Weigh Too Much

Yesterday was my third day with Julie (my trainer).

I see her twice a week, on Monday and Wednesday. I get to the gym and am changed and ready by about 5:30, typically. So I get on the treadmill and walk at a '3' on it until 6:15, which is my time with her. When I don't go to the gym, I've started meeting a friend of mine who lives down the road from my work (she of the snake incident) and we walk a local park, which takes us about 45 minutes. On the weekends, I've been doing my treadmill at home at about a '2.7' for a half-hour (my home treadmill seems to be faster than the ones at the gym). With Julie, we do the weight machines, free weights, and 'abs' (which are terrible and I hate them *so much*.) Last night she introduced the recumbent bike, and wants me to do 20 minutes of that on gym days, so she said to warm up on the treadmill for 5 minutes, go to the bike for ten minutes, keeping my pace in the 70-80's range, to get my breathing and heart rate up, break back to the treadmill and then back to the bike for another ten minutes. *Amber falls over dead at the thought* The bike was *hard*. Of course, I actually *have* a recumbent bike at home. It's not as fancy as the ones at the gym, but my plan is to bike on it on my non-gym days, in addition to the park walking/treadmill, and therefore get better at it faster.

I've given up soda entirely, today is day three without any soda. So far, no deaths have occurred. She's given me a checklist of daily food. It breaks it down into how many servings of each 'category' of food you can have, as opposed to telling you you can only eat a, b and c. It comes along with a sheet telling you how much of each 'category' makes up a serving (but I forgot to bring that, so I can't scan it for you.) Tuesday and Wednesday I ate a salad for lunch (1 cup lettuce, 1/2 cup carrots, 1/2 cup cucumber, 1 oz. low fat cheese, 1/2 cup avocado and 1 tbsp dressing), had my usual banana for breakfast, and a 1/2 cup of dates for a 'snack' around 3 pm. Despite my whining on Monday night when she gave me my new food guidelines, I did not starve, and in fact was not hungry all day. The only reason I ate the dates was I didn't want to get hungry later on, and I'm trying to space out my food intake. Dinner was whatever was cooked, I just measured/weighed out my portions and ate only that. And again, I wasn't *hungry*. I didn't feel the need to have a snack later in the evening. So. That's how the food thing is going. Exercise is going well too. I'm keeping up with my plan, and when we were discussing it last night, Julie says she's proud of what I've been doing.

She has me sitting up straight from my chair at work, not leaning back against the back of the chair. She wants me to get up and walk a little every half hour. I haven't been doing that, but rather, every time I print something (which is quite often) I get up immediately to get it, rather than building up a pile at the printer and then going to get it. Julie says that works too. :)

I'm including a copy of my checklist so ya'll can see it.


It likely doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense without the sheet to tell you how much a serving is, but this just shows you how many servings I'm allowed to have. The one thing that pains me (okay, not the *one* - I miss dairy. Not in like, a physical way, but I *love* cottage cheese, and I'm not allowed to sit down and eat a little tub of it anymore. *pouts*) is the meat. Only a 1/4 lb. of meat per day. *weeps* So I can't have meat in my salads! But the avocado makes a good substitute, and possibly nuts. But I haven't tried that yet. Today I have a sandwich for lunch. Peanut butter. Yum. (No, no jelly. I like Peanut butter sandwiches.)

eta: Julie's goal is for me to loose at least two pounds a week. Monday was the first day she weighed me (and God, was that ever *painful* - I'm not telling ya'll how much I weigh, suffice it to say, it's a *lot*. Like....a *lot*. You know those people on Biggest Loser? Yeah, like in that category of 'a lot'.), so next Monday we'll weigh me again and see.