week. Most of that was done during my lunch break where I can make the 0.5 mile walk to Whole Foods to pick up lunch and then the 0.5 mile walk back. Total trip time was about 25 minutes (including in-store time) which means a decent walking clip of about 3 miles per hour.

Ok, ok. Enough waiting. What did the trust bathroom scale say this morning? I stepped up on it and looked down to see... 312.2! That's 9 pounds in the last 8 days. I'm extremely happy and I'm also pragmatic. I don't expect this to be the norm by any means. I expect that my body will start to adapt to the lower calorie amounts and become more efficient (i.e., use less calories each day). This tells me that I will probably lose less each week and need to increase my physical activity along with the diet change.

For the moment, I'm going to enjoy the progress. And I'm going to thank God for being my rock during this week. It has been very hard. I have found that there have been times where I felt like I was going to make the wrong decisions about food choices. I felt almost helpless to not make those decisions. During those times, and many others, I tried to let go over my anxieties and focus on God. Sometimes it was focused prayer and sometimes it was more meditative. But I always felt like I was stronger following these times. I also know that I have many people praying for me now. That has got to be a good thing.

So, on to week #2. Come back next Friday and see how it's going...

Photo credit to SheCat.