March in Summary

It took me a while to get back and I'm sorry. I have been very very disconnected from everyone lately. I'm not certain what is going on with that, but I'll try to be better. Anyway.

March was a little disappointing in its passing. I gained 2 pounds, rounding out the month at 290.2 for a total weight loss of 25 pounds since I began. That's not bad, mind you, it just wasn't my goal of 285. I tried, too, working my butt off both in the gym and with my TurboFire. I spent the last week of March really watching my food intake. Still it wasn't enough and not only did those final three pounds NOT go away, but two more joined them. It seems my changes are coming just in time. On the positive end, my body fat percentage has come down by 2.5% since February, which is awesome and might account for the weight gain, or at least some of it. I know that muscle is denser than fat, so adding just a little bit of muscle shows on the scale in the same way a lot of fat would. I'll watch the scale and if my weight gain is due to muscle gain, I should see big drops eventually. This is because I know that more muscle burns fat faster than just cardio work.

So we're in April. This month through June I am supposed to make several changes including: adding 30 minutes of weight training to my cardio daily, cutting my food portions by 1/4, adding 1 liter of water to my daily intake, and making the switch to whole grains. So far I'm floundering a little in trying to figure how to cut my portions. Do I load my plate as I normally would and then put some back? I've been trying to put a little less on my plate to begin with, but then how do I know I've reduced by a quarter? Also, do I cut down on everything, or maintain the same amount of, say, veggies and reduce, say, grains? I am also struggling to incorporate 2 liters of water. This is, interestingly, the daily suggested amount of water. It is a lot of water. I see why most Americans don't get this in. It is hard to incorporate it into my daily schedule. I imagine this will just be a matter of convenient placing. Previously, I've had my water in my kitchen fridge and I drank it mostly when I was cooking. I had the idea of putting one of my daily liters upstairs where I can get to it easily while I'm resting. I'm also going to have to figure out how to get my water at work, which is hard because we aren't allowed to have food or drink in our work area and we also spend several hours at a time in the lab with no chance to come out. Also, you can't leave things at work because they routinely "clean out" the cafeteria, which really just means they throw out things that have been sitting. As for adding the weight work, I just haven't done it. I have a meeting today at 2, so rather than hitting the gym and TurboFiring right after work I opted to get some rest so I'm not a zombie at my meeting. My plan is to go to the gym after at about 3:30. I'm a little intimidated by the weight machines, but I plan to go back there and tackle them. I'm breaking up the weight training into body regions and doing a different region each time. Today I think legs.