Day Nine

I have given myself a little homework assignment.

I know that, for myself, I feel inundated with different articles, usually pessimistic, talking about America's obesity issues, BMIs, diabetes this, toxic fat that, and on and on.  But I got to wondering if I really know what all these "experts" are talking about.

So, I decided to start with something basic, simple.  The good old BMI:  Body Mass Index.  I figured I could breeze through this and write up a little something for tonight, but I don't think so.  I ended up finding an article talking about BMI on Wikipedia (one of my favorite places to visit on the web), and then I ended up finding an article on body fat percentage (I'm sure I have stock in that company), and an even more interesting topic, about female body shape types.  After printing off somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 pages or so of information, I have decided that I will read tonight, absorb, and tell you all about BMI tomorrow.  You know you're going to have a hard time sleeping tonight, waiting for my little report tomorrow, aren't you?  Kind of like Christmas Eve....

Other than that, it was a pretty ok day.  There weren't fireworks, I didn't feel like I grabbed BFL by the goodies, but I stuck with it, even though I didn't feel like a bodybuilder or an Olympic runner.  Part of that was seeing myself running at my job (working with kids).  There is a large room we can take the kids into, basically a large workout room, complete with lots of full-length mirrors, and seeing myself in motion made me realize I still look like a rabid water buffalo when I run.  But, I have to remind myself, it took me a long time to get this big, and (sadly) I am not going to drop 25 pounds in a week and look markedly different.  Not yet, anway. 

I had a hard time getting out of bed at 5:30am this morning (go figure), and so my Aerobics Solution got postponed until lunchtime, about 12:45pm.  I had waited two and a half hours before working out, so that my fat stores would be burned up after my workout, rather than the food still sitting in my stomach, and waited for an hour after working out, so that the feast on fat globules could continue (all as recommended the Body-for-LIFE book).  But by then, about four hours had gone by since I had last eaten my midmorning snack of an apple and two one-ounce low fat string cheese sticks.  I was so hungry I was beyond rational thought, so I ate way too much...soup.  Yes, tie me up and beat me, I had a doubly whammy of soup.  Oh well.  If you want to really get aggravated at me, I'll just tell you that this afternoon, in a rush, I grabbed the whole milk rather than the skim to add to my cup of coffee (hey, I was sluggish, so sue me!).  But the funny this was, I analyzed myself much more for the whole milk slip up than for the soup.  Was I trying to sabotage myself?  Tell me, fraulein, about your mother?

I ran on the treadmill today--a first in a looooong time.  Turns out that running your butt off on one of those suckers burns more calories and covers more distance than when you do the nice soft treading-on-marshmallows dance on the elliptical (and I do love that dance).   Hmmph, now that I know that, I think I'm going to have to keep up with the treadmill more than the elliptical.  I started at a fairly brisk walking stride of 3 mph, then increased by .5 up until I was burning shoe rubber at a whopping 5.5 mph.  It did feel good to know that I could run that fast--to me, that's fast, I mean!

Still feeling pretty good mentally about BFL.  I know this isn't a fast results kind of game plan that I'm on.  I am beginning to realize that 12 weeks on this program will yield results, of that I am sure, but I'm quite possibly going to need to continue removing weight and eating less in order to do that for more than just 12 weeks.  This program talks about weight removal rather than weight loss, since that sounds more like you misplaced your car keys and can find and pick them up again at any time.  I find I like the idea of weight removal--sounds serious, doesn't it?  Sort of like a surgical procedure.  But anyhoo, after weight removal comes the idea of weight management, and I think it is quite likely that weight management is a bit away on the horizon.  But, alas, I just need to stay in today.  I have no idea what tomorrow brings, let alone what 12 weeks of tomorrows will bring, so I just need to stay in now. 

I've got an Upper Body Workout tomorrow with my name on it, and I better get ready for bed.  I'm glad I stuck with BFL today, in spite of my head feeling ho-hum about it, and I will do it again tomorrow!  See you then!