Hey Guys! So let's get right down to it.

Monday Sept. 30, 2013

Food

Breakfast:

• 1 serving Fiber One Honey Clusters cereal
• 1 serving reduced fat milk

Lunch:

• 2 slices Nature's Own honey wheat bread
• 1  serving (I think, I still don't own a food scale), honey ham
• 1 serving Publix 2% provolone cheese
• 1 serving (20 minis) Snyder's mini pretzels

Dinner:

• 2 servings Bird's Eye Steamed Rigatoni & Vegetables  

Snack:

• 1 serving Snyder's mini pretzels
• 2 servings Weight Watchers string cheese (50 cal each)

Comments: I did great today! I still need to focus on lowering my carbs and increasing my protein. As you can see I'm in the high end of carbs and low end of protein. I'm still within the range though at least. One of the bigger reasons that I want to do this (besides it's just better for you), is that I really struggled today with hunger. In fact I'm still pretty hungry! Carbs make you hungrier faster and protein keeps you fuller longer. 

Starting at my next grocery store trip, I want to make some of my own recipes (maybe freeze them and eat them through the week). I also want to eat more complex carbs (veggies) and maybe even avoid bread altogether (maybe...). I'm going to work this week to make a list of simple recipes I can make with ingredients that won't break the bank. 

Fitness

So I know I wrote a post this morning about this, but I'll reiterate. This morning I woke up at 5:45am (!!!) and did the first day, first week of the Couch to 5K program. Th first week consists of a 5 minute brisk warmup walk, then 1 minute of jogging, and 1.5 minutes of walking (repeat for 20 minutes), then a 5 minute cool down walk. It was hard, but I felt pretty proud at the end. I almost gave up, but I didn't. Tomorrow I am going to wake up at 5:30am so I have a few more minutes to sit and recover after! This morning I had to jump right into the shower when I got back and I was super dead! 

Anyway, the waking up part itself isn't that fun but I got over it quickly. The program itself is for 3 days a week, but I am going to aim for 5 days a week, with weekends being a break if I want. Hopefully it won't be a problem and next week I'll be able to move onto week 2 of the program and not have to repeat week one. I had some trouble finding how many calories were burned using this, but I found a pretty cool spreadsheet. And without further ado, the numbers don't lie! 

Already halfway to my weekly goal and everything over that will be icing on the cake. :) 

Thanks for reading!

Hey guys!

I am writing this during recovery after my first real foray into the Couch to 5K (C25K) program. Let me tell you, I am DEAD. This is what I did this morning:

1. Brisk 5 minute warm up walk
2. Jog for 1 minute
3. Brisk walk for 1:30 minutes
4. Repeat ad infinitum (or what felt like it, but really was 20 minutes)
5. Brisk 5 minute cool down

I'm a lot more worn out than I expected. I have been taking walks for a few weeks now, but this really got my heart rate up and was quite difficult. 

Anyway, I need to shower and get ready for WORK. The nice part is now my workout for today is done so when I get home from work I don't have to worry about it.

Have a nice day!

Day 1

Hello Readers!

This is technically not Day 1, but for the sake of the blog I'm going to treat it as such. I'm going to update it every day, work out or not. I will be taking pictures and tracking measurements, but I'm not sure yet if I want to post them on a public blog. I might make certain posts friends-only so that I can include those. I'm not sure if I can do that, but I could do it in 2003 on LiveJournal so I'm sure I can. I'm going to be using SparkPeople to help me out with some of the food tracking.

My goals right now are to eat 1200-1550 calories a day, and burn 800 calories a week. I have decided not to track my weight, though I do have a starting weight just for knowledge's sake.

My format for tracking will be thus:

Sunday Sept. 29, 2013

Breakfast: 

• 1 serving of Fiber One Cereal
• 1 serving of lowfat milk
• half a mango

Lunch:

• 2 slices of Nature's Own honey wheat bread
• 2 servings of Smart Balance peanut butter (with Omega-3)
• 1 serving Smuckers strawberry jam
• 1 serving Snyder's mini pretzels

Dinner:

• 1 serving Bird's Eye Steamfresh Rigatoni & Vegetables

Snack:

• None today

Exercise:

• 30 minutes of walking
• 3 sets of "stadiums" 

Calories in:  (from SparkPeople website)

Calories out:

So that's it. I'm going to do this daily. Goals that I want to accomplish this week are:

1. Wake up every morning and do my workout before work.
2. Try to work in some more protein in my diet. 
3. Drink 8 glasses of water a day.
4. Get through the first two sections of GRE math (Substitution and Probability & Statistics) and one hour daily of Vocab practice.
5. Come up with a list of fields I would most like to work in, to be built upon for future goals.
6. At work, make an outline/timeline of how I want to work on the Jacksonville and Orlando meters this month. 
7. For pleasure, finish (hopefully!) Clash of Kings, level Eiron to 90 (WoW), and do all of the Throne of Thunders LFRs on Dapi.

Well I think I have written enough for now. I will only be sharing this with a few people, but feel free to comment and let me know of any changes you suggest in the layout, etc. 

Thanks for reading!

- Erin