Thursday, September 8, 2011

Sesame Teryaki, 2 miles, & Calorie Counting

I'm going ot go ahead and warn you... this is going to get a bit rambly!

I'm on week two, day 3 of the 5k Your Way plan at Sparkpeople, and I happily walked 2.3 miles today. I really felt like I could do a lot more. I took the day off yesterday, pretty much from all exercise. I wasn't feeling well (my stomach kept randomly hurting. Not nausea, just hurting.) so I was lethargic and icky.

I woke up late this morning... I had a really hard time getting up. I think it's as much because I didn't exercise yesterday as because I was sleepy.

Anyway, I just felt... good. All morning, I've felt good. While I was walking on the treadmill, my usual 3.0 mph setting just didn't feel fast enough... I kept outrunning it! so I turned it up a couple of notches. 3.2 felt better. Honestly, I wanted to go even faster than that, but I figured that hurting myself would just be kinda stupid.

So I listened to music, and clocked just a bit of 37 minutes, and though I didn't actually want to stop on the 2 mi marker, I did anyway. :) Did a little bit on one of the weight machines, but I wasn't feeling that.

It's funny how that works; the harder you work, the better you feel. I can tell such a big difference in my energy level and breathing from a month ago.

I think my biggest challenge on this weight loss thing is going to be FOOD. I'm a snacker. Yesterday I was borderline on my calorie limit (I hit the 1,900 top mark.) I would have been fine... but I had to have that ONE big cookie before bed. I also had a lot of fast food, something I very rarely do. One of my favorite things in the world is to get breakfast at Burger King or Waffle house.. but I discovered much to my dismay that my beloved sausage and cheese croissanwich has 420 calories! That's just insane. That got me off to a bad start, and a trip to the hospital (appointment, not emergency) resulte in a trip to McDOnalds... that lovely southern chicken sandwich? 400 by itself. We won't even talk about those stupid fries.

Sigh.

Today, I'm off to a much better start. Instead of a trip to BK, I had a bowl of Special K. I made some Simply Asia sesame teriyaki noodles, and they were so fantastic, and filling. Surprisingly light on calories, too; a third of a package (which is almost more than you can eat) is only 300 calories. I spiced it up with some fresh sauteed mushrooms and broccoli to give it some nutritional oomph. It was REALLY fantastic, and super easy to cook. I wanted more, but much to my pleasure, I didn't eat more than my allotted serving. :) It's nice to know that a low-cal meal can be so filling. I've noticed that a lot about asian foods... they pack a lot of punch in the full belly department, without sacrificing your calorie count for the day.

I did learn something about caloric intake/calorie burning that I didn't really have solidified in my head. See, I had it in my mind that you need to work out at least as much as you eat... basically, you burn it off by moving. I guess it's the whole "you have to walk X amount of minutes to burn off that muffin" crap you see on shows like the Drs (I hate that show). What I realized (and please, don't make fun of me, I'm new to all this) is that you do have a substantial resting caloric burn rate. The personal trainer at the gym told me that, and Sparkpeople's mobile app tells me my basal metabolic rate is 2,069. That's with no activity, just sitting on my buns like usual.

So I suddenly feel better about those numbers on the treadmill at the gym! All I could see was that it said "140 calories burned" and get discouraged that it was so few.

Now I get it!

So what all this rambly-ness means is that I can do this!

I know, this is probably the most boring post ever, but I wanted to get all this down for future reference.

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