June, 2007

STARTING OVER. AGAIN.
I'm sitting here in my lovely apartment after a 40 minute treadmill workout feeling pretty good: proud, capable and confident! It's been a loooong time since I've done anything decent with my health, and I have been paying the price with all the predictable effects - the weight gain, bad complexion, poor fitness level, lowered energy, not-very-happy-mood, low self esteem, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. But last week I was ready to get back on the wagon, so up I hopped. I have lost about 8 lbs (the first week is always mostly water), and today I started working out.

PROGRAM AND GOALS

Fitness
To get me back into the gym, I found a personal trainer. Today was my first meeting with her. She recorded my BMI, measurements and starting weight. I have to get a doctor's release before we truly begin to work out, but she wants me to do 40 minutes on the treadmill at only 2.5 mph, 0 incline, 5 days a week. As my cardiovascular fitness improves we'll increase the speed and incline level. Eventually we'll add weights and do a 30-minute circuit training type of workout (ugh). I can only afford her once a week right now, but that's all right.

Weight
My initial weight goal is to lose about 30 lbs in three months. My overall goal is to reach 160 lbs by the time I earn my doctorate in 2009.


FOOD
Although my goal is to eat a "high raw" (not all raw) diet, I am starting out cautiously. Last time I started raw I jumped in with both feet and lost 25 lbs in one month, and about 1/4 of my hair. I want to lose weight quickly, but not with that kind of side effect! I'm still growing my hair back and it looks better, one year later. I stopped wearing a wig last month- scary move, but a happy occasion.

My previous raw diet was very low in protein so this time around I plan to ensure that I get enough of it. Since I love nigiri sushi, I will be getting some of my protein raw. These past two weeks I've been having a fruit smoothie with protein powder every morning, low-fat vegetable or vegetable/bean soups for lunch, and then salads with some sort of cheese for dinner. For a snack I eat raw cashews and almonds. My trainer wants me to stop eating cheese and nuts, and to not do protein supplements. She recommends I eat oatmeal, egg whites and brown rice, all of which I am willing to do for a little while as I establish myself in this new health routine. She knows I am avoiding all red meats and fowl but I didn't go into the whole future raw thing with her- I'll do that later!

Now, I'm not sure if I like what my trainer is having me do for food: she uses the volume method for determining portion sizes rather than counting calories or food values. I mean, how do you determine an index finger's worth of olive oil? She admits that this is "ambiguous" but wants me to try it out before I completely reject it. We'll see how it goes but I am already not overjoyed with the foods or the portion-control method.

HOW TODAY WENT

I am SO out of shape it is pitiful. She did a stress test on me and wanted me to stop when my heart rate went back down to 119, but it never went below 130! My resting pulse was 80. She set me up to do 40 minutes on the treadmill at 2.5 mph. When she left, I experimented with raising the incline to .5 and then 1, and raising the speed to 2.7 - just little changes to see how my heart rate was affected. She wants me to stay between 117 and 144 beats per minute and I did that, but overall I only achieved 1.75 miles in 41 minutes. I'm very impatient and want to go faster than that, but I know I have to start slowly. The good thing is that I can only get better, and it'll be fun seeing the improvement. My arms and my neck are a little sore, and I'm sure my legs will be sore tomorrow, but my iPod will help to distract me from pain when I work out tomorrow.

Well that's it for today. I'm about to see what I can eat for dinner! A fist-sized portion of something...