Exercise, Day 7: Sweating the Weigh-In

First week is down.  I’m walking as I write this, so I’ve succeeded in completing my first week of daily walking.  I got in three hours’ worth yesterday, which made up for the deficit of the day before, but I’m still not looking forward to tomorrow.  I have a feeling the results won’t be so good.

The reason for this is that I’ve been eating a lot.  I’m only eating on my eating days, granted, and I’ve been dutiful about recording what I’ve eaten, but check out the points values for this week:

Monday (Fasting Day)

• Goal Points: 28 to lose, 32 to maintain, plus 35 Weekly Points
• Activity Points Gained: 5
• Points spent:  6.5
• Points spent so far: 6.5

Tuesday (Eating Day)

• Goal Points: 28 to lose, 32 to maintain, plus 35 Weekly Points
• Activity Points Gained: 5 (10 total)
• Points Spent: 37.5
• Points Spent so far: 44

Wednesday (New Years’ Eve, swapped Eating Day)

• Goal Points: 28 to lose, 32 to maintain, plus 25.5 Weekly Points
• Activity Points Gained: 6 (16 total)
• Points Spent: 53.5
• Points Spent so far: 97.5

Thursday (Fasting Day)

• Goal Points: 28 to lose, 32 to maintain, plus 0 Weekly Points
• Activity Points Gained: 9 (25 total)
• Points Spent: 5.5
• Points Spent so far: 101

Friday (Eating Day)

• Goal Points: 28 to lose, 32 to maintain, plus 0 Weekly Points
• Activity Points Gained: 3 (28 total)
• Points Spent: 43
• Points Spent so far: 144

Saturday (Fasting Day)

• Goal Points: 28 to lose, 32 to maintain, plus 0 Weekly Points
• Activity Points Gained: 9 (37 – 15 = 22 total)
• Points Spent: 6.5
• Points Spent so far: 150.5

So far today (Eating Day)

• Goal Points: 28 to lose, 32 to maintain, plus 0 Weekly Points
• Activity Points Gained: 0 (22 points)
• Points Spent: 15.5
• Points Spent So far: 165.5

As you can see, not only am I going over goal points for the week on my On/Up/Eating days, I’m going over them by A LOT.  I’d blown all 35 of my Weekly Points by Wednesday, and now I’m taking big chunks out of my Activity points too.  In one day, 15 points over, and THAT day wasn’t even New Years’.

This is made all the more convicting by the unfortuate knowledge that I’m not entirely sure my New Years’ Eve tally is correct.  I wrote everything down the next day, which means I might have forgotten exactly what I ate, and probably did go over by more than I accounted for here.  Exactly how much over, I don’t know.

All of this really wouldn’t bother me, except that just in the last week alone, this whole diet regimen went from being very easy to do to being unbelievably hard.  I guess it’s natural that allowing myself to eat the way I did at the NYE party would have some after-effects, reminding myself of how pleasurable it was before when I could and would just eat whatever I wanted without worrying about the consequences.  Maybe, in a way, I’ve had to start over at the beginning, and because these past few days have been every bit as bad as that first week was, if not worse.  At least that week, I EXPECTED it to be bad. This has kind of hit me between the eyes.

And maybe the exercise is also to blame… My energy requirements are surely higher than normal, so maybe I just need to cut myself a break.   My body is having to make a lot of adjustments, and I guess it’s only natural for it to demand some kind of compensation for all it’s putting up with from me right now.

I guess the one good thing is that assuming I didn’t eat 5,000 calories on NYE for which I have failed to account,  I’m still coming in well below my overall points intake for the week.  Presumably on ADF you’re to eat ‘normally’ on the Eating days, which to me suggests I should go by the Maintain value rather than the Weight Loss value in terms of Points Goal for the day.  That being the case, I’m presumably entitled to 32 * 7, or 224 points per week, plus the 35 weekly points.. So we’ll say 250 total.   (I know we’re not supposed to ‘bank’ anymore, but just for the sake of argument..) That’s without counting in extra points for exercise, so let’s assume I walk 1 hour per day, and add in 35 points for that too.  285.

So technically, I’m still taking in less than I’m alotted, even without the exercise.  I figure for dinner tonight I’ll have some kind of chicken dish with whole grain rice, a salad and the rest of my QT smoothie from the other day.  This will probably put me over on points, but hopefully not by too many.

Either way, I am not necessarily anticipating much of a loss this week.  And I think I do need to get a grip on my intake, the toal values notwithstanding.  I realize a 1-2 pound loss per week is about right, and I don’t necessarily expect more than that, but it would be nice to hit closer to the 2-pound mark rather than the 1. 😉  I also think that if I’m going to continue with the treadmill (and I intend to), I need to figure out my measurements so I can track progress that isn’t weight-related.  I can already tell that my leg muscles have more definition now than they had before, so I’m bound to gain muscle weight sooner or later here.

Oh!  I got new shoes today.  Thank you, Andy.  They’re just some $11.00 athletic shoes from Wal-Mart, so they’re nothing fancy, but anything has to be better than the ratty old shoes I was wearing before.  These feel much sturdier.

This morning I ate a good breakfast (grapes, 1/2 of a bagel with a little cream cheese, and a mini quiche thing that was worth about 1.5 points), and then sat there jonesing for more all throughout Bible Study.  We went to the store after church, which didn’t help… but at least I found myself craving a salad, as opposed to a doughnut.  I also noticed while we were sitting at the stoplight in the van on the way home that the undercurrent of buzzing desperation to eat something was suddenly reinforced with an actual gnawing in my stomach.  I thought, “Oh that’s right.. there’s a difference.”

This time, though, the ache wasn’t so much in my mouth as just sort of all over.  But it wasn’t in my stonach; the actual hunger pangs made THAT point loud and clear.  But man, just before I felt that, I would have sworn to you that I was hungry.  It’s just not even funny.

I’ve come so far, and yet I still have so friggin’ far to go.