Counting Calories - Week 5 Progress

This counting calories thing appears to be working, thanks to the Livestrong.com web site.

A few days ago I broke the 260lb barrier. Unfortunately, I did put 1 or 2 lbs back on thanks to a yummy pot luck lunch at work, but I expect that after this weekend, they will be gone and I will be below 260lbs.

This makes me very happy.

My goal is set at 2000 calories per day. With the exception of two days that I hit nearly 3000 calories (last Sunday, before I started tracking, and Thursday's pot luck lunch), I'm averaging 1450 calories per day, after my workout burned calories are subtracted. Even without the workouts, the average would be below 2000. Knowing that makes it tempting to skip a workout every once in a while. I have to convince myself that if I do that, then it'll get easier and easier to skip.

One thing that is extremely difficult to keep low is my sodium intake. It's almost always over the recommended daily intake. It's crazy. I have to try and keep a closer watch on that.

My workouts are up to around 30 mins long and are supposedly burning off anywhere between 350 and 400 calories per day, according to Your Shape Fitness Evolved. That's more than double than when I started and it's my plan to keep doing that much as a minimum.

My left hip joint is giving me a bit of trouble. It's bothering me for a couple of years now. It feels like it's grinding or needs to pop. It hurts when I stand for a long time or do a lot of walking, but I can really feel it when I work out and have to kick with my left leg.

Anyway, that's the update for this week.

Fitness hell - Week 4 progress

My suspicion from last week was correct. I have to start keeping a close watch on what I eat.

I weighed myself this morning and was disappointed to see that I gained a few pounds back. It's not like I went crazy with eating, but clearly whatever I ate was really bad for me.

Ugh. Too good to be true. :)

And to top it all off, I burned more calories this past week than the 3 weeks prior: just over 1600. I hate to think of how it would be if I hadn't.

On the plus side, it's looking really good for beating my 2000 cal in 14 day goal that I set for myself; 5 days and 274 cal to go!

I'm really enjoying the cardio boxing routines. That's part of the reason for the increase in calorie burns. It makes for a great warm up.

The Your Shape FE web site is still not fully functional, and it's been at least 2 weeks since I've been able to access their support forums. For some reason I get an error when I try to log into them. There are others with the same problem. At first, the reps in their Facebook page seemed concerned and were passing along info to their support people, but now our pleas appear to go ignored... and the problem still exists.

The leaderboard stats are a little f'd up too. For example, it has me listed twice. The "female" one is not the correct one, obviously. :)

Listed_twice

That was yesterday, but it's still listing me twice today.

There have also been some questions about when they're going to post "events" on their web site that we can participate in. No replies to those questions either.

It's annoying when a product is released with virtually no support to back it up.

Here's my current rank:

Leaderboard

Kinect & Your Shape FE - Week 3 progress

Since the last update, I discovered that I had entered my weight incorrectly into Your Shape FE when I did the fitness test. I fixed it, and it didn't seem to change the recommended workouts. However, since my weight was incorrect, it miscalculated the calorie burn. Heavier people burn calories faster. Based on the number of calories burned at my correct weight, I estimate it is around 360-400 calories short. Not a big deal though.

After completing the 12 easyier sessions, I went in search of something different. I learned the the Cardio programs will change daily, which makes it a whole lot more interesting. Plus, they appear to be broken down into two or three routines per session, which lets me decide how many sessions I want to do per day. I upped my workouts to burn around 200 per workout. That lasted until the weekend.

I had a little setback (err... night out) on Saturday. I didn't go crazy, but it definitely wasn't part of my fitness agenda. :) Good food. Cold beer. Fun times.

So, on Sunday I was wiped. Not hungover, just tired. I did try to workout in the evening but after a few routines, I was so winded it scared me a little. I had to call it quits.

At least I tried, so the guilt was minimal.

This evening, I decided to re-do the fitness test with my correct weight set to see if anything would change. It didn't seem to affect the recommendations as far as I can see, but it feels better knowing that it's based on my correct weight.

I redid one of the easy sessions for this evening's workout, which is how I determined how much short the total calorie burn was with the incorrect weight. It went well, but it felt like a bigger workout than it was. I didn't feel as energetic. Either I was still in weekend recovery mode, or missing a workout really messed things up.

On to the weight loss for this week. There was none. In fact, I gained about ½ a pound. Should I be surprised? No. Oddly enough, I weighed myself on Friday and it had me about 3 lbs heavier, so in the end a ½ lb is good enough for me.

We'll see how this week goes, but I suspect I'll have to start taking a serious look at what I eat if I'm going to have any chance of achieving a 10lb per month loss. The Christmas holidays sure aren't going to help with that either.

My Shape

I'm sort of... round. :)

I've never been a big fan of working out. I don't particularly enjoy exercise unless its a byproduct of something fun. Cycling, for example, I do enjoy, although last summer I didn't do very much of that at all and I'm not sure why.

You would think that being on medication for high blood pressure and high cholesterol and being about 70lbs overweight would be enough to make me wake up. You would think that years ago when my doctor compared my health situation to a house that would fall apart in 5 or 6 years, it would wake me up.

You would think.

And it did, for about 2 years. My doctor was somewhat of a hard-ass, no bullshit kind of doctor. Some hated him. I hated him, at first, but then realized that he's just telling me like it is. I didn't want to hear the speech every 3 months when I saw him, so I did something about it. I lost 45 pounds back then, down to 240lbs. Then I had to switch doctors, for reasons beyond my control.

I put most of the weight back on.

On the plus side, I did quit smoking almost 2 years ago, but the weight remained between 260 and 270lbs.

This past fall, I had the opportunity to try something very cool: Xbox Kinect.

When the official release date arrived, we picked up a few games for it, one of which was Your Shape Fitness Evolved.

Perhaps my head isn't screwed on the right way, but the thought of earning Xbox achievements in exchange for burning calories appealed to me.

Yeh, you'd think that perhaps living a longer life would be more appealing.

Anyway, for whatever reason, this "game" has woken me up.

The first day I tried it, the "beginner" workout that it created for me after my assessment kicked my ass. I actually pulled my calf muscle. I had to put my workouts on hold for a few days to let my calf heal.

When I resumed, I tried morning workouts on a weekend and found that I didn't have the same energy as I did after work, so after work ended up being my chosen workout time of day. Since then, with the exception of a few days, I've been doing my beginner workout and the odd "gym game" or "cardio boxing" session on a daily basis. I try to burn at least 100 calories each time, which works out to somewhere between a 20 to 30 minute workout. It's not much, but it's 100 calories more than I was burning before, and I'm sure it's building muscle.

It really didn't take long before the workouts didn't make me feel like I was run over by a truck. I seem to be adjusting to them quickly, and that's a major plus for me.

In that time, I also bought a digital scale. Our old one was so inconsistent. I'm not 100% sure of what I weighed at the start, but if I estimate my starting weight at around 267lbs, I have now lost 3.8lbs since. That's 3.8lbs in under a month. And, I haven't made any significant changes to my eating habits -- yet.

I've never been to a health club or anything like that, so I can't really compare them with "Your Shape", but to me it does feel like I'm at one and I have my own virtual trainer who motivates me and tells me where and when I'm not keeping up with them, all in my own living room; and without feeling uncomfortable or awkward.

Another plus is seeing and tracking my progress in the game and on the Your Shape web site. Seeing really is believing. :) As of tonight, I have burned ~1400 calories in total and completed the beginner workout sessions.

This is a great start for me. The more I do it, the more I want to do it.

I highly recommend Kinect. If workouts aren't your thing, there are more game-like games available for it that are a lot of fun to play. My daughter really likes Dance Central, and Kinect Sports is my fav and can also give you quite a workout without even realizing it.

I'll keep posting the occasional update of my progress, so if you're interested keep checking back here.