I haven’t mentioned to many people that I’ve started a fitness program. Ok fine, it’s a “diet”, but I dislike the word, and not just because it doesn’t incorporate the fitness aspect, but because there’s a stigma attached to it. It’s weird how “fitness” sounds great in my head, but “diet” sounds like I’ve got a problem that I should be ashamed of.
I started out on the “Special K Diet”, which simply involves replacing two meals a day with bowls of Special K. Oddly enough, that works. I have since become more interested in what I’m eating and what energy I’m expending, and I signed up for Weight Watchers Online to start tracking these things. (There’s another name that sucks, “Weight Watchers”. They might as well call it “Fat Club”. There’s got to be a better name they could brand it as.)
Weight Watcher’s interface for tracking food intake isn’t too bad. It has a lot of commercial food that you can easily add, and it’s easy to drag things around to organize them. The date settings are a little weird, but in all, it’s not too bad. Their interface for exercise is poor, though.
I’ve been doing - although I hate to admit that I’m some kind of “joiner” - this ActiveTrainer workout on the treadmill, called the “Couch-to-5k Running Plan”. The idea is that if you train as they prescribe, you can go from my starting fitness level, ala “Couch Potato”, to running a comfortable 5k in 9 weeks. This isn’t racing, just ramping up to the ability to run 5k regularly without having to be chased by a mountain lion. And going to there from complete Potato status would be something, considering that I really do sit at my desk pretty much all day.
The Weight Watchers program fails to provide enough feedback for me, especially with the treadmill. I’d really like to combine both the Weight Watchers site with the ActiveTrainer site and add in some pretty graphs of my progress. I want to see a graph of calorie/fat/fiber intake along with a baseline for how much I should have, and I want to see daily distance, speed, and calorie burn from the treadmill. Also, both systems fail to account for incline on my treadmill, which is a big oversight in my book, being that if you’re doing this at a gym, you probably have access to a much fancier mill than I do, and even mine does it.
I don’t want to be premature announcing any milestones because I fear I’ll take any praise and quit. Really, the driving force behind this effort so far is simple that it amuses me, and I’ve been doing it for longer now than I’ve done any other self-organized program, which really isn’t saying much, but is still something.
According to the food tracking, I’m coming in reasonably under my daily limits for intake, and I’m also doing my workouts. As you might expect, I have lost some weight. How much I’ve lost seems too good to be true, so I’m hesitant to say until I’ve done more and really notice it.
I wasn’t really hungry when I started out with the Special K diet, and the Weight Watchers diet offers the ability to spread the calories from the evening meal out more during the day. Actually, I’ve been doing the Special K breakfast and lunch on most days, unless I get a craving, and then there are a few lean microwave lunches in the freezer to choose from. (Avoid today’s Lean Cuisine chop steak flatbread sandwich! It tastes like vomit!)
I do get hungry between cereal bowls sometimes, and so apples are good. Actually, I had to break out the oranges today, since I ran out of apples. Gonna have to get some more of those. Overall that’s not bad.
The couch-to-5k thing is pretty gruesome for someone who hasn’t tried a real jog for a while. Thankfully, I’m familiar with the feeling of burning in a new workout routine from my experience with organized sports. (Didn’t know I did that, did you?) I’m not quite at the point where I enjoy the jog, but I can see that point ahead and am looking forward to it.
I don’t know how to explain all this, really. It’s not a resolution. It’s not something I’m announcing because I want encouragement - at least not yet. And I’m certainly not turning this site into my fitness log. I just kind of fell into this activity, wondering if I could do it. It doesn’t feel good yet, but I know it will if I keep at it. I know that in a few months I could be a better physical version of myself, and that seems like a great idea. And it was exciting noticing this morning that I can run up and down the stairs a couple times without getting winded. If these milestones keep up, I’m very likely to see this thing through to a healthier overall lifestyle.
