So… dieting.
As stated before, I planned on a mini-fast over the weekend, to jump-start my calorie cutting beginning today and lasting at least through May. I was going to hold myself to only 500-600 calories a day.
Well… I ended up with at least double that each day. Saturday, I went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of fresh fruit and vegetables, some almonds, stuff like that, and figured I’d snack on those if I got hungry. And, I did. Um… a lot. I also had two whole wheat bagels, once with two teaspoons of blackberry jam. And I drank lots of water. I also didn’t run – too tired. I’ve forgotten how much dieting makes me tired. Ugh. But I’ve got to run… it’s the combination of exercise and calorie-cutting that reduces my weight. At any rate, at the end of the day, I’d eaten around 1550+ calories. I decided that was OK because it was still probably half of what I have been eating, and resolved to do better on Sunday.
Except I didn’t. Oh, I did great during the morning and early afternoon; but 3:00 or 4:00 I’d only had around 500 calories. But I got really hungry, and went for a walk, and found myself near Mike’s Drive-In… and convinced myself to have a bacon cheeseburger. No fries, and a diet to drink, but, still… I figured that if the cheeseburger was around 1000 calories, that means I only had about 1500 total for the day, which is what I had on Saturday…
Damn, cutting calories is hard. I’d feel a bit better if I’d managed to run at all this weekend. Or even walked further than 10-15 blocks. Oh, well, it’s a moving target.
Be that as it may, this morning I weighed myself: 201.5 lb. Now, granted, some of that might just be water weight (once your body starts burning fat you lose more water at first) but considering I’d managed to cut my intake by at least 3000 calories over the course of two days, and a gain or loss of 3500 calories equals one pound of body weight, some of that must be fat.
I’ll keep monitoring and only update the blog on this topic when it seems significant.
I think, for running this week, I’m going to try to do the schedule I posted for last week. Which is as follows:
- Monday: – Run 30 minutes
- Tuesday: – Run 40 minutes + strength training
- Wednesday: – Speedwork – 4 x 4:00 fast/2:00 slow
- Thursday: – Rest day + strength training
- Friday: – Run 35 minutes
- Saturday: – Run 60 minutes + strength training
- Sunday: – Rest day