Healthy Eating and Calorie Consumption Update #3 - Fitness Update #2

I've been on week #2 of the 100 Push-up Challenge for 3 weeks now. The first week I struggled with the 2nd workout and could only do the minimum on the last section. So I decided to repeat the 2nd week at least once. The 2nd time I repeated it was because I forgot to do it last Friday and I didn't want the lack of effort to skew the test (the test to see how far I progressed.) Besides, swimming kicked my ass. I haven't swam in about 10 years and there were some good size waves on lake Mille Lac.

As for calories... I knew I'd eat differently at Chomo-Fest 2008 but it was prolly the beer that was the worst. I weighed myself afterwards and I'm still down 1 pound, if I can trust the fidelity of the scale... and exclude my own 'rounding' errors (emphasis on 'round' j/k)

So, it's back to trying not to drink my calories and protion control. And the walking... I've been walking 3 times a week on break and on lunch, for a total of 25-40 minutes on those days. I think every bit is helping.

Digitizing My Life: Scanning Old Photos, Part 1

There's been an item on my mental 'to-do' list for awhile now, prolly since I broke my ankle.

Scanning all my old photos.

Actually I guess what really prompted me to finally tackling the task was this:

About a month back I developed the last two rolls of film that I had laying around. Now that I own a digital camera, I intend for those to be the last two rolls of film I ever take. They're from 2 Halloweens ago when I didn't dress up as anything. Eric was later-years Elvis, Chris was Dapper and Abe was a Sad Hobo.

I tried reinstalling the scanner I bought for my poetry redux project and after some frustrating research online, found out that there are no Vista drivers for said scanner. So, I've been going to my mom's place to use one of her Windows XP machines to complete the task.

What I thought might be a 1-2 day project has so far stretched into 3 days (probably more like 120 hours, if you include the cropping and rotating). As I tackled removing all the photos from their albums, it slowly dawned on me that I have a shit-ton of photos. I thought I had, oh, maybe 300 photos... I think it's more like 500-600. That's good in one way, I have many more memories that I remember having. But damn... talk about ever-receding horizons.

It's been keeping me busy tho and it's been a good time catching up with mom while I scan.

Healthy Eating and Calorie Consumption Update #2

I've been formally tracking my calorie consumption for 10 days now. The goal was 2 weeks, so I've got just a few more to go. It's surprisingly easy, as long as I can find out the calorie content of each food. That's the hardest part, mostly for the eating out.

Take Famous Dave's for example. The only relevant items that I could find online were the firecracker beans (60 per 6oz serving). Good to know but it's the ribs I was really curious about.

I wasn't trying to make any major changes while I was tracking my calorie intake, I mainly wanted to know how much I was actually eating. I didn't skip any meals. I ate on all my breaks. I usually ate when I was hungry (sometimes had to wait 30-45 minutes because lunch break hadn't arrived yet).

The things I did change were simple to me. I knew soda was a bigger part of my diet than I'd like it to be so I mostly switched it for water on breaks and with meals. If I felt hungry at work, I went to get a drink of water and that helped most times. I switched to caffeine-free diet coke for lunches because I was still craving sweet fluids during lunch. I didn't stop drinking soda completely but I did manage to cut it to one or two cans every other day.

The other interesting thing with this tracking the calories was where those calories are coming from. Over the last few months I've been trying to balance the macro-nutrients (carbohydrates, fats and proteins) at each meal and also with each snacks (that's not easy without turning a snack into a full-fledged meal). But a bigger issue is the alcohol consumption. I just drink too much, for good health and for too many calories. So I'm taking a long break away from any heavy drinking after this St. Cloud fun hangout time.

I weighed myself last night and I weigh 184.5 lbs. Now, I don't know how accurate the last measurement was since I thought the battery was dead. But if that was correct, that means I've lost 4 pounds just from being observant of what I eat and making some minor changes on top of that. ( and yes, I weighed myself in the nude, no glasses, after I ate but with an empty bladder... just because you wanted to know)

Healthy eating and calorie consumption update #1

So I've been informally tracking my calorie consumption for the last few days. I'm actually amazed how little I eat. If it wasn't for the homemade wine, chicken wings once a week and the pop consumption, I imagine I'd be 20 pounds lighter.

Yesterday I ate about 1700 calories and that's including a 20oz of Lipton iced tea and two cans of Dr. Pepper.

That's what I'm going to shoot for: 1700 calories a day, averaged out over a 7-day week. Average being the key. a 15% reduction off the base amount of a 2000 calorie daily diet would amount to 2100 calories a week. Doable, very doable. Coupled with the fitness challenge(s) I've started, I should be able to drop a pound or two a week.

I bought a scale but the battery went dead after my first weigh-in. 188.5 pounds. I'm only going to weigh myself once a week at most, maybe more like once every other week.

Fitness Update #1: the 100 push-up challenge

I found this link on a personal finance site called Get Rich Slowly. It's called the 100 push-up challenge. It's an interesting fitness challenge since it has a very specific goal: 100 push-ups in one go. Nothing nebulous like "get in better shape" or "be healthier." That's just gravy when we're talking about a specific end goal.

I think that's what clicked in my head about this challenge. I can do 10 push-ups, I can do this challenge.