Buying Shares in Tim Hortons

Last week I posted about my husbands ♥love♥ for sweets and the array of junk he brought home. 

Well ... it continues!

In the last THREE days let's see how many 40 packs of Timbits he has brought home:

Yes - THREE!

One box per day

Let's do the math on that:

3 boxes x 40 Timbits = 120 Timbits

1 Timbit = 50 to 90 calories

average of an assorted pack is 65 calories each

so .....

120 Timbits x 65 Calories each =

7,800 Calories

They don't look so innocent anymore, do they?  Where, oh where does my family put these?  Not to mention there is on average 2.9g of fat in EACH timbit .... 120 Timbits = 348g fat - GROSS!!!  I feel nauseous now.

With all this temptation around I've done pretty good.  I have had 6 Timbits total from these boxes, about 390 calories.  While that will not kill me or 'ruin my diet', my husband is in serious danger.

He has been warned that if he brings home one more box of these little devils or ANYTHING junk food like within the next two weeks I will throw the item AND him into the fire!  Though as I look back over those nutrition numbers I may be tempted to throw away any future Timbits, forever.

He was quite shocked to learn that these little suckers are about 50 calories each.  I can't wait to tell him tonight that it's actually 65 calories on average, and how many calories & fat he has consumed just from these in the last few days.

Sometimes it takes a little bit of shock value to set them straight.

Today was my Belly Blast weigh in.  I was down .4 of a pound, yippee.  I'd like to be more excited, but it's hard to be because a couple of days ago I was down over a pound.  Since my race and long run and the last two days I have been doing weights, so my weight is up.  This is typical with this type of activity as I put extra stress on my muscles.  I'm not gonna stress over it.  The scale is going the right way and I'm happy AND I'm going to keep it moving that way.  Plus, while I haven't done measurements yet (too early), my belly seems a bit flatter and my husband noticed it too.  What more can I ask for!

Hope you're have a great AND 'Timbit Free' day!

Heidi

♥♥♥♥♥

Belly Blast Begins

OMG!  Today I found my measuring tape (it's been missing as my house is turned completely upside down these days with the renovation).

The good news ...  there has been no increase in the following areas:

• hips
• thighs
• bust
• upper waist (the narrowest part)
• arms
• even my weight is the same (147ish)

The bad news ....  HOLY CRAP .... 2" increase on my waist!

SERIOUSLY???!!!!

I had felt like my waist was a bit softer lately than it had been, but really had no idea it was that much bigger.  When I'm sitting down I can feel that belly spillage.  And my waist/belly has always been my weakest point.  It already was the body part that needed reducing last time I did measurements.

I could feel it too, especially while running.  My pants would slip down a bit, my tops would raise up a bit.  My belly would sometimes slip out over the waist band and have that awful jiggle that makes you want to crawl under the closest rock.  Very distracting!

So, here it is for the world (or the few people who are kind enough to tolerate my ramblings and read my blog) to see:

I soooooooo do NOT want to post these pictures.  But I need to be accountable.  I am determined to come back here and post updated AND improved pictures soon!

Ready .......

UGH!  Note ... I am NOT pushing it out so that I can have a super change for my update pics.  Sadly that is me just standing there completely relaxed.  It's all belly baby!

My measurements are an unhealthy combination of 37-35-37. 

I'm getting serious about this and that middle number is coming DOWN!

Last night I had a great workout.  Did 3 miles easy run on the treadmill (taking that focus off of always having to run faster) and I did a lower body and abs workout.

I think today I'll do some fat burning intervals!

I'm also thinking that I need to be paying more attention to sodium in my diet.  Lately I've been feeling a bit like (to quote one of my favourite comedy CDs) a "water retaining sea cow".  I don't typically add salt to my food, but have noticed that some of the things I've been eating have been fairly high in sodium.  Surely that can't help.

Well, I'm off to make a healthy (low sodium) lunch.

Hope you are having a great day and enjoy your weekend !

(long weekend for Americans)!

Heidi

♥♥♥♥♥

January Recap

APPT FOLLOW-UP

Was back at the Dr this afternoon for a follow up.  Things are looking good.  He massaged my foot and calf and there was very little discomfort which he said is very good.  The hip was quite uncomfortable but he said it's doing what it should to heal.  He said just a couple more sessions and I should be fine.  Plus he gave me some good stretching tips, including to hold stretches for quite a long time, until you feel the muscle release.  He said 30 seconds is a bare, BARE minimum and 2+ minutes could easily be necessary - especially in a trouble area.

I should mention that this is a Chripractor/Massage Therapist in an office that has a high volume of sports related clientele.  So they really get wanting to work through issues without complete bed rest if possible.  A standard doctor would just give you a prescription and tell you to stop running.  Which is fine if that's what is necessary, but if there's a problem that needs fixing, drugs & rest alone aren't going to do it.

OUTDOOR LIVING

About a week ago my husband decided to start the renovation on our ensuite.  End of January and he takes the ceiling, walls and insulation out of the room adjoining our bedroom.  Who does that??? Let me tell ya ... that's a cold sleep!  The wind was blowing right through.  I thought my nose would fall off at times. 

So Friday I had to finish filing a tax report and when I was done I figured on mostly relaxing for the weekend. Saturday morning I went out for a couple hours and came home to everything being removed from my bedroom. 

Turns out there was a problem that lead him to have to do some framing work in the bedroom.  So EVERYTHING had to be removed from the room.  Then they tore down all the drywall and insulation - what a mess! 

The first night we slept at my in-laws next door.  But last night we set up our mattress in the front living room.  It's going to be at least a few weeks.

Today I came home and the exterior wall is gone, as is the interior wall. 

And my husband and son had framed up my walk-in closet (that'll be nice!!). 

It was SO cold when I got home from work.  But thankfully my son put up a layer of plastic to keep the cold out.  Much better now.

It's going to be an interesting time around here for a while as we have lots of renovations to do.  We've been living with this very outdated walls & carpet for a LONG time.  It'll still be a while yet til that's gone, but the progress has begun.

  JANUARY 2010
RUNNING RECAP

# of runs:  14

Distance:   ......66.3 Miles / 106.6 Kms 
Monthly Goals:  55 Miles / 88.5 Kms

Longest Distance:  10.2 Miles / 16.3 Kms  (1:32:10)
Fastest Pace:  .....7:54 min/Mile / 4:55 min/Km / 7.6 mph - on a 3.1 Mile/5K run
Average Pace: .....8:52 min/Mile / 5:31 min/Km / 6.8 mph

Summary:  I'm super happy with what I achieved in January.  I was hoping to run more often, but with the injury I took some extra rest days.  I exceeded my distance goal by 20% (which I was sort of aiming for) and I'm pretty happy with my pace.

Hope everyone is having a great day!!!!!

Heidi

♥♥♥♥♥

My Big News!!!

Did everybody stay up all night waiting for me to post my big news today??? NO!  Hmmm, OK, I get it.  My life isn't all that exciting.  But I think you guys will agree that this is pretty darn exciting news ....

WE HAVE MOVEMENT PEOPLE!!!!

It took me 4 days to fully believe it.  You see, I am absolutely sure that my scale lies to me.  Whoever made it in the factory had some twisted sense of humour because that thing can give me some awfully, (not so) funny readings every once in a while.  But 4 days of being consistently down AND confirming it on alternate scales and I finally believe it.

I have broke my 4 month plateau!

It went something like this ....

Jun - 145.8 (all time low)

July - 147.0

Aug- 147.0

Sep - 147.2

Oct - 147.0 (well from Oct 1 - 30th anyway)

then, on the last day of October we begin this trend......

Oct 31 -145.6   what??? really???  No, scale is just feeling peppy

Nov 1 - 143.2   No way!  Need to throw it out.  It's gone insane.

Nov 2 - 144.6   OK, that's the trend we're used to, going up again ... but could it be that I AM actually down???

Nov 3 - 143.6   Hmmm, maybe this is real, better confirm this on other scales.  Yup - it's TRUE!

It's kind of funny because on the morning of Nov 1st, we were laying in bed and my husband had his hand resting on my stomach and he said something about "I think your stomach feels smaller today".  And he didn't even know that the day before the scale had finally moved.  Thats' how much I didn't believe it, I was afraid to share incase it was a false reading.

So the question would probably be ... Did I do anything different? 

Umm, my first thought would be that I don't really think so, not hugely different anyway.  But, since I am using the lovely Sparkpeople website I can go back and analyze things a bit.  I'm such a nerd!  Here's what I found:

CALORIES EATEN

Not a huge change there.  I had planned to increase my calories in the last week of October, but one day I really wasn't hungry and ate very little so my weekly average stayed about the same as it did all month, which was just over 1400 per day or 9,900 per week.

CALORIES BURNED

In the last week of October I went from having a average weekly burn of around 2000 calories, to almost 3200 in the final week.  This would be mostly due to that 18K run I did last weekend. 

FAT

Not much change here.  I average about 40g per day and I try to make it the healthy types.

CARBOHYDRATES

I did lower this a bit in the last week.  Not really intentionally, but because I was trying to increase my protein and stay somewhat in the same calorie range, this is the nutrient that ended up balancing it out.  I also found that in eating more protein, I didn't really want as many carbs.  Earlier in the month I was average 210-215g of Carbs a day and the last week this went down to about 170g. 

PROTEIN

As I mentioned above, I made a good effort to increase the amount of protein I eat.  Earlier in the month I was having approx. 65g per day and in the last week I increased this to 100g.  Sometimes it's a little harder to organize the higher protein foods, but with some planning it's getting easier.  Cottage cheese and egg whites have become my good friends.

So not a huge amount of changes.  It really doesn't feel like any kind of change.  But maybe that was the jolt that my body needed.  Or maybe it just decided it was time and it was OK to let a little go.  Either way, I'm HAPPY!

.

Interesting Facts and Numbers

Been crunching numbers this morning.  I quite like using Sparkpeople so I can look back on my calendar and see my overall numbers.  I'm a total numbers person.  Some interesting things I've discovered this month:

I haven't exercised at all on any Fridays this month, nor most Thursdays.  This is ironic considering I don't work on Fridays and Thursday night is the only weeknight I don't have other committments.  You would think these would be the easiest days to fit in exercise.

Sundays I burn the most calories (870 on average), however this makes sense because this is my long run days. 

I'm kind of suprised to see I only exercised 17 out of 27 days so far this month.  I thought for sure it was more frequent than that.  However, when I do exercise I average 464 calories each time - though that number drops to 254 if you don't include my long Sunday runs.

I eat the most calories on Thursdays (1539) and Saturdays (1697).  Consequently, I eat the least calories on Wednesdays (1302) and Fridays (1303).  Hmmmm ..... see a pattern there????  The most calories I've eaten in a day is 2110 and the least is 835 - that was kind of an extreme, it's the only day I've gone under 1100 and I had 2021 the day before.

Here's the average numbers:

Calories Eaten:  1452
Calories Burned: 292 (this includes non exercise days)

BMR (1716) - Calories Eaten (1452) + Calories Burned (292 ) = 556 Daily Calorie Deficit

This should mean that since the beginning of October I should be down 4.3 lbs (556 * 27 days / 3500 calories to lose 1 lb).  So ... what am I actually down??? .... anything from nothing to up 2 lbs depending on the day.

By playing with the numbers you'd think I'd be losing.  An average daily calorie deficit of 556 seems to be within normal I thought, though perhaps that leaves me a bit too low.  The other thing is that if I calculate the daily average calorie deficit just on days I exercise ... it averages 756.  OK that's an eye opener, didn't realize it was quite that much.

What am I doing with this information????  Well, I've made some pretty charts that I have no idea how to put on my blog (hahahaaa).  NOTE:  If anyone can explain to me how to insert a chart I would love them forever.....  But, seriously, in looking at this I think I may have to up my calories a little bit for one thing.  I know MANY of you have been telling me this for a while, but I'm a tad stubborn (and maybe scared...).  Recently I increased the amount of protein in my diet, but in doing so I made a cutback in carbs & fats because I wasn't comfortable increasing my calorie limit. 

I'm not even sure how I go about increasing my calories because, quite simply, I am not hungry - at all!  Very rarely do I actually feel hunger, and even when I do, if I get distracted for a while it pretty much goes away.  On days that I exercise hard I could probably go without eating.  It completely cuts my appetite.

The other thing I think I should do is to exercise more ..... or should I say more often.  I think on those days that I'm typically not exercising at all I should at least do a light walk.  It doesn't have to be hard core. 

Any thoughts???  Maybe I'm getting to the point where I need a dietician in my life, though I've done a teensy bit of looking around and have no idea how I find one in my area.  Even though I've gotten fairly trim, I know I still have some to lose.  My belly is soft & squishy and with everything else thinning out sometimes it even looks like an early preggo belly.