Biffster’s WeightJournal.com

Weight: 321.5
Difference from last entry: -1.5

Happy Halloween, everyone! I don’t have a lot of time this morning, so I’m going to make this brief. This week’s weight loss is because of the exercise I’ve been doing, plain and simple. I haven’t been good at avoiding sweets, but I have been keeping myself active. And it shows on the scale. Yay! I’m also going to start putting up measurements soon, so I can see if I’m losing inches anywhere.

The reason I need to keep this short is I am working on a major upgrade to my Weight Journal! Blogger has pissed me off for the last time, so I’m going to start up a Wordpress blog, hosted by myself. That’s going to take me much of today to get everything rolled over. Check back here soon for new links (’specially those of you accessing this site via RSS).

As I’ve mentioned here a few times, I really, really want to get into water aerobics. But I’ve been having a hard time battling both a crazy schedule and my own insecurities about my body in a swimming suit. So I hadn’t quite gotten to a class yet. I have been eyeing a new Water Walking class which started up at the new rec center here in Highlands Ranch. The rec center has an indoor “river,” a current-driven pool. The walking classes take place in that river. From the description of the class, I figured this was a beginners class, basically an “easy” version of water aerobics that I could use to get started before I moved to a water aerobics class.

So I dropped in on a class yesterday morning. And after 5 minutes, I realized that I was very wrong about the “easy” assumption. Turns out that, while there is a lot of walking into and against the currents in the “river,” the class also integrates many of the standard water aerobics activities into the workout. So one has to try to – for example – do a wrestler run into the current in the “river.” While this was easy for some of the 60+ year old women in the class, it was not so easy for me.

By about the 25 minute mark of the class, I was seriously thinking of calling it a day. But the instructor had warned us newbies (fortunately, I wasn’t alone in that regards) that we might get winded very quickly, and if that happened, to just slow down and walk instead of trying the exercises. And I actually remembered to do that. Had I not, I never would’ve made it through the whole hour.

It wasn’t so much that I was winded. Though there were a couple points where I was breathing pretty heavily. My main problem were the muscles in my calf. My calf kept trying to cramp up on me. It was murder! I’ve never used that set of muscles for that long in my life. It hurt like a mother. And it made me look like a weak fool.

But at the end of the hour I was still on my feet and moving. Which is a good thing. And I’m going back Monday morning, which is an even better thing. Hopefully eventually my calves get used to this.

Holy crap! What the hell got into McDonalds? The Golden Arches are actually going to post nutrition information on wrappers for their food!

Patrons of the world’s largest restaurant company will be able to learn the amount of calories and fat, among other information, in a McDonald’s product by looking at the wrapper instead of having to go to its Web site or ask for it at the counter.

The fast-food industry has been under pressure from consumer groups and the government to provide more nutritional information about its food. McDonald’s and others had previously made calorie count brochures available, resisting calls to do more.

Anyone care to wager how drastically sales of the Double Quarter Pounder drop once people can easily see how many calories/fat grams that monster has?

Technorati tags: diet, nutrition information

Weight: 323
Difference from last entry: –1

Ah, that’s more like it! A pound was about what I thought I would lose. It would’ve been more, but I fell victim to temptation this week. Two bits of temptation, actually. Two that I know very well, and should know how to counteract by now: soda, and Halloween candy. I actually did very well resisting both. Halloween candy’s been out all week. And all week, when I brought a lunch with me, I was able to abstain.

But I didn’t bring a lunch with me on Thursday. And, when I got hungry and didn’t have anything on hand, I dug into the candy jar. I didn’t go overboard, and did a good job in limiting the amount of candy that I had. But I didn’t stop at one piece, which is what I should have done. Lesson learned: either always bring a lunch, or stick to one piece.

I also fell victim to peanut butter, which I have a strange relationship with. Eaten in moderation, PB is almost a perfect food. It’s filling, high in protein and makes a great sandwich. But it is also high in calories, and I love it. Love it. LOVE IT! One serving is not enough for me. So I end up having two or three sandwiches. And I have to have milk to go with the sandwiches. Not good, not good at all. This is a case of taking a healthy meal (and a PB&J sandwich with a glass of milk actually is a pretty health meal) and making it unhealthy via portion size.

Fortunately, I am good at recovering when I am abusing peanut butter. That little stint over the weekend probably cost me a pound or two of weight loss, but I got it out of my system, and I’m good to go for another six to nine months before I’ll be wanting to do that again.

Still, things were mostly good this week. Stuck with the exercise. Ate mostly well. Brought lunches to work. And lost a pound.

That’ll do!

Technorati tags: weigh-in

deepFitness.com has a fun article up right now about the importance of exercise in a weight loss program. I fully agree that exercise is critical. It’s always been challenging for me to add exercise to my routine. And apparently, I’m not alone:

Then as the days go on, they find it increasingly difficult to meet the domestic and professional demands and so their routine slows down and finally comes to a complete workout burn out. In other words, they stop working out completely. It is a universal fact that the most chosen time for work outs is the evenings. If you can stick to work out in the evenings then it is well and good. But most of us find ourselves exhausted in the evenings. We find ourselves physically and mentally drained. And at that time our bodies will be just too tired for a work out.

The result is that after the first few days of working out, the interest just dwindles away.

Heh! That sounds exactly like me, and previous attempts at starting a regular exercise routine! Fortunately, I’ve been doing much better this time around. Hopefully, I can keep this up.

Technorati tags: exercise

The writers at Health and Fitness Blog have some strong feelings about drinking soda while trying to lose weight:

If you are still drinking “sugar water� you are unlikely to be successful in either reaching or maintaining a healthy weight. Fully sweetened colas and similar drinks contain around 160 calories each, enough to add around 16 pounds to your body weight if you have one a day for a year and don’t cut back somewhere else. All liquids and particularly soda pop tend to be “empty� calories that don’t sate your appetite; they also provide very little nutrition. You must avoid them if you want to lose weight.

Those are stern words. But are they true? I’ve gotta say I don’t believe them. I think that soda, like anything else, can be had in moderation when one is trying to lose wegiht. Sure, you can’t drink a fully-sweetened soda every day and expect to lose weight. But having one a week? Especially if you account for the calories? I don’t see a big problem with that. Variety is the key to successful diet change, after all. As is not having any “forbidden” foods, but instead limiting (sometimes severely) the amount of less-healthy foods one consumes.

This article seems a little overboard to me.

Technorati tags: diet, nutrition