The Next Step

A little change for phase 3. I'm not feeling the 30 Day Shred is doing much good other than making me hurt every day and have no energy. Exercising is supposed to give you energy, and I'm thinking perhaps I shouldn't be doing that video every day because of the weight lifting that is in it, I'm not allowing my muscles any recovery period. So the exercise part of phase 3 is being changed from 6 days a week doing all three circuts of the first level of 30 Day Shred to doing the video every other day of the 6 days and attempting to jog the other three.

I say attempting because I've never been a runner or jogger. It's going to have to be a little at a time, because with my hip wearing out I have to be careful how much impact I get, and at 272 pounds, that's a lot of impact with every step. So, the plan is this. We live in the middle of the long side of a block, so I'm going to walk to one end to warm up, jog the short side, walk the next long side, jog the next short side, then walk back to the house and repeat for at least 2 laps this first week, and add an additional lap each week for the next two weeks. Then I'm going to start adding more jogging time to each lap until I'm walking from the house to the first corner to warm up, jogging the rest of that lap, the next three laps, and all but the last half of the last long side of the block on the last lap, then walking the last half of the long side of the block back to the house as a cool down. If I can accomplish that, then I'll start working on jogging the full 7/10 of a mile area around our neighborhood that we currently walk every night twice.

The rest of the exercising for phase three includes two laps 6 nights a week around our 7/10 mile area in our neighborhood.

Next, I'm happy to have my sweetheart on board with me for our new diet plan! We're starting this week counting calories, with me getting 1200-1300 a day and Rob getting 1300-1400 a day. Plus, our fat is less than 30 grams for me, less than 50 grams for him, carbs are 150 grams or less for me and 175 grams or less for him, and finally protein is 60 or more grams a day for each of us. Also we're drinking at least eight 8 ounce glasses of water a day. I have to put some flavoring in mine but Rob likes it plain. My favorite to use is the Mio Southern Sweet Tea and the Mio Lemonade mixed with the Mio Black Cherry.

So today was the first day of our diet. It went fairly well. We have an Thomas's English Muffin with a wedge of Laughing Cow Cream Cheese (strawberry for Rob, Cinnamon for me), one scrambled egg, one slice of turkey bacon, and either a glass of OJ for Rob or a small can of V8 for me, plus a serving of fruit (one small apple, cup of grapes, etc).

For lunch, we have two cups of lettuce, 1/2 ounce of shredded carrot, 2 ounces of cucumber, 1 1/2 baby bell pepper, and 2 ounces of mesquite smoked turkey for a chef salad with a lime juice/olive oil/oregano/Italian seasoning/garlic homemade vinegrette. We also have another serving of fruit as at breakfast, and a serving of low fat dairy (pepper jack cheese for Rob, cottage cheese for me).

Dinner each night is different, but it will be the same choices for the next few weeks until we get tired of it and decide to create new healthy meals. Tonight we each had 4 ounces of boneless pork chop-trimmed of fat-and covered with half of a can of 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup ( I just put the other half of the can in a bowl and put it in the freezer for next week). For sides, we each had a cup of cooked glazed carrots, and Rob had a half cup of peas, and I had a cup of steamed cabbage. For desert every night, we get one ounce of dark chocolate (we're using the Giradelli's bittersweet chocolate chips from the baking asile. It's cheaper and tastes just as good!).

Because of our work schedules, we're both having breakfast about 7am, lunch at noon, then don't get dinner cooked and ready to eat until about 7pm. So we have an afternoon snack of 1 ounce of nuts-Rob has cachews and I have pistashios.

Like I said, so far so good. We'll see how this week goes. I only purchased the weeks groceries from the diet list, so we have no choice but to stick to it this week. I figure if we can get through this week it should be easier to do it next week and the next and so on. I really want to lose at least one size if not two by our anniversary weekend trip (the weekend after Thanksgiving).