So, for Christmas, my FMIL (future mother in law) gave me a $50 gift card to Best Buy. I was like "huh, what can I do with this?" because I don't generally buy anything there, and we already have all the electronics we could need. Then, shortly after my 30th birthday, something (the fat pouch) inspired me to start losing weight - finally - and I began to come up with a plan. I thought about going back to Weight Watchers, but they've changed their program so much and it's very, very expensive these days. I checked it out and even though it would have been pretty easy to re-learn the new system, I wasn't interested in paying for it, so I ended up going back to SparkPeople.
SparkPeople is a website that offers nutrition, fitness, and other trackers. They now have an app for your smartphone, too! All I have to do is put in the foods I eat, and it will calculate it for me. Almost every single food you can think of is in their database, or you can enter it manually. To begin, you put in your weight, height, age, activity level, etc. and it tells you how many calories you can have per day, without exercising, to lose weight. Then it says you should exercise, and encourages 30 min/day, 3x/week. My numbers are pretty easy to follow: 1330-1660 calories/day, exercise 7 days/week to burn 299 calories every day, and drink 8+ glasses of water per day.
It's been a bit rough getting my calories in order, because I went from eating less than 1,000 calories a day to eating over 2,000 - thanks to working out and actually feeling hunger! Silly brain, always going to one extreme or the other! Anyway, it took about 10 days but I am mostly able to keep my calories close to 1660. I'm hovering around 1800, but I also burn anywhere from 310-490 calories per day.
...and that's where the Best Buy gift card comes in! I started SparkPeople and didn't plan on exercising at all, just hoped that eating the right amount of calories would work (yeah, cuz it worked so well in the past...?). Poke and I had left 4L at his Nana's house, and were running some errands when I remembered the gift card and suggested we go look to see what they had. Originally I thought maybe I'd get a tablet or a TV, but even the smallest, cheapest tablets/TVs were well over $100 (I was willing to pay half). We wandered around, checked out the GPS area, car stereos, and ended up by the video game systems. YAY! I thought maybe I'd get a few Wii games, and then it caught my eye - the Wii Fit Plus. It was on sale, and with the gift card I ended up getting it for like $15. YAY! It took a couple days to charge my batteries and get motivated, but I finally hopped on two days later.
At first, I was like "What. The. Fuck." because it was really weird to be standing on this balance board and moving the character on screen in all these strange games. The little guy talked me through the process, doing a body test and introducing me to all the features. I've been doing it for 16 calendar days now, 14 actual days (I take Tuesdays off), and I'm getting pretty good at most of the games. It even includes Yoga and Strength Training, which at first I could not do and actually sobbed after trying. These days I can do most of the Yoga and some of the Strength Training, and allegedly it will get easier as I go on.
The problem is, even though I've been working out steadily for two weeks, I haven't lost any weight. I don't think I've lost any inches either because my jeans actually feel tighter! I don't understand what is going on. For the first time in my life I'm drinking plenty of water (36-44oz/day or more) and getting regular exercise, as well as burning way, way more calories than I take in. My BMR is 2329 + 310 burned cals/average and subtract 1800 cals/eaten from that = 819 cals/differential. They say to cut out 500/day to lose a pound a week... So why am I not losing any weight?!
I'm hoping that it's just a matter of getting things going, and sometime in the next week or so I'll start to see some results. It'd be nice if I could just see something - even if my jeans just felt better.
No comments:
Post a Comment