I went a little nuts on Friday and ordered and overnighted copy of Jillian Michaels’s Making the Cut. I was enthralled by this sentence on the back cover: Are you in good shape but struggling with those last ten to twenty pounds that stand between looking perfectly okay and looking knock-their-eyes-out great? Um, YES! That’s me, Jillian! How did you know?! As promised—and paid for—it arrived on Saturday. Man. This chick knows her shit. (I love Jillian, by the way, just in case you’ve never spent more than 8 seconds talking to me about health and fitness.) I perused it Saturday afternoon, and then realized something. Uh oh. I’m not ready for this book. I’m not 10-20 pounds overweight anymore! I’ve crept up from 10 lbs overweight to 25 lbs overweight. I’m not ready to do that program. In fact, I’m a good 10-15 lbs away from it. I mean, who’s going to see my ripped body hiding under 15 extra pounds of fat? It was really devastating. (But it was also kind of a relief when I flipped through the workouts. I haven’t worked out to failure in years. I remember it felt really great afterward, but it hurt like hell when I was dozens of pushups in, tired, and my damn burning muscles just kept going. Fail already!)
So now I’m on a mission to lose 10-15 lbs in order to do the Making the Cut program. I’m done with Weight Watchers (which I’ve gained 1.2 pounds on since January, by the way), and I’m back to good old fashioned calorie counting. I found my old spreadsheet that calculates my calorie surplus and deficit daily, and I readjusted my BMR—basal metabolic rate, or how many calories I’d burn if I stayed in bed all day and barely moved. I’m sure most of you know this, but one pound equals about 3500 calories. Thus, losing 2 lbs a week means a 7000 weekly deficit, or about 1000 calories a day. Figuring out calories burned during workouts and consumed is exhausting and time consuming, but really interesting and worthwhile. And it gets so much easier as you get used to it. Plus, with websites like www.calorieking.com and www.caloriesperhour.com, it’s easy to find an accurate measurement.
Yesterday was grocery store day, and I took the opportunity to rid myself of all the processed crap in my house. No more bread or crackers or cookies. If it didn’t grow out of the ground or have a mother, it has no business in my house. Today is my first day of eating cleanly, and I feel great. Granted, I’m only a few minutes past lunchtime, but I still feel pretty good. I woke up late this morning, so my workout will have to happen tonight. I’ll have a better gauge of my energy levels then. But I skipped coffee, and yet, don’t feel any worse than I usually do. My menu today consists of:
Breakfast:
- 1 cup Kashi GOLEAN cereal
- 1 cup organic light soymilk
- 1 organic hardboiled egg
- 1 organic hardboiled egg white
I ate breakfast much earlier than usual—at 8:45—and was not ravenous as usual at 12:45, my new lunch time.
Lunch:
- Organic romaine, almonds, feta, strawberries, red pepper, and wild-caught grilled shrimp salad with balsamic vinegar
- Banana
- 1 square of Ghirardelli dark chocolate
- 1 can sparkling water—hey, I’m allowed something if I’m going to give up diet soda
I’m 2 1/2 hours from my snack time—which will be 4 oz cottage cheese and 1 cup of fresh cherries—but I’m not obsessing over eating more, either, which I usually do as soon as I finish my last bite of lunch. So far, so good.
For dinner I’ll likely have a plain grilled veggie burger and a side of steamed vegetables. I’m addicted to Lost now (I watched almost 13 hours of it on Netflix this weekend—where have I BEEN all this time?!) and I need to finish knitting a few baby blankets, so the quicker dinner comes together with as little cleanup as possible, the better. I needs my TV time!
My workout tonight will be Jillian’s Burn Fat, Boost Metabolism DVD. That sonofabitch is rough. I’ll follow it with a 40-minute walk and training session with Kane. Tomorrow I’ll run for an hour (and hope to do exactly 6 miles, but we’ll see how that goes), and Wednesday I’ll do Jillian’s No More Trouble Zones DVD.
I’ve written on here several times that “I’m ready,” or, “time to get started,” but I don’t think I really ever meant it. Realizing I was out of the spectrum of doing Making the Cut was a real wakeup call, and now I have a concrete short-term goal to focus on instead of just “looking great” or “feeling confident.” I have a good feeling today, and my willpower is right where it should be.
After mentioning Kane and dedicating my last post to what an asshole he is, I should give an update. We are still having some issues with him posturing (you have to be a dog person to know what this is—it’s basically a posture that tells other dogs/people “You are a threat and I want to fight you.”), but the lunging and barking have nearly subsided. In the grand scheme of things, posturing isn’t a huge deal—it’s not good, but it’s not life threatening. It hasn’t been easy by any means; we’ve both worked very hard to understand each other and modify how we interact with each other. But the amount of progress we’ve made in the last 3 or 4 days is mind blowing, and it just reinforces what a wonderful, quick, sharp, and intuitive animal he is. We are not finished; the next 6 months are going to be rough as he continues to mature. But I have a really good feeling of what he’s capable of understanding and the best way to facilitate a change in his behavior, and I’m also incredibly proud of myself for the work we’ve gotten done in the last few days. I’m not Cesar Millan, but I think I just passed my first handling/training test.
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