Friday, November 13, 2015

Hello, it's me....

Adele's new single, "Hello" seems quite appropriate for the title of this blog post.  How many times have I started and stopped on this weight-loss journey in the past few years?  It's well-documented here in my blog. 

What am I doing this time? Well, I'm participating in a 6 week challenge at a local gym.  The premise of the challenge is this: they give you all the tools you need to lose 20 pounds, and you pay them $600 up front, but if you lose at least 20 lbs, you get your money back.  In addition to following the meal plan, you must commit to working out 30 times in those 6 weeks (or 5 days a week).  They prefer that you do the workouts at their facility with their certified trainers, but you may ask permission to do at-home workouts if you must.  The class times are more than convenient as they run every half hour starting at 5:30 am until 9:30 am and then start up again at 3:00 pm, and run every hour until the last one at 8:00 pm.

The meal plan is simple enough to follow.  They say it's important to eat the food in the order that's given!

Breakfast: egg whites, spinach, and oatmeal
Snack: Isopure with strawberries and raspberries
Lunch: Either chicken or turkey with a sweet potato and either broccoli, cauliflower or Brussels sprouts
Snack: Isopure with strawberries and raspberries
Dinner: Either white fish or chicken with a salad made with Romaine lettuce along with up to 2 cups of a veggie such as celery, cucumber, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, or spinach

In addition to the meal plan and the workouts, they want you to do 30 minutes of ESC (empty stomach cardio).  Squeezing in the ESC has been, remarkably, one of the more challenging aspects of this routine.  As it is, I am attending the 5:30 am workout class.  Ideally, they want you to do the ESC before breakfast.  Also, ideally, they want you to eat breakfast before the workout class.  That means, I have to wake up at 4:10 am, do my ESC, prepare and eat breakfast by 5:00, so I can be out the door and at class by 5:30.  Needless to say, I have been saving my ESC for after work, before dinner.  It's not perfect, but it works for me.  When I can, I do the ESC when I wake up.

I'm two weeks into this program, and I'm officially down 5 lbs.  Tomorrow is our second official weigh-in, and if my scale at home is any indication, I'm down about another 4 pounds, for a total loss of 9 lbs.  I will post results tomorrow. Fingers crosses until then.

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