Also I lost two pounds since last week. Woo hoo! That means I've lost over twenty pounds since kicking this fitness thing off in January. I'm halfway to my forty pounds of weight loss! I've lost an average of 1.66 pounds a week, and I've got something like four months to meet my weight-loss goals, which looks like it shouldn't be a problem at all at this pace. We'll see.
How I Ate:
My average daily calories for this week were 1143 a day, which is lower than I'd like. I'm not sure what's going on here. It's working out in terms of losing weight and I don't feel hungry, but I'd hate to see my body start acting like it's starving and make doing what I'm doing more difficult. Even on days when I have high-calorie meals, I'm not eating snacks or drinking any of my calories and find myself still falling right around or below my calorie goals for the day. A glass of milk, an extra hard-boiled egg, something extra a day should bump me up to my goal of 1300-1400 calories a day.
Also, I'm going to be getting my food scale in the mail soon since Chris shipped me a lot of my stuff this week, so my calorie counts will become more accurate, especially in regards to how man ounces of meat I'm eating. Honestly, I wouldn't stand a chance at estimating this kind of thing without having used my food scale for a few months before having to part with it. I had no idea what two, four, and six ounces of meat looked like before. Now I have a better guess, but I like knowing I'm dead on, so I'm excited to use my scale again.
How I Moved:
This week I hit my three workouts a week goal, two of which were a combination of strength training, cardio, and yoga, and the third, which was spinning. These are the first group fitness classes I've ever taken, so they were quite an experience! I began a version of Starting Strength, so I was doing squats, bench and overhead presses, deadlifts, and (assisted!) pull-ups. Or chin-ups. I always mix them up. I haven't been running except on a treadmill at the gym, and I also did some stair climbing at the gym, which is like a tiny escalator to Hell and I love and hate it so much.
Now onto my classes. Yoga was great. I had two different instructors, one who filled her class with a bit of chatter and loud Eastern music and who treated it more like what I imagine other fitness classes were like. The second instructor was amazing and sounded passionate, invested, and extremely knowledgeable about yoga. The space was quiet and peaceful, and I felt a much better connection to her. I'd go to either class again, because I had a lot of fun and experienced good soreness in my abs, arms, and shoulders day after both of my classes. Now spinning was a whole other beast. It's fast, challenging, and horrible. Seriously, these people are masochists. But when I was done I felt awesome. Yes, I am sore in places I'd rather not discuss. Yes, I was only able to do about 1/3 of the position two and three things that everyone else in the class was doing. But I came away sweaty, happy, and kind of pumped. I' don't know if I'll be doing a lot of spinning in the future or not, but I like having it as a good cardio option for the future.
How I Felt:
Great. I felt really good. This week has been a high point of fitness motivation for me, though other things like jobs and family things haven't been hit as hard as they should have been. Between all the cooking shows my family watches, logging my calories, and working out, it sometimes seems like I'm obsessed with food and working it off. I want to get to a weight that makes me happy and comfortable and then find a fitness activity or two that really motivate me and that I enjoy, and just work on those.
I love the idea of maintaining my weight. I'm not there yet and won't be for a few months, but I look forward to a time when I want to be and just...improving where I am. I have goals of weight lifting not just to build calorie-burning muscle, but to increase my strength. For now everything's in the service of weight loss and a little bit of strength/cardio conditioning, but I want to bump it up once I achieve the size and move up to training like an athlete.
Lots of people getting in shape get involved in races, triathlons, sports, etc. I don't know if any of those are for me, but I'm keeping my eyes open for something that motivates me. Spinning classes twice a week for the rest of one's life is okay, but striving for something like the completion of a bike race or a victory in sports (maybe roller derby?) sounds more rewarding to me. I've always been unsure of and embarrassed by my body, so to even consider putting myself out there in highly physical activities is exciting and kind of scary. Getting in shape, getting a stronger, healthier body is really amazing. You just don't realize how much you gain by starting down this road until you've been on it a while.
No citizen has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training...what a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.
Socrates
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