Friday Fitness And Food Check In

The weekend is near, can you feel it? And it’s a long one which is twice as nice. I’m looking forward to some swimming with the kids and hopefully between the forecasted rain we’ll have a chance to splish splash a bit.

It’s been a productive few weeks in terms of refining my nutrition. Through a bit of trial and error I’m starting to figure out how to stay under my lower sodium goals as well as my new 1,800 calorie target. I’ll be honest, I thought it would be easier than it’s been. How hard could it be to shave 300 calories off my old 2,100 daily calories really?

Perhaps it wouldn’t have been as hard if I wasn’t also shooting for that lower sodium as well. I regularly found myself over 1,200 calories after lunch and with 3 more meals after that it didn’t bode well. I suppose it didn’t help that I’ve been trying to adjust the types of calories I consume at different times of the day either.

I’m always trying to change it up, what can I say?

Here’s an example of how my day went on Wednesday:

• Fage 2% plain greek yogurt, blueberries, 1/4 cup granola, espresso, raw sugar — 370 calories
• 25 raw almonds — 172 calories
• Full Strength chocolate shake — 300 calories
• Pre Protein bar, espresso, raw sugar — 232 calories
• 1/2 cup oatmeal, protein powder, 1 tbsp peanut butter — 370 calories
• Fage 2% blueberry greek yogurt — 180 calories

That’s a total of 1,624 calories which was a bit low. It also had too many yogurts, I like to only eat that once per day but I was really tired and didn’t want to hunt around the house for anything else.

You might have noticed that I had a shake for lunch, this is new as well. I’ve been rotating that in for lunch on the days I don’t have it for breakfast. That’s usually the day I don’t want to have the free lunch at work due to it not being healthy enough. Again I’m not a fan of having two fake meals in a row but on this day it worked out how it worked out.

The sodium put me again on the low side coming in around 900 mg of sodium. The RDA is 2,500 mg so this really needs to be upped to a more realistic and maintainable number.

Lets see how I fared on Thursday:

• Full Strength chocolate shake, 1 tbsp peanut butter, espresso, raw sugar — 432 calories
• 25 raw almonds — 172 calories
• Caesar salad, 2 tbsp dressing, string cheese, espresso, raw sugar — 527 calories
• Pre Protein bar — 200 calories
• Chicken breast, green peppers, onion, pita, bbq sauce, broccoli — 572 calories
• Banana — 90 calories

That brought me in at 1,994 calories with 2,677 mg sodium. Much closer on both counts though you likely noticed that lunch and dinner were kinda high in calories. I needed to cut the dressing back a bit and remove the croutons, but I’m not perfect … better next time.

Not all of my days were as solid as these two however. On Monday we went out to dinner and I went from being close to exploding my daily targets. I ate 2,700 calories (dinner was 1,600) of food that day and my sodium came in at just shy of 5,000 mg. Yes, my workout was awesome so my calories for the day were under 1,800 but that’s still ridiculous and shows how much work I have to do at making better choices.

On to a more positive note, workouts!

My workouts have been going great and have really been keeping it fun. Here are the workouts I’ve managed the past few weeks:

• Weight Lifting — 50 min
• Bicycling — 40 min
• Walking (with dogs) — 55 min
• Circuit Training — 50 min
• Running — 50 min
• Yardwork — 60 min
• Circuit Training — 60 min
• Running — 55 min
• Weight Lifting — 50 min
• Bicycling — 50 min

It’s really been fun and motivating to change it up for every workout. I know I need to get a bit more mileage in on the bike to prepare for my ride but I’m working to lose weight as much as I’m working to strengthen my legs.

Strength and a bit less mass should make it easier to get to the top of those hills. Well, that and the new 12/36 rear cassette I picked up for my bike but that’s another blog post.

• Stepping On The Scale Saturday
• A Fitness And Weight Loss Update
• Tuesday’s Scale Day on Thursday
• My First Weigh-In Post FitBloggin
• Weighing In On Time Tuesday