Progress

I haven't posted in awhile, in part because I've been using all of the delicious recipes I've listed on this blog over and over again, and haven't come up with many new ones. However, I did change my diet a little. I heard that if you are trying to lose a lot of weight (almost 100 lbs total in my case), you should do it gradually, or else you might end up with some saggy skin issues. I definitely used that as an excuse to move into a brief "maintenance" phase after losing 40 pounds last year. From January through March I still ate pretty healthy, but maintained my weight rather than losing more. However, 3 months was just about enough of that; an excuse to eat normally can only last so long.

Starting in April one of my friends and I started a weigh loss competition. Both of us are trying to lose at least 50 more pounds, and we are hoping the competition will inspire us. I started using the website fatsecret.com to keep track of how many calories I eat every day. This is an awesome website, and they even have a great app for the G-1 and iPhone that lets you look up your favorite restaurant foods to see calorie counts and other nutrition facts; it also has a barcode scanner to calculate any store-bought food that you're eating. You can sync your food diary on the website with your phone. Anyway, my goal is to stay at or under 1400 calories a day. I've been doing this for about 3 weeks now and have lost only 3 pounds so far; I'm trying to decide if I should bump it down to 1200.

I am still working out 4-5 times a week and have seen some progress on that end - I actually have some muscles! So far I can run a 10 minute mile (6mph) or if I'm trying for distance I can run 2 miles at 5mph. The weight lifting has definitely improved my rock climbing abilities too. Woo!

In short, so far so good.