Greenellow

I learned a new word yesterday, portmanteau, which is a type of luggage with two separate sections.  Over time, however, it has a developed a secondary meaning.  It is the description used for a word that combines the sounds and meanings of two different words.  In other words, it's a blended word such as smog (smoke + fog) or my favorite word of late hangry (hungry + angry).

Today, I'm using a portmanteau word that I just made up: greenellow (green + yellow), which is the score I gave myself yesterday.  In truth, I told myself when I started my scoring system that I wasn't going to allow myself to be wishy washy like this. I need to fairly and accurately assess my day and there shouldn't be a middle ground; I either met all my goals for the day (green) or I fell short some how.  But, I decided that yesterday was one of those days where I wasn't going to be so hard on myself.

Here are my stats:

11,135 steps
1240 calories
53 minutes cardio and body weight exercises, specifically Jillian Michaels' Bansish Fat, Boost Metabolism workout DVD

As you can see, I fell short of my 12,000 step goal. If I had taken another 865 steps, it would have been a green day, easily.  At 10:00 pm last night, I contemplated walking around my house for another 1000 steps, but that just didn't seem true to my efforts.  In all other respects yesterday, I did well.  I made good food choices, I worked out even though I really didn't want to, and I drank plenty of water.

My Jawbone UP tells me that at one point yesterday, I was idle for a stretch of 1 hour and 59 minutes.  It also tells me that even if I exercise regularly, long periods of idleness can be detrimental to my overall health.  So, today I am going to redouble my efforts to be less sedentary at work. It shouldn't be that hard for me to get up a few more times during my day and walk around.

Salad Day

Last year, the human resources department at my work started an initiative called "Let's Get Healthy Together!"  One thing, among many, that we do is a once-a-month salad day.  The idea is that anyone who wants to participate contributes a healthy item for a salad bar.   We are encouraged to bring our own re-usable plates and silverware to cut down on wasting paper products, too.

Today was our January salad day.  Shortly before going down to the employee lounge to make may salad, I happened to hit on an article that listed 29 fat burning vegetables.  While creating my salad today, I made a conscious choice to choose as many fat burning foods from that list as I could.  I was able to choose beets, celery, beans, broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, and green peppers.  I skipped the feta cheese, which I usually love to pile on top.

As I said before, baby steps... it's all about making healthy choices each and every time.

Green Day

After being in the "yellow" for two days straight, I managed to score a "green" day.  Here are the stats from yesterday:

I took 12, 174 steps, according to my Up.  I logged 1267 calories, and I worked out for 42 minutes on the elliptical and did strength moves for just under 20 minutes.

One week check in

So, it may not be obvious from the lack of writing around here, but last week, starting on Monday, January 5, 2015, I eased back into a routine.  It makes me very sad to see how far I've gone in the opposite direction of being healthy... I was reading some of the posts about doing P90X back in June of 2011.  I am so far from that healthy person, it's depressing.

For now, however, I've resolved to move more and eat less. To accomplish this resolution, here is my plan.  It's very basic, but I need to start somewhere.wee

Goal 1: 12,000 steps daily (no excuses)
Goal 2: Track all food/calories
     sub goal: to eat 1300 calories or less
     sub goal: eat out less and make better choices
Goal 3: 40 minutes of cardio and 20 minutes of strength training
Goal 4: drink 128 oz of water

I am keeping track of my progress on a simple chart that I hung in my bathroom.  I developed a color coded "accountability" system to rate how well I did each day - again, very basic, but I'm a visual person, and I want to be able to see, at a glance, how I'm doing.

Green: accomplished all goals

Red: failed to reach at least 10,000 steps or failed to work out for at least 30 minutes or ate more than 1450 calories.  Bottom line: if I fail to move or eat right, I will give myself a red.

Yellow: falls somewhere in between.  Example 1: If I accomplish my workout but fall short of 12,000 steps, I'll grade myself a yellow.  Example 2: If I workout and reach at least 10,000 steps but eat more than 1300 calories, I will grade myself a yellow.

Since I started using my color coded system I have had 3 yellow days and 5 green days.

Diving back in without comment

I started to write a post about where I've been for the last (gasp!) three plus years, but after struggling with what to write and feeling like everything I was writing sounded like excuse, after excuse, I decided to just dive back in to writing.  I may get around to posting about my whereabouts, but it is not really all that exciting.  I suppose I can sum of the last 3 years like so: I went back to work full time.  We moved. I got older. I gained weight.

Keep going

Woke up extremely sore this morning from yesterday's workout. Not surprised, but I think I did something to my right elbow. I iced it this morning and will keep an eye on it.

I did okay with my eating yesterday. I ate too much rice with my chicken, and I "cheated" once. I was scooping ice cream for the kids, and I snuck two spoonfuls of ice cream. I have absolutely no will power... I really tried to talk myself out of eating the ice cream, but I could not...at least I was able to limit my cheat.

So far today, I've been on track with my eating. Tonight we are headed to a local political event, so I am preparing myself to make good choices with whatever is served tonight at dinner.

I also got in an hour of cardio. I had to split it up into two half hour sessions because I did not have a solid hour available, but I think it worked out fine. According to my heart rate monitor, I burned a total of 603 calories, so I'm not complaining.

That's all the time I have for an update.

Two week challenge

I am on a mission of "clean living" for the next two weeks to jump start my most recent attempt to exercise and eat right. I've been around for the last several months, I was actually doing pretty well from October through mid-January. I'm going to attempt to keep track of my progress over the next two weeks!

Today, I got a great strenght workout in, and so far my eating has been on track.