12 lbs in 12 weeks (Week 2)

Well, today is Monday and that means I had my weigh-in this morning.  The news was good: I lost 2 lbs from last week and so I’m down to 166.5 lbs.  Here’s a plot of my actual weight compared to my weekly goal weight:



I think I’m still eating too much.  They say that you should eat slowly, and stop when your body tells you it has had enough.  My tendency is to fill my plate with food, and then eat whatever is on my plate.  I’m good in the sense that I haven’t been going back for seconds, but bad in that I often take more food than I really need.

In the evenings, I have a light meal.  I know that on some days, my meal isn’t really light enough.  (Hey, I love to eat, what can I say…)  Note that you only need food to supply the energy you need to get through the day, so it’s smarter to front-load your meals: a larger mid-day meal, and a smaller evening meal.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have a large meal at the end of the day, since the day is almost over.  I think my eating habits have improved but I know I can do better.  (If it were otherwise, then I wouldn’t be writing this post!)

I was good about hitting the gym.  I think I only missed one day (and that was because I had to work late).  I sometimes dread going, and can think of a thousand reasons not to go.  But you know what?  After I go for a workout, I’m always glad I went.

At the gym I have a loose schedule of activities: 20 min. of stair-stepper, 20 min. of treadmill, and about 20 min. of weights.  I’ve been doing chest and shoulders on one day and arms on the next.  I begin the strength training part of my routine with crunches and push-ups.  The past week I managed about 10-12 push-ups per day.  (I’d like to be able to do one extra push-up per week.  At the end of this sojourn I’d like to be able to do 25 push-ups.)