Weeks 6 & 7

More than a third of the USA is obese. In 2010, 20%-29% of Pennsylvania are now obese.

Weekly Goals
Calories: 1500
Fat: 33-50
Exercise: 150

A better name for this post would be Portion Control...

I'm cruising right along with the program so far.  The biggest differences I've done was to following through with a lot of things I already know I should have been doing all along.  For instance, I know that restaurant portion sizes are large and loaded with more calories than if I cooked the same dish at home. Before the program, I'd eat the entire meal.  Now, I try to pack half the meal to go. It makes for a great dinner the next day too.  I knew that I should have been doing that all along, but I rarely ever did it.

One of the difficulties I've had in the last weeks 6 & 7 is cupcakes.  I had a cupcake tasting, a "share the cupcakes with the rest of the fam" day, leftover cupcakes from the family tasting, and a birthday party.  To get past this, I tried to keep a close eye on my portion size throughout the week to balance out my calorie intake.

So far, it seems to be working. I am now moving below my usual summer weight and into what I'd weight at the end of a good summer. It's been noticeable too because it's happened in such a short period of time.  When I cross under 190, I'll be into weights I seldom hit in a given year.  However, my weight had a slight plateau despite the increase in exercise minutes. I still lost weight, but it slowed down considerably. I dropped under 200 and consistently maintained it. In this program, 200 is a magic number. My calorie goals are going to drop in a week from now. On top of that, my exercise goals will keep increasing towards 300 minutes a week.

The key to meeting this new challenge will be portion control.  I see a few areas where I can be even more stingy about what I'm eating and things like cupcake weeks are going to be nearly impossible to do while still maintaining my goals without doing things like eating half of a cupcake (again, portion control).  The calorie levels (1200) won't be high enough to have a few low calorie days to compensate for the higher days.  I was upset about this at first, but now I'm starting to view it as a new challenge that I'll have to figure out how to overcome.


Weigh-in Weight: 193.8