Friday, June 06, 2008

What I'm Eating Lately

Last month I did a SparkPeople challenge in my Calorie Cycling team that really got me focused on what I eat every day. We were assigned to teams and we got points for certain foods and activities and at the end of each week the team members' points were added up and one team won. My team won every week. Awesome.

Some of the women on my team impressed me so much. Every day they were dedicated to eating what they needed to eat and exercising (sometimes exercising insane amounts). At the end of the challenge I was finally getting on a good path, food-wise, and the scale reflected that. I broke the plateau I've been at for, well, forever.

This week I have made a big effort to act like I was still in the challenge. In fact I even made little goals to check off every day on my SparkPeople site that make me accountable to myself (Plus, I get a little point every time I check one of the boxes. Yay, points!). Every day this week the scale has inched down a little bit.

So here are my daily food goals:
3 servings of fruit
5 servings of vegetables
3 servings of whole grains
At least 25 grams of fiber
Less than 2300 mg of sodium

My calorie cycle looks like this:
1500, 1800, 1600, 2200, 1500, 2200, 1800
Not necessarily in that order, but attempting to cycle from high one day to low the next day with the high calorie days being the days I work out the most. FYI, 2200 calories is a LOT of food, especially when you're keeping the sodium down and eating more produce. Those are the days I find myself going through the fridge in the evening wondering what to eat next. And yet the scale still goes down. It's kind of amazing.

I've exercised every day this week except Sunday (and I'll be going swimming tomorrow morning). I'm doing HIIT elliptical, swimming and pilates. Oh, and walking about a half hour every day down and up the big hill in between work and home. I actually think I'm already breathing less heavily on my trek up the hill. I might be wrong, but I like the delusion.

So wait. You're saying I have to eat really healthy and work out in order to lose weight? Amazing!

2 comments:

N.F. said...

How are you liking Spark People? I have an account with them also, but haven't been too impressed with them...not sure what I'm needing - or what they aren't giving me. I know I need something, since I've stalled out at 56 pounds and have plateaued for months.

Sounds like you are doing great! Congrats!

Kelly said...

Well, I actually really like Spark People, but I don't use their food plan. I also don't use their calorie range because I'm doing calorie cycling and the range for that is much broader.

The reason why I like SparkPeople is because it's free and easy to use for logging my food and exercise. I also think they have some interesting articles and I like getting involved with the teams sometimes.

Basically for eating, I do the things I noted in this post, eat lean protein, severely limit refined sugar and carbs, and I also stopped drinking diet soda except for once a week or once every couple of weeks. When I initially stopped I had a two-month soda hiatus. I keep track of my food, trying to hit my calorie cycle for the day and my specific food goals. It's too hard to follow someone else's food plan since it's not often stuff I would normally make.