Pulling up after a steep dive

It's usually one of the more climactic moments in a movie.  The plane, for whatever reason, has taken a nose dive.  The pilot (or a stalwart passenger or staff member after the pilot is shot) grabs the stick and tries to pull up. As the ground zooms ever nearer, bringing certain doom, the would be pilot wrests the stick back as far as possible, forestalling an imminent disaster.

My weekend was like that.

It started Friday, going to lunch with friends from work.  I stuck to the "Garden Bar" as it is branded at Ruby Tuesday, and heaped on the veggies, added a small pinch of ham, and topped it off with about a tablespoon of a raspberry vinaigrette.  That wasn't bad, but I found myself very hungry a few hours later.

Let's just say that there was an incident in the break room, and it involved a couple of sweet rolls.  Bad Andrew. Bad Andrew

Dinner on Friday wasn't horrible, but wasn't great, either.  The family was having pork tenderloin and a choice of starches, so I opted for pork tenderloin and salad.  It was SOOOO tasty! I should have stuck to one serving of the pork. Or two...

Saturday was crazy, with the day spent at the individual sections wrestling meet, hosted at our local high school.  Then, for dinner, I had Mrs. F pick up some Papa Murphy's pizzas.  I kept myself to three pieces--far better than before, but still not great.

Then there was Sunday, meeting Mrs. F's cousin and her family at one of my all time favorite places, Davanni's.  Their Chicago style deep dish pizza is amazing.  Two slices there (almost 650 calories), and then two slices of their traditional crust.  Bad Andrew, once again.

I did finish up week one of the 100 pushup challenge over the weekend, and I spent some extra time on the treadmill during family movie night on Sunday evening.  Still, I was pretty sure I blew this weigh in.

This morning, I left for work extra early because we had snow moving in.  That gave me time to squeeze in some stairs (12 flights each way) before needing to weigh in.  Thankfully, all that movement prompted my GI system to help me rid myself of a bit of extra weight.

The end result? I lost 1.5 lbs. this week.  I'll take it! I certainly missed my 2+ lb. goal, but I didn't go back up, either.  Had I not let myself slide so much going into the weekend,  I'm pretty sure I could have had another massive week (around 5?). Oh, well! We'll have to see what happens this week.

I'm still standing at my desk, and I quite like it.  Unfortunately, I'm sitting in a class all week, so am getting neither my standing time, nor my daily laps.  I'll just watch my calories and keep moving.  I'm excited that I'm still making progress.  To date, I've lost 4% of my body weight in the BWL contest. 

I managed to pull up.  It wasn't too late.

Happy Thursday

Last night, I completed my second 100 Pushups workout.  Since I had trouble completing the first full day, however, I decided to modify my plan a bit.  Instead of starting with my on-the-floor pushups, I'm going to run through the program once doing them on an angle.  Then, after finishing the program that way, I'll go back and do it closer to the ground or on the ground.  Doing that, I finished my workout with 25 repetitions on the final set, placing my total for the workout at 63.

I'm still doing fine on my calorie counting, and on my daytime activity level.  This was my second day standing at work.  My feet are a tad sore, but not bad at all.  I can already see and feel the first bits of difference, specially around my face and the overall bulge of my gut.  I'm really hopeful that this time I'll be able to maintain my progress for the long term, and that I'll be able to sink to new lows on the scale.

Not a bad weekend

Well, I didn't restart C25K, but I did get some time in on the treadmill--a bit of walking at 4.5 mph and a bit of running at 6 mph (with the last 30 seconds at 7).  I did, however, get through day one of the 100 pushup challenge on Sunday, however, though I couldn't finish the final set.  Later today, I'll either move on to day two, or repeat day one.

My blood sugar dropped low enough yesterday that I got shaky, and it's the first time that has happened in a long time.  If I can keep my activity level up, I might be able to back off my medications again (which had increased over the past two years).

Keeping under my calorie goals for each day has been a bit easier than I expected.  Even with the extra sugar I had to consume yesterday (when I bottomed out), I still was just below my goal (net, accounting for the exercise).

Okay, so it was a good weekend.  Now I hope I'll have a similarly good week.  I already have one set of laps through the halls and the stairs done for today.

Weigh-in is tomorrow.  I'm interested to see what the scale reveals.

Twelve pushups

Things have been a bit busy and crazy here at work, so I've not been able to jump back into things as quickly as I've hoped.  The good news, however, is that I've adjusted to caloric restrictions again. For the past three days, I've managed to limit my daily calories, keeping my daily net intake at or below 1,579 calories.

     "Our estimate is that you may consume about 1,579 calories a day to lose 2.7 pounds per week."
     (From LiveStrong.com's My Daily Plate tool)

I think I'm off to a good start on that end.

Well, the last time I started the One Hundred Pushups Challenge, I completed only six pushups during my pre-test.  The number you can do during that test determines where you start in the program.  What surprised me last night was that I actually did twelve (12)! That means some of the strength gains I made during that aborted attempt are still at play.  I was really surprised!

Fridays are my longest days at work now, so I won't likely be weighing in on Fridays any longer.  Since the Biggest Workplace Loser (BWL) contest here is holding weigh-ins on Tuesdays, I'm going to post those results as they come in.  Other than that, I'm going to try to avoid the scale (since weight fluctuates so much from day to day).

Anyway, I need to run (literally and figuratively)!