Ketogenic Diet Update

It's been a month of following the Dr.Bernstein diet and I've lost 14.4lbs. I feel more like myself, my mental health has improved and it was easy to follow even when I went out of town for a weekend.

I decided a week ago that for the Canada Day long weekend I would treat myself. Also my car is getting a replacement part and I'm in love with my mechanic who has raved about the cookies I used to bring him and I'm baking cookies for him and the rest of the guys this morning, so I'd like to have a couple as well.

What I ate last night was a handful of chocolate covered pretzels before dinner and then had disappointing bruschetta at dinner followed by chicken on mixed greens, then while having friends overs for a movie, I shared a few M&M's, bridge mix and Hint of Lime Tostitos.

This morning I feel completely gross. I have heart burn and I just don't feel great. I had bought some greek yogurt to have for breakfast, but I think I'll pass on that. I'm just going to jump right back into what I've been eating since I feel better on it.

After the Michigan Classic....

Wow, the Michigan Classic was quite an experience!

There was a constantly packed social dance floor--even until 6am I hear--and so MANY talented, advanced dancers showing moves that I have never seen up close! I definitely spotted some trendy patterns and moves, all of which require a level of physical fitness and flexibility.

I stayed up until 4am dancing on the Saturday of that weekend! I wanted to continue, but my feet were getting a little complainy and I had a roommate.

It took about 5 days to start getting my energy back, and on the Monday of June 3rd I started back on the Dr.Bernstein Health & Diet Clinic, a program I've often had good success with. The first time I went on it, I lost 90lbs, however someone was helping with the cost of it.

In the past few years, my benefits plan had reimbursed 85% of the cost. Now it's reimbursing about 10%, however I decided that I was reaching a mental health status requiring self-intervention with something that would move my mind into a better place as fast as possible.

Anyhow, I've lost 8lbs in 7 days, half of that is likely water. I danced this weekend and did just fine in ketosis.

I will update in a week or so.

Jillian Michaels Cleanse / Detox / De-Bloat Drink Notes

Yesterday I poured 20oz of the concoction and sipped nervously throughout the day, my mind echoing with the myths/scares found on the internet when you Google about drinking distilled water.
Today I put my mind at ease by referring to the respected Dr. Andrew Weil and his sound wisdom about distilled water:
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART00581/water-an-essential-part-of-life.html

Anyways, here's how I made it today:

1. Boiled some distilled water in a kettle (like a cup and a half or so--no need to measure, just enough to steep the bag in and not stress out your kettle's heating element with too little water), steeped the Dandelion root tea bag for an hour or so.
2. Got my 50oz pitcher (dollar store) and poured the steeped tea in, added 3 tbsps lemon juice (from concentrate--one of those plastic lemon-shaped juice bottles you buy in the fruit section), added  1 tbsp sugar-free (sucralose) cranberry juice (bought in the juice aisle). Mixed it up.
3. Poured out a third of the mix into my water container and started on it.

It kind of tastes like unsweetened, super-weak tea.

Pre-Michigan Classic West Coast Swing dance event

I'm one week out from The Michigan Classic and I resolved last Friday to give up on the calorie counting for the time being and as of June 2nd will be returning to my Dr.Bernstein plan for no more than 3 months. I see it as a mental health issue at this point, and I know it works...so I'm regaining myself in time for the Toronto Open Swing Hustle Championship in July.

In the meantime, I am going to try the Jillian Michaels diuretic drink featured at:
http://makemebeautifulblog.blogspot.ca/2007/12/jillian-michaels-cranberry-drink-recipe.html

It's actually featured elsewhere (ie: youtube), but I just grabbed this link because it has some chat responses which are helpful.

I have my period as of yesterday, so my whole digestive system is thrown entirely out of whack, which was made worse by sitting in a car for about 6 hours while having snack foods for sustenance on the drive back home from North Bay. I have to say, this period was prefaced by the *worst* bout of PMS I've had in a while---it was very depressive! Until I decided to take a Tylenol Menstrual every day which made a GIANT difference.

I have my sugar-free Cranberry juice, my many jugs of distilled water and my dandelion root tea bags bought at a local health/supplement store. I totally missed getting the lemon juice, so I will add that tomorrow.

It should be noted that from what I've read, distilled water is not something you should drink regularly. If you google it, make sure you also read the sites that debunk the most damning site that pops up right away in the search results.

Day After Dancing

My new lifestyle has taken over my life.

Myself and another girl have taken the reigns of a dance community in London, Ontario and between the two of us we have organized dances and instructional series of classes from now until the end of December. I get to be the demonstration partner for the instructor that we're using often, so we meet, do our own lesson, then practice the two lessons, do the two lessons, film the recap of the two lessons and then dance for the rest of the evening.

I didn't even dance every song! Rarely do I dance every song--I need to manage my perspiration.

Actual social dancing started around 10:10pm and finished an hour later. In there, I danced two songs using East Coast Swing which is a little bit faster feeling because you are triple-stepping so much and stepping back for a rock step, then stepping forward into a triple, then another triple, then rock stepping. This would make more sense if you learned to dance. You should look up "West Coast Swing" dancing in your area. Trust me, it's fun!

In an hour, I probably had about 5-7 dances since I was doing a lot of socializing and promoting.

By the time I was done, I was ravenous. Dinner was a restaurant chicken salad at 5:30pm and after that, there was no time for more eating and I prefer to eat light before dancing.

Once I got home, although I had premade pancakes waiting in the fridge, I knew that would be bad news to go to bed on a stomach full of pancakes, so I had 250mL of Greek Yogurt and a couple of triscuits and a hot chocolate. Yes, I bought a canister of hot chocolate the other day *sigh*.

This morning, as I woke from being dead to the world, I was grateful to myself for making a stack of whole wheat/blueberry pancakes and refrigerating them. I ate 3 with No Sugar Added syrup (I prefer the milder sweetness of NSA syrup by E.D. Smith).

I hadn't given myself enough time to get into ketosis and figure out how it would feel to do all of that with the very restrictive diet that is required in order to achieve and stay in ketosis. I also know that I would need to make a serious effort to get my stamina up and strengthening my back so I don't feel so completely spent the next day. The Michigan Classic at the end of May is looming.

I might have to put stamina and back conditioning ahead of fat loss.
What I might try next is to get into ketosis for May 4th when we have our next dance and see how I feel the day after.

On the Keto Fence (again)

When things start to feel out of control, or I start to feel overwhelmingly anxious about the damage I've done to myself with the eating last summer/fall, or when I view myself dancing on video which I'm doing a lot more of lately in order to improve, I start panicking and plan to get into ketosis so I can lose weight as fast as possible with the tried and true methods of my past.

Then I start to anticipate that feeling of isolation that comes with being on a ketogenic diet (constantly having to turn things down, explain yourself etc) and it too makes me anxious. I go through the day talking myself out of it, rationalizing that if I just ate low-carb and did cardio for an hour every day, I could probably affect a weight loss; even though not as great as it may be with a ketogenic diet.

Then I realize that my life is totally different this year, in that I am committed to dancing nearly every weekend this summer and an evening of dancing leaves me so exhausted and ravenous, I don't know how I would manage the energy demand. I won't know until I try of course.

When I see myself on video, I bounce back to my original thought that I seriously need to buckle down and get into ketosis because it saddens me to see what I've done to myself.

I feel like a tennis ball.

Greek yogurt & my go-to digestive cleansing product

First off, I've been hot chocolate-free for two days now. Jonesing! Still staying strong even though it is my comfort drink.

Secondly, I wore my armband for quite a long time yesterday (22 hours and 50 minutes) and I woke up this morning with my armband being somewhat embedded into my tricep (I'm exaggerating a bit) and leaving a spot on my arm itchy and irritated. So I am leaving it off until that goes away (probably another day).

Let me exclaim how delicious greek yogurt is! So creamy and chilled! There will be no need to get ice cream now that I've discovered greek-effing-yogurt! Here's how I've had it so far:

• with Splenda & coconut flavoring or banana flavoring (bought at Bulk Barn) + ground flaxseed to give it that "coconut/banana cream pie" texture
• with Splenda & cocoa (this was an experiment--I might give it another try with the 2% Liberte yogurt...the 0% President's Choice yogurt had too much of a tangy aftertaste to enjoy the chocolate, although maybe I need to mix a dash of vanilla in to cut the tanginess)
• as an additive to mashed sweet potatoes. don't bother doing this, it dulls the flavor of the sweet potatoes

There's another issue I have that seems to affect both the number on the scale and how my clothes fit at any given time. This is a somewhat embarrassing/personal issue to talk about, but I think it's worth talking about so that I can tell you how I'm handling it when I need to.

I'm fairly certain I have some degree of IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) because not only am I not regular, but it's very easily affected by how many carbs I'm having, what types of carbs I'm having, whether I'm stressed, whether I've been less active etc. My sister, on the other hand has gone with a gluten-free lifestyle (that's for you Ember ;)  ) and has a completely opposite constitution.

On Monday & Tuesday of next week I will be visiting her place and bringing along some of my own foods, but when it comes down to birthday cake or baking, I know I will try it, love it and then pay for it for days by being immediately "Bunged Up" (favorite terminology used within our family for ages for this condition lol). She tells me I should eat Magnesium Citrate tablets and be careful how much I take for it might make me want to stay close to a washroom at all times. I bought it *hoping* that was the case and it had little to no effect on that.

Anyhow, I know that when I'm bunged up my digestion "isn't working well", I don't even bother to weigh myself and tend to choose clothes that are looser and more stretchy. I've tried self-administered colonic massaging (rubbing my tummy counter clockwise) and have found that it was helpful in stimulating some digestion a little bit.

When I notice that things are starting to need attention and I'm done with waiting for something to happen, I take 2 of these babies:

I HIGHLY recommend them as they are much easier to tolerate than taking 2 Extra-Strength Ex-lax tablets which I save for the critical-stage times.

However, if you plan to try this product, take one before bed with lots of water, and then lots of water as soon as you get up. Do it on a weekend so you know how your body will handle it. My mom took one and found her digestive system too "squelchy" throughout the day, whereas for me, I don't get that at all.

I'm in Canada, so I buy this in the herbal/vitamin aisle of the natural food section of Loblaws or Real Canadian Superstore. I don't take them every day, so a bottle can last me quite a while.

Down the Dance Rabbit Hole & Back Up Again

Thank you so much Ember for lighting a fire under me to put up another post : )  I guess I kinda thought no one was reading.

Another month has gone by and I used my BodyMediaFit armband consistently and logged my food consistently, and still no real change on the scale or in the fit of my clothes.

I have my first ever dance weekender coming up on May 30th and I want more confidence in myself at that time than I've had the last 3 months.

So it's time to return to the Ketogenic or Low-Carb plans that have worked for me in the past. This time, I referenced a blog that I came across which puts a fresh mindset on the whole process:
http://josepharcita.blogspot.ca/2011/03/guide-to-ketosis.html

My President's Choice Sugar-free Dark Hot Chocolate addiction habit needs to go. It's far too easy to mix up a couple of tablespoons and sit down with that lovely hot chocolate flavor making everything feel alright. I don't even want to go through the list of ingredients because the undissolved chocolate sludge at the bottom of every mug is enough to tell me I probably shouldn't be drinking such copious amounts of it.

The temporary consideration of taking up running has passed after meeting with a personal trainer in her 70's (she's an athlete, don't laugh!) and discussing my knee concerns. She started me on a ball workout program which left me completely sore (as it should) and I've had a number of things going on affecting me getting to session #2.

Mostly stress and disappointment with life and disappointed that I think we all get brought up to believe that you are pretty much going to have a husband and children and a house and it's a matter of finding him and arranging all that. For the late bloomers like me, it's a huge disappointment that you reach age 40-whatever and feel left behind.

Anyways.

It doesn't help that I'm in "love" with my car mechanic who is in his 30's and has a girlfriend. Fortunately I have a car that is aging and *perhaps* he likes me a little bit (from afar) and takes care of me, going well above and beyond every time I have a car concern.

I digress again.

So the last month has been a mad blur of dance-related activities. Here's what I accomplished with my co-pilot on the project:

• built a website  (westcoastswinglondon.ca)
• established a Facebook page, group and Youtube channel for us
• negotiated and scheduled two 6-class courses for Beginner Lessons and Musicality
• designed/ordered business cards for our group
• negotiated and scheduled several other workshops & social dances for the remainder of the year
• established relationships with the West Coast Swing communities in driving distance and started to share their events so they could share ours
• the list goes on....

I am looking forward to lots of dancing coming up and whatever I do in the gym will need to be towards being a better dancer in some way or another because it is definitely a passion and the kind of thing you can always improve on (like golf!).

Thank you for reading and getting my head back in the game.

MOTIVATED.....by dance!!

The past 9 days have seen a whole new frontier start to open up before me!

Nine days ago I agreed to be a demonstration partner to a visiting West Coast Swing instructor who decided to take me under his wing as he was impressed with my enthusiasm and interest in progressing.

Since then, myself and the girl who presented me the opportunity to be the demo partner have been selected as the right people to form the new committee which will take over the monthly dances that are one of the few outlets of West Coast Swing here in my fair city.

My mind has been racing with the possibilities and how we can build on the monthly dances, how we can bring in new dancers and expand the group of people who like to do this.

As well, my boss invited me to pay out some overtime which gave me just enough to book and prepay a hotel room for 2 nights so that I could go to the Toronto Open Swing Hustle Championships which my dance mentor recommended.

And now--I'm considering attending the Michigan Classic which is an even higher caliber of event at the end of May.!


Further still, are upcoming dances within an hour's drive out of the city with excellent instructors!

I've also found a new dance that I probably won't be able to learn in this city, but it's exciting to look at and revived my interest in Latin dancing (I kinda gave up on Salsa mostly for financial reasons last September). The dance is Zouk if anyone is interested.

With all these exceptional opportunities and commitment to a whole community of recreational dancers and a commitment to myself to reach a new level of skill, I do NOT want to arrive at either of these championship events feeling self conscious of my body.

The latin dances, and even West Coast Swing look much better when you're willing and able to execute body rolls and stick your booty and hips far out to accentuate the music and styling. For me, I need to feel that confidence again.

And so--I decided.



It's interesting but all these past few weeks of the new year when I was logging my food and learning to do new things with my body (ie: hoop dancing), I thought I *had* decided.

This feels different.

This feels like, "EFF THIS--I'm DOIN' IT because I'm EXCITED for what I'll be able to do when I feel PROUD of these curves and the small waist and by then my skills will have reached the level that I CAN join in the reindeer games!"


We have a jar of M&M's at work. I stood next to them and walked by them multiple times today in the course of doing my job. I was smiling inside because I was thinking, "man I can't wait to dance in Toronto and wear snug fitting dance tops!" : D

Calorie Burner: 3 hrs of dance lessons followed by 2.5 hours of social dancing

omgee.
my feet hurt!!

As I may have mentioned in previous posts, I am part of a West Coast Swing community of social dancers.

This evening I was fortunate to have a one hour private lesson, followed by 2x 45 minute lessons where I was the demonstration partner (for the first time ever!), followed by another 2.5 hours of social dancing. It was not quite on the level of World's Largest Disco calorie burning, but from 6pm-11:30pm, I burned about 1081 calories doing all of that.

You know that you've burned a lot of calories in a short span of time when you sort of "hit the wall" and then you'll pretty much eat whatever's put in front of you. I ate a leftover half-sandwich from the food trays that were put out and a handful of truffle candies, then a slice of bread and peanut butter (and a Tylenol) when I got home.

Knee Pain / Weakness (program)

This is a little post to capture a wonderful site I finally ferreted out after searching for help with my knee issue which my doctor had said was likely "something patella something" (I can't recall).

I found helpful information at:
http://www.knee-pain-explained.com/chondromalaciapatella.html

I found very good knee cap exercises at:
http://www.knee-pain-explained.com/knee-cap-exercises.html

General leg strengthening to benefit the knee at:
http://www.knee-pain-explained.com/knee-strengthening-exercises.html

Awesome knee and supporting muscle stretches shown at:
http://www.knee-pain-explained.com/knee-stretches.html

Calorie Burn: treadmill walking & leg extensions (plus an epiphany!)

Living in Southwestern Ontario between 3 great lakes has brought a lot of windy, snow and generally messy winter conditions. After a long day at work, whether I was tired out from a busy day, or tired out from lack of being busy, going out into the winter weather was enough to make me want to get home as soon as possible for a hot chocolate and my Hello Kitty pj pants.

This afternoon at work, I looked out our windows to watch the driving snow and the university students forging ahead from building to building. Again I visualized how nice a hot chocolate and my comfy pj pants would feel once I got home. As usual, since I've been paying for a gym membership every month and not going, I briefly considered whether I should go to the gym or not.

Since last summer, I noticed my knees feeling less stable, or weak even when climbing up onto a curb or getting up out of a chair, or my car. My doctor told me that it was likely just that I needed to strengthen the ligaments which hold the Patella (knee cap) in its place (sitting in grooves which it slides along). She recommended leg extensions.

As someone who has been learning to dance for the last 3 years with a promising future of enjoying it immensely, my knee strength is important to me. It's also important to me that I don't groan when I get up out of a chair or climb up a curb. I should be bounding up and down stairs, not leaning on the handrails for support.

I also mentioned in my last post that I've been considering running. I certainly can't run if my knees are going to be at risk, so I have new reasons to be considering the gym and what I can do there to improve my life by facilitating the physical ability to continue exploring these new activities.

While I was visualizing stepping out into the cold, wintery late afternoon, I fast-forwarded to the summer and visualized myself heading out into the warm sunny weather when it would be much easier to get to the gym.

That's when my thoughts shifted.

What's worse: going to the gym even though it's cold and windy out and I just want to go home and be warm and cozy, or heading out to enjoy a hot summer day feeling overweight and not being able to wear the things I want to wear like my favorite leopard print maxi dress, or all the other flattering dresses I've collected over years of thrift-store shopping?


I went to the gym tonight.

As soon as I climbed up on that treadmill, I felt successful and proud that I was able to push myself and overcome thoughts of immediate gratification. I had a vigorous 25 minute walk on the treadmill at a 1% incline listening to awesome tunes and then did 3 sets of 10 leg extensions using very low weight just so that I could work on my knees and not worry about trying to build muscle.

I enjoyed 7.5 minutes on the Hydromassage bed and then headed home where I had a healthy dinner and good conversation with my best friend while it was baking in the oven.

Calories burned in my 45 minutes of walking and leg extensions at the gym: 230

 I'm not really sure what that V shape portion of the graph is all about, there was no sudden decline in activity, I'm wondering if it was just an anomaly or something. I will pay closer attention to the clock when I go to do leg extensions so I can easily pick them out in the graph.

Flirting With The Impossible

I'm interrupting my youtubing to document the seed of a thought I've begun flirting with.

running.


Never in my LIFE have I been a runner. When I was growing up, we didn't have access to treadmills until the day I joined a gym. Even then, running on the treadmill was out of the question for a few reasons:

1. I already sweat a lot just walking briskly on a treadmill. I can't imagine how drenched and gross I would look and feel by running.
2. My junk in the trunk would be bouncing at such a momentum that I would look like a 1940's jalopy running full tilt at a giant bump on a dirt road with the back end barely hanging on.
3. My bosom (which I consider one of the few things I am happy with) would be bouncing so much that it may attract attention, or become so used to bouncing that all the ligaments would stretch out and I'd end up having my very nice bosom turning into something which hangs low and moves to and fro.

This would be the most common type of gym activity which would be the furthest out of my comfort zone, but which may bring me the physical appearance I want in the shortest span of time.

How did this seed form? My friend LG has been a dedicated runner, especially over the last year and has done admirably with her health and achieved her personal goals for physique with running.

And a girl I play World of Warcraft with posted on her Facebook wall that a year ago she was 27 lbs heavier and when I asked what she had done differently, she said she took up running on the treadmill.

So, I've begun considering the idea and not immediately dismissing it like in the past.

To document something I may or may not do, I thought I would collect some of the resources now in case I need to look back on them.

Running Form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3hjpDs_Fq8
Treadmill running program for beginners: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2LL8f65x-Y
http://www.mytreadmilltrainer.com/

Calorie Burn: 1.5 hours of cleaning my 2-bedroom apartment

I have company coming today and it was the perfect time to give the apartment a once-over. I don't have a lot of things to dust and I don't have a lot of carpet to vacuum (which is unfortunate because I am a Dyson owner and there's nothing I love more when cleaning house than a good, cathartic vacuuming).

However, I have two cats that rough-house A LOT, so sometimes I'll be walking through an area and the air current from my walking past draws out some significantly large cat hair tumbleweeds (tumblefurs? I've invented a new word).

So, after doing my house cleaning, I promptly removed my Armband, plugged it in to find out how many calories that just burned:

300 calories!

See that flat spot in the middle? That's when my Dyson sucked up a pen and I had to find where it had lodged itself in the hose and remove it, which I did.


Housecleaning is well worth the good feeling it leaves me with when I've made everything fresh and sparkly, and makes me feel like I can have people over without concern for tumblefurs rolling by, AND I burned a good amount of calories!

Snack Revelation

Last Friday I weighed 1.5 lbs less than when I started tracking everything.

On Tuesday, I weighed 1.5 lbs more (back to original weight), however I weighed myself just a few days later, against my better judgement so I dismissed this as a water retention anomaly.

Today (Friday), I weighed 1.0 lb more than last week.


Mildly frustrated (because I am giving myself time to learn about my metabolism and habits etc.), I reviewed the amount of calories I racked up in the "Snack" category for the whole week, and this is how that looked:

So, given that I was creating a deficit every day of the week, according to my Armband, it seems that the snacks were adversely affecting whatever weight loss my body was trying to achieve.

This information was very sobering and I definitely reconsidered putting my hand in the jar of M&Ms at work. I only took 3.

In the week ahead, I am going to try and significantly reduce the amount of snacking I do, which is done primarily in the evenings after dinner, or in the morning at work, or in times of anxiety.

Calorie Burn: 1 hour of hoop practice in my apartment building

My mood wasn't the best today and I was definitely not motivated enough to get out and go to the gym.

However.

I did throw on some workout stuff and went down to the exercise room at 8:13 and enjoyed practicing some hoop dance and before I knew it an hour had gone by.

Calories burned = 283

I was feeling all pleased with myself when I had reviewed my food logging for the day and had come in at 1397 calories...unfortunately I quickly forgot the 42g chocolate bar and 1/8 cup of almonds I had before lunch.

This is where planning the meals and snacks ahead would have helped.
It also would have helped to put a cold pack in my lunch bag so that my lunch was sure not to have spoiled, forcing to me to hunt for a healthy lunch in the busiest hub of the university I work at and the food place with the shortest line and healthiest options won.

Calorie Burn: West Coast Swing workshop & dance

I belong to a West Coast Swing community in southwestern Ontario and attended a workshop and dance this afternoon which ran from about 2:10pm-6:10pm. I participated in the Intermediate lesson and sat out for the Beginner lesson that followed.

There was open dancing between 4:00-5:00 and then a little bit more dancing between 5:20 and 6:00. I chose not to dance as often since the majority of the music was Country/Western which makes me cringe.

Calories burned for this event = 554

In case you want to see what West Coast Swing looks like, and I highly recommend learning, check out Lucky Sipin and Shelly Saxena from Swing Niagara's Pro-Am Spotlight this past September 2012 (they're Torontonians):

Hoop-insanity

I might have to change the name of my blog to RachelInTheHoop instead of RachelAtTheGym because I'm having a lot of fun feeling challenged by learning to Hoop Dance!

I did a little 30 minute hoop session this morning, then the 2-3:30pm class, then when I realized I ate too many calories today than I am comfortable with, even though I had created a deficit, I went downstairs and hooped for 40-45 minutes for a total record-breaking calorie burning day of 880 calories!

However, hooping makes me ravenous, so of course when I got back up to my apartment all hot and sweaty and hungry again, I ate more (plain greek yogurt with coconut flavoring added)....and then I ate again later (my favorite snack of whole wheat toast, all natural crunchy peanut butter and no-sugar added blueberry jam).

To see what I've been up to for 4 weeks, check out this girl's video showing all the things I've learned:

Sleep Quality After Hooping

Last night I did some hoop dancing in the fitness room in my apartment building, for nearly an hour, while accomplishing 5 loads of laundry and a load in the dryer.

Hooping for that long leaves me feeling tired in that nice "I worked out alot" way and an hour of hooping goes by wicked fast!

As I anticipated, the amount of time I spent sleeping is the same, but man--I SLEPT LIKE A BABY!

Check out this morning's report from the BodyMedia Fit Armband:

Somewhere in there I had a somewhat nerve-wracking zombie dream featuring Chris Lloyd, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas and Glenn from Walking Dead as a mod-podge trio of unlikely heroes.  Clearly I was thinking of the return of Walking Dead this Sunday night!

Review: BodyMedia Fit LINK - Part 4 Neat Stuff! (final installment of review)

I will add to this post over the next few days as I discover cool things about this whole system.


How Many Calories Did I Burn?


I live in an apartment building where the laundry room and a small exercise/weight room are directly across from each other. Since I've just taken up Hoop Dancing, I thought I would see how good a practice area the weight room would be if I was doing laundry at the same time. I hoop danced between 6:30 and 7:30pm wearing my armband.

After connecting the armband by USB and syncing the data with the Activity Manager, I was able to view this report:

By moving the sliders at the bottom to the period of time during which I was hooping, the report stretched out to show me how many calories I burned during that period.

Estimated Calorie Burn

The longer and more often that I wear the Armband, the more it gets to know my daily averages and can give me an estimated calorie burn for the day by hovering over the light blue portion of the bars that 'grow' horizontally as the day progresses and more calories are burned. Here's an example of what that looks like:

Useful Reports To Obssess Over

hahahaha, I love that title. It's so true, isn't it?!

In the Activity Manager, to the right of the Facebook icon is a link you can click to export data into an Excel file, or other variations if you like. I chose Excel, here's the result:

Here's the report. Although it was disappointing that a key calculation was totally left out, so I added the column and the calculations myself. You'll see those highlighted in purple:

BodyMedia Fit "FitCoach" Tips

Sometimes there will be a little "note bubble" appearing next to one of your Summary screen categories to praise you, give you some helpful tips about nutrition/exercise, or give you a heads-up about some of your data. Here is a screenshot of two FitCoach tips I opened:

Thank you FitCoach for pointing out that I ate too much chocolate yesterday. Give me a break, I'm a girl and it's "that time of the month" :)



FitCoach: You're more than just a number on the scale

FitCoach realizes that I haven't weighed myself in a week and its way of encouraging me to track my progress in other ways is to tell me that I can also measure my waist as seen in this tip:

To log a waist size, it was pretty simple to find:

Personal Bests

Any time I have a new personal best, I am notified! Check it out!

Import Heart Rate Monitoring (Garmin GPS)

In the dashboard of the Activity Manager, you can import heart rate information from a heart rate device!  I don't have a heart rate device though.

Review: BodyMedia Fit LINK - Part 3 : My Troubleshooting

(for those who want to quickly flip to the different parts of this review, you can go to Part 1 or Part 2)


My Troubleshooting

• "Waiting" or "Linking" status at the bottom of the mobile app, while the armband is paired properly in the Bluetooth menu of cell phone :  yesterday I was referring to the BodyMedia Fit mobile app as I'll probably do many times a day with my new gadget and I noticed that it would not say "Linked" the way it should when it is communicating data. Without my user manuals handy, I reached over and pressed the grey button from outside my sleeve. I heard it make a noise, but the status didn't change. I went back into the Bluetooth menu of the phone, unpaired the device and then paired it again (requiring that I press the grey button to put it into the mode where it will pair with my phone). Once I did that, everything was fine and all the data was there and communicating properly.

• Installed the BodyMedia Fit Sync application on my laptop and wouldn't sync (accessed the file I had downloaded the other day over my home network and ran the installation on my laptop since I couldn't find it by logging on the BMF website)--tried to sync the armband on my laptop and nothing happened :  in this case, I am going to try again tomorrow and see if the same thing happens. I took the armband back over to my home computer and sync'd there without a problem.

• Logged my food for the day in MyFitnessPal and it wasn't updating immediately in BMF's Activity Manager: in this case, I just needed to be patient. When I clicked the arrow next to the Calories Consumed item in the Summary screen, at some point it populated with the calories that I had logged with MyFitnessPal, however it was not yet updating the total calories shown on the Summary. When I clicked the arrow to collapse that menu, the calories updated. Patience.

Review: BodyMedia Fit LINK - Part 2 (one full day & night of wear)

So far I'm impressed with the Link Armband.

In Part 1 of my review, I ended my post saying that I was heading to bed. It's now 7:26am, I took the armband off as soon as I got up, and plugged it into the USB cable that I'm just leaving attached to the computer.

It began syncing immediately since the BodyMedia Sync Application was already running in the background from when I installed it yesterday.

I grabbed my breakfast and a hot chocolate and sat down to review the results by clicking the green "Activity Manager" button on the BodyMedia Fit website.  This is what was logged overnight:

This information gets added to the data for the morning after sleeping. When I went to bed, it was Feb.5th and when I woke up (Feb.6th), this was logged under today's date. I had trouble getting to sleep last night, so I can see that I was last recorded as "lying down" at 12:08am and then "asleep" at 12:19am. After taking a Robaxacet with Ibuprofen in it, it took 11 minutes to put me out. My quality of sleep was probably the most interesting of the things tracked since it's going on while I'm unconscious. I know I didn't exercise yesterday, so the results are just everyday movement. Here's what that looked like:

The numbers on the left show 2/4/6/8 calories per minute and each spike shows how many calories per minute I was accomplishing for any given action or inaction.


Food Logging:  MyFitness Pal vs. Activity Manager at BodyMedia Fit

As I had logged all of my food with MyFitnessPal, only the calories for each meal category were imported into the BodyMedia Fit Activity Manager, however it gives a much nicer pie chart and nutrient summary than the online reports available from the online version of MyFitnessPal (their mobile app reports are more enhanced than the reports offered online):

Here's how it looked in MyFitnessPal:

I wanted to see whether I would prefer logging my food with MyFitnessPal or logging it via the Activity Manager at BodyMedia Fit. First, I had to go to my Preferences screen in the BMF Activity Manager and switch it from "Third Party Logging" to "Food Logging" as shown here:

Once I did that, I was starting fresh with the food database available at the Activity Manager and although I do enjoy creating my own foods to select from as I could do with MyFitnessPal, the ability to find foods that other people have added to a database is only available in MyFitnessPal as shown in the two searches side by side.

 My decision is to continue logging food with MyFitnessPal.



Today, based on my sleep from 12a.m. onwards, I started the day off with a 477 calorie deficit since it takes effort to sleep poorly for 5.5 hours (hahahaha). Here is how MyFitnessPal treated this deficit as "Exercise":

I have yet to go to my West Coast Swing dance class tonight to find out how many calories I've typically burned doing that activity, and I have to download the info from my armband containing all the data for the daytime.


End of Day Results:

I want to show you the Summary screen on the Activity Manager now that I have taken off the armband and uploaded the data while I had a shower before bed. I'm going to put it back on an hour after taking it off so I can see how well I sleep.

In the dark grey column are targets for the day (I set the 1400 calorie target, everything else was set for me based on answering questions in the setting up of the Activity Manager when I made choices about what my goals were, what amount of activity I would likely be doing and how fast I wanted to see results).

In the right column, starting from the top is how many calories I burned among the various activities of the day and all of the bodily functions of sleeping, breathing etc.

Then it lists how many calories I ate, which then shows how much of a calorie deficit I created. If I wanted to lose a pound a week, I would need to create a deficit of 500 calories per day. Since I chose during the setup process that I would like to lose 2 lbs per week, that is why the 1000 calorie deficit is listed on the left in the Calorie Balance row.

1 pound loss per week math: 3500 calories in a pound / 7 days in a week = 500 calorie deficit
2 pound loss per week math: 7000 / 7 = 1000

The # of steps taken is quite higher than the other days, but then I was at dance class this evening where I was doing a lot of "triple steps".

Review: BodyMedia Fit LINK - Part 1

(for those who have already read Part 1, you can flip back to Part 2...)



I am going to introduce you to the BodyMedia Fit - Link Armband which I bought on Jan.30th from the BodyMedia Fit website with a 15% discount using the promotional code available to me as a user of MyFitnessPal (it expires Feb.28th and you can see the info here:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/apps/show/10).

There are a few gadgets out there which can be worn as a way to measure what rate you burn calories at, and it was the review of someone in the BodyBuilding.com forums which convinced me that this would be the more accurate approach since it measures more things than the others.  Here's a link to the Features & Benefits page on their website:
http://www.bodymedia.com/all_day.html


Here is my experience so far:


1. I placed my order online and received the item about 5 days later via UPS. As I live in Canada, I was expecting to have to pay customs fees, but I didn't!

2. Unfortunately their website is not that intuitive and if I had known what difficulty I would have trying to pay for the subscription to the online Activity Manager (which captures the data and reports it for you, and also communicates with MyFitnessPal), then I would have added it to the shopping cart initially. Since I bought right from their website, I get 3 months free on the subscription which will start billing at $6.95/month in May. Not too exorbitant considering it's $4.86 for a Starbucks Chai Latte. Just sayin'.

3. Again, since the Manual and the QuickStart manual which come with the packaging are not very comprehensive, I found myself having to call their customer service hotline, which by the way is only available 9am-5pm EST. Otherwise, you need to email them for any issues.  Between the booklets and two phone calls to Customer Service, I have made the process much easier for anyone reading this who is considering buying one:

• charge the armband for 3 hrs using the USB cable connected to your computer

• pay for the subscription and activate your armband for that subscription using the info on page 8 of the user manual 

• from their website, download the BodyMedia Sync application (in this step, I do not mean the Android or iPhone app, that comes later) by clicking on "Getting Started" and stepping through that process. This will install the BodyMedia Sync application on your home computer where you need to have it so that when you plug it in with the USB cable, your data will be captured and then communicated to the Activity Manager you access on their website.

• on your cell phone, ensure that you have activated your Bluetooth so that it can discover devices 

• press the grey button on the plastic interface of the gadget and watch that it pairs properly with your cell phone. If you activated your subscription, it should show something like "RC's Armband" where "RC" are my initials...yours would have your initials. THIS WILL ONLY APPEAR THIS WAY IF YOU SUBSCRIBED AND ACTIVATED FIRST. If you make the error of not subscribing, but trying to get one of the steps out of the way by pairing your gadget with your cell phone, it will say "BodyMedia Fit Armband" and will not be able to communicate the data from the armband to your BodyMedia app. You'll have to go through all the trouble of unpairing the armband, then pairing it again after you subscribed & activated, then log in to the app and watch that it starts doing what it needs to.

• What BodyMedia App? The one you need to download for Android or iPhone. Once you've done that and you know you successfully 'paired' your gadget with your cell phone, log into the app and watch in the bottom right hand corner for "Waiting.....Linking....Linked" . Once it's linked, your data should begin updating periodically.

• However, if you want to get the data from your gadget to the Activity Manager you access through the BodyMedia website, your cell phone will not do that for you (they're working on improving the technology for future prototypes). You will need to take the Armband "off body" and connect it to your computer via USB. You should have the Activity Manager open and ready for data to sync when you're doing this.

• MyFitnessPal Users - you will notice that an estimated potential calorie deficit was already added from what you input during the set up process of the BMF Activity Manager.  Don't go scarfing down calories just yet....you still need time to see how these applications and the gadget will all interface

(this is the part I am at now and I will report on that in the next few days).


I have been wearing the armband all day, it's been very comfortable. I have changed clothing and it hasn't slid down my arm or anything. I've checked my phone a couple of times to see that it has kept track and communicated with my phone as to how many steps I've taken today and estimates of calories etc. It still needs to log a whole night of sleep, so I'm heading to bed wearing it.

At maximum, it should be "on body" for no more than 23 hours so that it can send data properly (I suppose).

Hooping Progress: Beginner {and a chat about PMS}

I went to a Gangnam Style flashmob in October and saw my facebook acquaintance who does fire performance there. He was accompanied by a girl with purple/blue hair doing hoop dancing and I found myself watching her more than watching him. She's very spritely and fun to watch. I asked her about her hooping and she said she's only been hooping a year and a half (self taught) and gave me a business card because she sometimes offers classes.

I started taking a class two Saturdays ago and expected to be hula hooping in the first class. As it turns out, I spent most of the class starting the hoop off with a good wind-up and a push to the left, and then trying to catch the hoop from falling to the floor very shortly thereafter.

It's MUCH harder than I expected! However, it is not impossible and she was teaching us other things to do with the hoop as part of "hoop dancing" that I was able to do. This burns about 11 calories a minute and her class is an hour and a half long. Since I can only estimate right now (without a gadget to help me), I accounted for actual "hoop attempting/success" time than actual class time which are 1.5 hrs.

At the end of yesterday's class where I was hooping over my head, floating, helicoptering, hooping to the side and doing a couple of revolving doors in addition to my stubborn attempts to just "get" the first thing I was taught, I was "good tired".

By the time bed came a long, I was still "good tired" and needed sleep. I was hungry most of the evening and I dreamt about looking for a hoop in a dollar store.

* those are usually kid sized hoops and have no gaff tape for a better grip, so not a good idea to buy for those who want to learn this *

Youtube has a ton of tutorials and videos you can refer to. This type of activity seems to have attracted the natural/new age types , along with people who aren't, but you might notice a theme among the people in the videos. I watched a video of a reporter showing how great an activity hooping is. I can't imagine that she's an actual beginner because her hoop does not hit the floor once during her segment. Anyhow, check it out:

THIS JUST IN!   Ohhhh! I'm going to try this : )   The way this girl looks at the beginning is close to how ungraceful I've been looking haha!

On a whole other topic, I want to talk about PMS.

When I was following the Dr.Bernstein program and weighing in 3x a week, it was always discouraging when approaching the date when my period was to be due. I noticed that for me, any reductions to be measured by standing on the office scale would totally stall about 10 days before. And this was on a program where I was to be losing 3.5 lbs a week! But, I knew what was going on and while it was discouraging, I knew that once my period came and went, the numbers would start dropping to reflect whatever fat loss had been happening while PMS had been in play.

I need to know what to expect when I'm not following the Dr.Bernstein program, so I weighed myself today and I'm up another half pound from Friday morning.

Friday my calories were way too high : 2199
Saturday my calories were great: 1398

Logging the food with MyFitnessPal really helps to give substance to what I'm seeing on the scale. I know that people say you shouldn't weigh yourself all the time, but that's not me. I need to understand what's happening and when I don't weigh myself, it feels like blissful ignorance.

Progress Check-In: +0.5 lb in 7 days

It makes sense really.

Here's a report from MyFitnessPal (I added the calorie threshold line to show where "1400" should roughly be) showing when I started logging my food diligently, up until last night.

I weighed myself on the 18th after starting to really track things on the 13th and as you can see there were several more days under or a little bit over my calorie budget.

I weighed myself this morning after only 1 day in the last week under budget and naturally have gained a half pound. Yesterday I had chocolate covered pretzels (0.19kg) and those ended up hogging a huge part of my calorie budget before dinner was even logged; over 900 calories. So, for a chocolate craving, I should have had a small chocolate bar instead.

Dealing with the gym

Yesterday I worked up my courage to go back to my gym.

I was feeling like I didn't belong there anymore, like I couldn't remember what to do, or where to begin knowing that I couldn't just pick up where I left off in 2009-10. My fitness level had slid back to "beginner" status and these last few weeks, I've had discomfort and fatigue in my lower back (which I've determined is likely a subluxation so I'm off to see the Chiro this week).
 

Back in the summer of 2011, I was ambitiously pursuing some personal training with a trainer who did a good job of connecting with me, but a poor job of training me. I recall a session where he had me standing in the cables trying to execute a front fly that I was not capable of. He continued trying to encourage me and "push" me as though that's what I needed to move the cables, but I felt paralyzed and hard as I willed those cables to move, they would not. I began to feel like I was drawing attention and was shrinking within myself. I just wanted it to be over. He lost me.

After that one, I did not set up a time for the last session, nor did he call me. Time passed and then in the late fall I was contacted by the Manager to find out what my experience with the trainer was like and that's when I found out he was no longer with the gym.

I exchanged calls and emails trying to pursue the customer service call to let the gym know of my experience and finally I went to the gym yesterday to talk to the Manager about putting an end to the inquiry and receive some sort of compensation for my experience with the trainer, but more importantly how lengthy a time it took to respond to my follow up inquiries, or on the Manager's part, for completely neglecting to respond with their list of sessions that the trainer had logged as completed vs. what I had tracked.

Anyhow, it looks like I will be getting 6 PT sessions for 30 minutes each, at least.


Once that was out of the way, I did a short bit on the treadmill (omg it has Solitaire to play on it!), then tried my new jump rope for the length of one song on my iPod, and then about 15 minutes on the Hydromassage bed.

Skipping is not easy. I felt like I was returning to childhood gingerly stepping over the rope a couple of times, then giving it an actual jump, then jumped fast several times in a row, then slowed it down to "double bouncing" (my technical term). I was very quickly out of breath.

Progress Check-In: -1.5lbs in 5 days

Yesterday morning I kind of wanted to weigh myself out of habit since I'm following a self-imposed plan.

In the periods where I was paying for and going to the Dr.Bernstein Clinic at the ass-crack of dawn M/W/F,  the expecting rate of loss was about 3.5 lbs a week and they weigh you on each visit which could sometimes be very exciting to see such a drop, or very frustrating to see nothing at all (usually in the 7-10 days of PMS).

Yesterday I thought that I probably should not weigh myself often because I may get discouraged seeing as how the Dr.Bernstein plan (a ketogenic, "very low calorie" diet) ensured more immediate results.

So, this morning as I relished the few minutes of stolen time after hitting the Snooze button, I decided I would weigh myself and accept that there might not be a loss, but at least I would know how differently my body behaved on this plan. After turning to the Dr.Bernstein plan numerous times after my first big loss of about 90lbs (12 years ago), I became very aware of what to expect from my body and mind while following it, but I don't know that same information about me when following the "watch your calories, drink water and eat right, everything in moderation" plan.

I lost 1.5 lbs since I officially started putting my nose to the grindstone on Jan.12th. That's a quarter pound a day so far!  Here's my report showing when I started really tracking my calories & nutrients using MyFitnessPal:

It's interesting how I've become more cognizant of the calories I'm taking in after the first couple of days of FULLY tracking everything.

It's our busiest time of the new year at work and our boss bought Swiss Delice Petits chocolates from Costco and have had them out since last week. I tracked each one that I had; it didn't take too much effort to locate the nutritional information on the internet and enter it as a food item in my food list within the app. I also looked up the info for things I ate or drank on the fly such as the Starbucks Chai Lattes which are not only costly, but expensive in calories as well (but they taste like "Fall" which is their redeeming quality and since I have a gift card I get to enjoy them for free). Did I enjoy logging that I ate 6 chocolates and went way over in my calories? No.

But I did enjoy logging that I ate 5 chocolates and managed to still stay within my calorie budget in the days following!

I also planned for popcorn while sharing a movie with a new friend!

At the end of the day yesterday, when I saw that I still had 240 calories I could spend, I ate two of my homebaked cookies stashed in my friend's freezer whose house I now look after (he's had ample time to eat them, so I reclaimed them).

It's very encouraging!

Return of a good habit

Thanks to my friend Lisa G. who kindly explained the virtues and how to use MyFitnessPal (the app and the website, which sync together with every entry made on either platform), I have started returning to one of the habits that was part of my success in 2009: logging food.

It's as easy to use as FitDay.com and as an Android phone user, I'm able to carry it with me. Every time I log a food and complete my entries for the day, it says "if every day were like today you would weight ___ lbs in 5 weeks!". It's an immediate reality check with what I've done each day.

As well, logging food ahead of time gives me an idea of where I can plan ahead for things such as popcorn when I'm watching a dvd at home, or a Starbuck's chai latte. Those are 240 calories each! So they need to be planned. Fortunately they're expensive and I am only getting them because I was given a gift card for Christmas.

I've modified my goal settings to be 1400 calories a day with a 40/40/20 macronutrient ratio of protein, carbs and fat (this is based on recommended amounts as provided in Jamie Easton's fat loss program on Bodybuilding.com).

Since starting to log (I think it's been 3 full days), I've come down a half pound. I've also noticed that I've started to concentrate on my water intake.

I call it the start of progress. I would prefer to just be able to switch gears and fully adopt the lifestyle I was in the habit of in the summer of 2009, but it just won't happen that way and I have to recognize when my mind is making the shift towards the ideal, even if it's just one step.

Cool Tools (or Bogging Myself Down in the Details)

This is the coolest/easiest online calculator I've found, now I just need to know what to do with it!

http://www.health-calc.com/diet/energy-expenditure-advanced


All I want to know is what is the closest estimate to how many calories I should be taking in, in order to affect weight loss? I feel like I'm over-researching and getting discouraged.

I had some sweetened greek yogurt this evening and bloated enough afterwards that I felt like I'd gained 5 more lbs since this morning.

There's a lot of self-loathing going on and fear. What if I try to eat "normal" foods and stay within the 1400 calorie range and still gain weight??


This is all causing anxiety. Anxiety causes me to reach for comfort (foods).

It's a huge and nasty vortex.

My Calculations

I will probably edit this post a few times, but I want one spot to keep track of the following:

Resting Heart Rate = 72bpm ("above average" for my age according to the chart, yay!)
Metabolic Heart Rate: 220-age (which is 42) = 178bpm

Fat burning zone = 107bpm - 125bpm according to:

http://www.brianmac.co.uk/hrm1.htm

This makes me want to invest in a heart monitor watch which are not cheap!

My alternate way of dealing with this is to find out the beats per minute of my favorite workout songs and ensure that iTunes knows it by right clicking the song, choosing "Get Info" and on the "Info" tab, filling in the BPM field. Then I can just generate a "fat burning" playlist to sync onto my iPod Nano.


Resting Metabolic Rate = around 1525 using the Harris-Benedict calculations (incl. the revised one) or based on the Military Circumfrence % of bodyfat = 1503

best resource I found for this calculation is at: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calrmr.htm

RMR & Comprehensive List of Activities & Calories Burned

In case you wanted to know how many calories you're burning while repairing that airplane, check out the sort-of user-friendly calculators at:

http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php

I think it's cool that they also have "Disco Dancing as an activity since I go to to the World's Largest Disco each year and dance my ass off from 9:30pm - 1am...apparently that burned about 1250 calories!


Also, an explanation of why we might want to Google "Resting Metabolic Rate" instead of using the catchy "BMR" when figuring out what sort of deficit we are creating by bringing down our food intake somewhat.

My Most Useful Posts

This post is strictly for my own convenience, so that I can access quickly the posts wherein I referenced the most useful tools and calculations to figure out what my plan will be:

BMR / TDEE / gym arrival time for working out in the morning before work (Aug 2009)

More BMR calculations & calorie goals (Feb 2010)

More adjustments to caloric goals including fiber needs  (April 2010)

Best Practices summaries from when I started in 2009 (May 2010)


I will go back through everything with updated figures and see how my plans should change.

My Lunch with Lisa G.

"Lisa G." started out as a colleague at work and now I consider her a friend. She's in her twenties (I'm in my early 40's), wise, strong, funny, and someone I thoroughly enjoy spending any time with.

Over the past 4 years I've heard her talk about her love of food and the pub outings with her friends and b.f., and how running was her way of managing her weight. I always thought she had a figure I would love to have and then at some point this summer, I noticed how much more lean and lithe she was appearing and her clothing was even more complimentary than usual. She had thanked me and said she had lost some weight and touched on a few things that she had done differently.

Since then, I watched what her typical lunches have been; very salad-y and veggie oriented, but she ate happily and watched her indulge in some treats over the holidays at my birthday outing which she graciously organized.

I asked her if we could have lunch together so that I could inquire further about how she reached her svelte physique. These were the points that came out:

• a little over a year ago, she and her bf saw photos taken together that they didn't like and wanted to slim down a bit

• they decided to cut out wine and beer for a month and they committed to 4 workouts a week (without changing her diet, she lost 10lbs in a month this way).

• then they reintroduced wine and beer only on weekends and continued with the 4 workouts a week. Being a runner, she noticed that the change to their alcohol consumption allowed her to feel stronger and began pushing herself a little further on her runs..at first doing about 20km a week...she lost another 5lbs or so

• her friend introduced her to MyFitnessPal.com, which is a free site and free mobile app which syncs with the site and in using the calculators there, determined a caloric goal and tracked everything she ate and all the exercise she did so that she kept close tabs on how she was affecting that weekly calorie deficit you would want to shoot for to lose fat. Once she started changing her nutrition she lost another 10-15lbs and then switched her mobile app to "maintenance mode" so she is still tracking her calories, but ensuring she doesn't lose anymore weight.

• she is still doing her 4 workouts a week, though she turned one of the running days into a strength training day 

• she allows herself to eat whatever she wants on the weekends with the goal of not eating back all the calories in deficit and she makes sure to still track what she's eating as she finds that she will eat less of something if she knows how eating more of it will add up when she goes to track it

I've watched people around her; notably older ladies exclaiming "my goodness, don't lose anymore weight!". She looks very good; not unhealthy thin.

I asked her if she felt like she was "dieting" when she had changed her nutrition. She said that most of the time she did not, until confronted with treats or a big foodcentric event, and ensured that she wasn't depriving herself the entire time (hence the weekend flexibility).

I asked her how she deals with not wanting to go for a run when she gets home. She said that as long as she's doing 4 workouts a week, if she comes home and doesn't want to go for a run and isn't prodded to go by her b.f. (who also runs--they're a great partnership, I look forward to their wedding someday!), she will permit herself to stay home on the condition that she definitely runs on a specific day thereafter. She also knows how tiresome it feels to have to run Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon and tries not to set herself up for 4 consecutive running days.

***

Although there's no way in hell I will ever become a runner, it is her outlook and approach that I admire and seek to adopt this year.

2013

Wow.

So it's been 19 months since I last "took stock" and added an entry to my Gym Blog; a blog which I used to use in 2009 as a platform to record my plans and progress.

What's happened since May 2011?

• in June 2011 I broke up with my LDR, in July 2011 I went to Halifax
• I got a new kitten and all hell broke loose
• I moved to a new apartment in October 2011
• still doing my Swing dancing when lessons and workshops are available
• met a bf in April 2012, was together for 5.5 months during which time I spent my weekends with him a lot of the time and the eating went out the window, however I was a nice size when I met him, fresh off a recent 4-week weight-loss effort at Dr.Bernstein
• my relationship with my newest best friend was becoming distant, petty and uncomfortable at the same time as my romantic relationship was becoming intolerable
• then September came--at the end of that crazy month I broke up with the b.f.
• then October came, along with drama from the break up and drama from trying to get my friendship on better ground again, had to involve the police with regards to the b.f. 
• November: Disco month
• December 2012: birthday/Christmas/New Year's and....

....here I am after having gained weight over the summer and fall and now without the Dr.Bernstein program to fall back on since it's not reimbursed by my insurance company at the same rate anymore.

I used New Year's day and the days leading up to it deciding to refocus myself (as I think everyone tends to do) and came down to 5 things I wanted to improve, "figure" and "fitness" being the two that apply to the blogging I do here.

Inspired by my friend at work, I am going to test the merits of the MyFitnessPal website and mobile app which seem to be very similar to FitDay.com (but with an app too).

I've bought a speed rope (skipping rope) for cheap as a means of trying out a new form of cardio.
I've updated my iPod with some fresh beats.

I'm also paying attention to my thought processes.

My first reaction was to stock up on the foods I would have been eating on the Dr.Bernstein diet and attempt to do it at home on my own without the shots. It is so restrictive that I immediately felt a sense of isolation come over me knowing how difficult it is to do. However, one insane day back at work at the start of a new term decimated that plan by about 11am.

I left work yesterday when it was dark and thought to myself, "
 what would motivate me to go to the gym right now after the day I've had, feeling like I do right now?" I could not come up with anything. I just wanted to go home and seek comfort in my pyjamas and that's what I did.

I decided that trying to do such a difficult program just to achieve a short-term loss was not worth it when really what I've wanted to do is get back to the excitement and empowerment I felt when I was weight-training in the summer of 2009.

I called my friend at work and asked if she wanted to have lunch and talk further about how she achieved her improved health and she was happy to tell me all about it. It made me feel good about trying to take the right path and that's what I am here to assert.

2013 needs to be "the year".