Juliette cross-training for Romèo

Howdy!
I'm definitely getting better. Fever's down, mind's clearer. Now I only have to fight the urge to start doing things right away. But (after missing a full week of work for this) I have a really good motivation for being healthy next week, so I'm being reasonable. No housework, no work-work, absolutely no exercise, no nothing. I concentrate on getting better still.
I've been catching up on my reading, though, that's not too strenuous, right?
http://weight-loss.fitness.com/harsh-truth/9442-top-5-ways-gain-fat.html Read this, you MUST!
http://weight-loss.fitness.com/topic/9468-you-dont-have-starve.html Ditto..
http://weight-loss.fitness.com/club-challenges/9057-lenten-challenge-suggestion.html#post186703 Habit-forming 101..
http://weight-loss.fitness.com/weight-loss-diary/8425-journey-not-destination.html More inspirational reading from Steve..

Having read those I decided it's time for an evaluation of the present situation.

Waist: highest 36 inches, now 31 inches (good to be under 31.5 according to health recommendations), lower than that last probably about 16 years ago..
Weight: highest 73 kg, now 67.5 kg (BMI 24.8, so in "healthy" range), lowest (in last 12 years) last spring 64 kg, lost a lot of weight quickly due to minimal eating, came back quickly as well...
General feeling and mood: highest at 71->73 kgs last Oct-Dec, going to the gym 4-5 times a week, at the same time waist >33 -> <31, eating healthy and quite much;
now quite low, due to some extent to being ill, eating non-existantly, but mostly to not being able to "fuss myself happy" that is, doing so much all the time that there's no time to think, seems as soon as I stop to think I find I'm not treating myself very well;
lowest last spring after the quick weight-loss, had additional reasons, though; it's a real bummer when your mood and outward appearance (commented by other people) don't match, no matter which way it goes
Resumé of all that:
Q: Is this working for you? A: :eek:
Q: How did this happen? A: :confused:
Q: Do you know better now? A: I sincerely hope so!!

I'm looking for a lifelong solution to taking good care of myself here. I want to be in good mood in my head, be in good shape in my body and look good outside to suit how I feel inside. Preferably all of those at the same time in the same universe&dimension&personality too...
I don't want the rest of my life being about the number on the scale. I want to improve my body to enjoy it, not to obsess about some aspects about it. I don't want to learn a lifestyle I can't maintain for the rest of my life. And I definitely don't want to look great according to my friends and feel absolutely rotten inside.
Since it takes 28 days to form a new habit (bless you, Mal!), but no-one never said those 28 days would be easy, I'd rather (this time) try to plan first and do then rather than think "I should've" in three months/years or something.
SO: back to the drawing board...
I'll get back to you, and in the meantime, go read Steve or some Harsh Truths, do a sit-up for me or jump rope, I'm sure it won't take me more than three weeks to come up with a plan to show you.. :rolleyes:
Juliette (trying to get better in more ways than one)
 
steve is quite quotable... :) (and really easy to look at as well which is a nice bonus.. .(bad mal bad... the boy can't help his looks he's here to give out good advice... :)

happy International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day -

and happy friday :)

Have an awesome weekend...
 
Eating according to Steve, part 1

Must confess, I'm currently putting a lot of effort on this. This meaning my project towards feeling&looking good inside out.
And Steve certainly makes us run for our money.. ;)
Read my outburst above to get the intel about why I've spent the whole beatiful Saturday on my computer calculating and recalculating. Got actually something done, so here's a crash course into how I've understood things so far. And feel free to correct me on anything you find wrong here. Right now I'm not sure I could find a tree in a forest if I tried. :eek:
Steve keeps bugging us about healthy eating in a way which struck me as something I wanted to try. So I gathered all the info I could find here and here's what it looks like now:

Daily nutrition
Energy 15 kcal per pound
Protein 1 g per pound (1 g = 4 kcal)
Fat 0.5 g per pound or somewhere between 50-100 grams per day, preferably healthy fats (1 g = 9 kcal)
Carbs about 200 g (1 g = 4 kcal)
If more energy needed, rest of the energy combination of all three
Healthy energy deficit 10-20% of daily energy

Entering this to a spreadsheet I found that my (148 pounds) daily energy number is 2230 kcal. I should be getting 148 g protein, 74 g fat and depending on my choice of deficit, somewhere between 150-240 g carbohydrates daily. By own choice I also entered a number for fibre intake, 25 g, which I know my body is used to.
This in mind I proceeded to enter foods to another spreadsheet to see how far I'd need to go from my usual food to achieve the astronomical protein and fat numbers. I know that I've eaten about 60-80 g protein and 30-50 g fat daily before, so I'd have a long way to go...
After seriously streching my imagination outside my eating comfort zone and some very interesting research into protein and fat wonderland I came up with the following: (numbers are grams)
Breakfast
milk (non-fat) 250
coffee 290
oatmeal (flakes) 36
yoghurt (non-fat) 132
Snack
orange 145
Lunch
tomato-basilic sauce 102
pasta (whole-grain) 60
chicken breast 167
Snack
dates (dried, no sugar added) 15
almonds 10
Dinner (salad)
cabbage 115
cucumber 100
tomato 110
white balsamic vinegar 15
olive oil 10
flax seeds (linseed) 20
cottage cheese (non-fat) 100
canned tuna (in water) 75
Snack
rye bread (whole grain, no wheat added) 60
margarine (only vegetable fat, non-saturated) 10
cheese 22
avocado 65
Total nutritional value:
calories 1686,4
protein 141,3
carbohydrates 140,2
fat 65,2
fibre 25,6

So didn't quite manage to work all the protein and fat into that, but I'm definitely miles nearer than I used to be. The thing is, my evening snack I'm still kind of negotiating with. It's there to be eaten, but so far I don't feel like I wanna eat it. I'm FULL. :eek: And the thing is, if I don't manage to eat it, I won't be even close to any of those goals. But even if that happens, I'm putting it down to my influenza just going away and I'm going to keep on trying. I see long term possibilities in this kind of eating and I'm certainly going to find out if this suits me personally, or how I'll have to modify it to make it good for me.
What I think now is that I don't think I've ever eaten like this in my life. Here in the Northern countries people are mostly health conscious to the extreme. Everybody has the knowledge about healthy eating and many try to make use of it, that's the case also in my family. The problem is that the topics on eating in the media tend to concentrate on "less fat", "more vegetables" type of things still, even when there's a lot of other things to take into consideration. And the people already watching their fats and vegetables overdo it while the one's who don't care won't start no matter what it says in the newspaper..
This above type of eating plan is actually exactly what the health authorities in my country are recommending. So by trying this out I'm also doing it by the book where I live. I'll give it a month to start with and see where it takes me.
Exercisewise I'm hoping to restart going to the gym when I come back from a worktrip next weekend, and I think that will increase my chances of actually getting all the food down.
Here you got my first ideas for a new kind of eating plan for me. Please, comment, correct, throw in ideas of high protein foods, tell me what you think... I'm listening. :)
Juliette
 
Follow up to that post above:
Managed to eat everything else on my list yesterday except the avocado which, in the end, turned out to be a little too raw to be eaten yesterday. It's on my list today and I'm really looking forward to it, I LOOOVE avocado.
So without that my numbers for yesterday don't look quite as I'd liked them, but are still a whole lot better than all of last week combined (serious under-eating caused by the influenza..).
calories 1553,9
protein 139,4
carbohydrates 137,2
fat 52,4
fibre 23,7
Here's what that missing one half of avocado (65 g) would have had in it:
kcal 120,3
prot 1,7
carboh 0,5
fat (all good!) 12,6
fibre 1,3
I'm trying to do a quite similar day today, I'll keep you posted on how I'm doing. :)
Juliette
 
Hey Juliette :) I think your plan looks really great. I am doing something really similar :) I was wondering though-are you eating lots of tomatoes and cucumber to get that many calories? Veggies are somewhat low in calories, from my experience so far. Here is a website I use to get the number of calories per serving:



They have lots of fruits and veggies there, and even show what a serving of each is. I love avocado too! It has such healthy fats in it :)

Are you feeling like it's kind of hard to eat so much? I really am. I think I was consuming far too little calories before, and now that I am taking in so much protein, I find myself having a hard time getting it all. I guess I am just giving my metabolism a little kickstart though :) Hope you had a good weekend!
 
Monday morning...

Weight 67.2 kg (prev. 68,0)
Body fat 27.8% (28,5)
Muscle mass 33.7% (33,6)
Body water 52.6% (52,1)

I'm very pleased with those numbers. I'm almost at the intermediate goal (67 kg) I set myself a month ago and now it's time to think about what to do next. This weekend I began with what I'd call "the new eating". I've done that for two days and shed an additional 0,3 kgs eating more than I thought was possible at first. Yesterday I ate 1775,6 kcal of which 148,8 g protein, 165,5 carbohydrates, 61,0 fat and 25,5 fibre. I went for a light 50 minute walk, don't want to tempt the influenza to come back.. I've been drinking water about 2-3 litres (67-100 fl.oz) a day. I ate 472 grams of fruit and veg Saturday, 498 yesterday, so that's also a good thing and I'm watching it carefully.
The most difficult thing in planning what I eat is still to get enough fats. I was about 13 g below my target amount yesterday. I nailed the protein though, that was a result of careful planning. Since I'm hoping to restart going to the gym this week I'm not at all worried about the increase in calories. If I want to get some more muscle in me I need to up the calories even further, so this is a good start. And so far, even this amount seems to lose weight for me. Which I think is very good news. Seems my metabolism hasn't been badly damaged by undereating. :) We'll see how I feel about this next week, since two days is too short a time to make any conclusions about most of these things. :rolleyes:
Right now I want to set a mini-goal for March 10th. That's 13 days from now (a lucky number for me!) Since I'm not sure how this eating change will affect me long term, I'm not going for weight-loss this time. If it comes, I promise I wont try to gain it back :cool: , but now I'm going to concentrate on getting the muscle mass number moving. So I'm going to hit the gym and find other ways to keep me moving and see, if I can shift it at least one .1 by Saturday next week. And then I'll probably have an idea of how my body reacts to this eating (it'll be full 2 weeks then) and I can adjust things if I need to.
Here's Juliette wishing everybody a great week!

PS. Britta: I know we can make this!! Definitely not easy, but I'm already feeling the good mood which comes from doing true good to yourself. I think that will carry us through the difficulties and the doubts to the point when we genuinely feel that this is good to the body. Keep up the good work!
 
Looking good Juliette! I am impressed. If anything, I would add a little more green veggies to the mix. Other than that, you are doing quite well. :)
 
*blushing*
A compliment from Steve... :D
*blushing even more*
Thanks Steve, I try adding a little green and leafy to my eating plan, nothing against it, just didn't happen to have anything handy at home.

I'm a happy woman (not only for the compliment though..)! :D I was SKATING!! They've managed to clean some tracks to the sea ice for skaters and one of them is just 15 minutes walk from my apartment. I saw it yesterday on my walk and decided to try it out if I had the time. And now I did!!!
It was a 1,4 km track not very far from the shore, in excellent condition. The sun was shining, there was -6 Celcius, not bad wind, peace and quiet and dazzling snow all around me. I did four rounds, 5,5 km alltogether. Just came home still dumbfounded of all the simple beauty and joy of my little outing.
Juliette
 
Yup!
I actually think my thighs and my butt should be thanking me for taking them out to exercise in such exquisite conditions. Somehow I kind of foresee them thanking me tomorrow evening in the only way they can: hurting like hell. But I don't care, it was fun and besides, I'm off to a work trip tomorrow and no matter how sore your thighs are you can always sit on them without moving a muscle.. that's what it's going to be till Friday anyway.. :rolleyes:
I just wish the weather continues, so I can go back to the track on Saturday.
 
Unexpected work load really hit me hard. There seems to be couple of different epidemics going around, so a lot of work engagements are coming my way. Not complaining, though, I'm all for interesting work and extra money combined.
Just thought I'd write a couple of lines here to remind myself that I'm still alive (not much kicking going on here, but everything in its time, I guess).
Foodwise I was thrown into the hardest part of changing my diet right away, that is eating out all the time. I'm doing a good job at it. I have to give myself credit for that. Getting enough protein is still the most difficult task. The quality of some of the fat could be a lot better, but this is the best I can do.
And I'm r e a l l y looking forward to eating self-prepared food at home once again. :) That'll happen next week for two days and for the weekend I'm going to go stay with my parents instead of a hotel, since my work takes me to my former home town, so there I'll get very good and nutritionally decent food for two days without even preparing it myself. :D
The thing that bothers me most in this busy schedule is the lack of excercise. There aren't enough hours in a day just now, so the only excercise I get is brisk walking from point A to point B. Compare that to my goals above, and you'll see how it fits.. :( The only thing I can do here is postpone my deadline to the end of March and hope that all these sick people return to do their own jobs by then. ;)
And I'll be catching up on everybody elses diaries by the end of July, I hope. :p
Happy International Women's Day to all of you!!! This is the time to support and demand Women's Rights and International Peace.
Juliette
 
Nothing wrong with pushing goals back, just as long as it does not become a chronic habit. It is normal for life to get in the way. Just stay focused on your ultimate goals and do what you can.
 
Thanks for the encouragement, Steve!
I'm doing my best, I even managed to squeeze in some good exercise yesterday. I have two whole free days in the middle of next week and this sudden work spree should be over in about two weeks. So there IS light in the end of the tunnel.
The way spring is making its way here in the north, we might even have clear roads by then for some running (or then we'll get more snow and it's skiing season once more :rolleyes:, you never know).
But till then, I'm working my head off, so wish me staying power until you hear from me again...
Juliette
 
good luck - once its all out of the way you will have a clear head to focus on your weight loss goals. youre doing really well with balancing work and reaching for your girls. keep it up honey :)
 
New beginnings

Greetings from sunshine!
I'm really glad to be home again and the dazzling sunshine outside is making this a perfect day. It's almost making up for what the scale said today. I adjusted my ticker, unfortunately to the wrong direction this time. I'm one kg up from where I was before this work travelling began.
I'm hoping for that weight to be just from not drinking enough water, eating way too much sodium and not getting enough fibre, because I'm quite sure I didn't go crazy with calories. But since I don't want to see an incorrect reading in my ticker every time I come here, I'd rather adjust it again in a few days than wait for the number there to come true. Too much pressure..
The spring has come. At least for a few days and most of the snow is gone. The streets are clean, so I'm planning to go for a run today and actually wear running shoes instead of winter hiking boots. Yippee!!!
I still have a lot of work to do, but only one day of travelling left this week and only two planned for next week so it feels almost like a holiday compared to the past few weeks.
I'm actually hoping to catch up on your lives as well, just can't imagine how many pages there are for me to read. :p
Juliette
 
just read the last four posts of your favorite threads and mark all as read :) if you nod your head a lot - it's like you were paying attention - andif anything really important was said -itll be repeated :)

the mal method of forum catch-up :)

travelling for work is brutal - it was one of my biggest problems... hope it slows down for you a bit :)

happy wednesday
 
maleficent said:
just read the last four posts of your favorite threads and mark all as read :) if you nod your head a lot - it's like you were paying attention - andif anything really important was said -itll be repeated :)

the mal method of forum catch-up :)

travelling for work is brutal - it was one of my biggest problems... hope it slows down for you a bit :)

happy wednesday
Click to expand...

Took your advice, Mal. Don't want to sprain my brain on my first day back. :p

Steve said:
Good morning :)
Click to expand...

A very good morning to you, Steve!

Thanks for adding even more sunshine to my sunny day, both of you!

Juliette
 
Warning: Endorphins talking.

A lot is said in this forum every day about exercise. It's right and wrong, hard and easy, good and bad.
Way too little is said about the instant reward after brisk exercise. Thanks to our own opioids there's such a natural high following good run or workout which makes it all SOOOOO much better. A totally legal drug meant to take us through rough terrains, childbirth and psychological bad times.
Sorry about the poetic bit, just had to get it out of my system.
Went for first spring run earlier. Didn't dare to run all the way but did 6 km walking 10 minutes, running 10, walking 10, running 10, so 2 km walking, 4 running alltogether. Then some upper body strength exercises and stretching when I came home.
Now I feel like million dollars. :cool: Or euros, they're more valid around here anyway. :)
It had been too long from the last run. The winter here in the cross-breeding of Siberia and Alaska is not running season, and this winter we didn't have enough snow for skiing either (I live in the coastal region). So my last good run was on a treadmill in January probably. Been just nordic walking outside after that.
So in my current endorphin enhanced state, not poor, not ill, no worries in the world, I thought I'll make a challenge of my own and see how much faster I can do the above mentioned route on May 1st, that's in a month and a half. Have to think how to do this best.. If I'm now running the bits about 12 km/h and walking 6 km/hour, if I at some point manage to run all the way at that pace it'll take me 30 minutes. Hmm.. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'M interested in finding out what I'm capable of. :eek:
Today I also made all my goals in proteins, fats, fibres and calories with a nice amount of fruits and veggies included.
I hereby declare this day a Particularly Successful Day!
Juliette
 
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