New Diet and Health Club, Two Weeks In

Looks like so far I have probably lost about 5-6 pounds, give or take.  It's not quite been 2 weeks:  that won't happen for another 2 and a half days.

The diet is good on a lot of dimensions.  Even if it didn't cause me to lose weight, I'd still consider it good because it's more nutritionally balanced than my previous diet (drive-thru heart attack in a bag).  It's also much lower in fats.  Ultimately, this is probably better for my long-term health.

I don't really miss the old diet so much.  Last night I had pizza, which was the first bread I'd eaten in a week and a half.  As long as I can cheat every now and then, I feel like this is a diet I can live with.

It's really a pretty simple formula:  the more active I am, the more calories I can eat.  At low activity levels, I would need to stick pretty close to the basic diet to continue to lose weight or maintain my weight loss.  At higher activity levels, I can eat more.

I'm not sufferring through this diet like I thought I would.  This is a lifestyle change that I should probably keep for as long as possible.  I may have to depart from it now and then.  It's not that it can't be followed, but when travelling, for instance, it would take some dedication.

I've also found that even though you can't necessarily follow the diet exactly, all the time, you can try to stay close to it.  For instance, I was out of town the other day and ate at Applebees for lunch.  I ordered chicken fajitas and just ate the chicken, onions and peppers off the hot plate.  I ordered a baked potato for my starch and that was reasonably close.

The chicken was probably fattier than chicken breast.  The onions and peppers probably weren't that good of a salad.  It was obviously cooked in some really good tasting oils that were probably off the diet.

All in all, though, much better than I had been eating and close enough for the purpose of this diet.

Most of all, a diet has to be something reasonable that you can live with.  If it's impractical, it's worthless.

The weight workouts are progressing.  I'm totally on board with the trainer's philosophy:  lighter weights, slower reps, high number of reps.  I really want to avoid injury.  Over time, strength will increase.  I think he's doing this more for a body-shaping thing than for increasing strength, per se.  I'm okay with that.

I'm doing my own cardio and based on my heart rate, it's embarassing to admit that the training pace I should probably be following is something like 12 minute miles.  That'd burn fat and let me build aerobic base.  I've been doing 5 minute warm-ups, 20 minutes at pace and 5 minute cool-downs. 

If I restrict myself to ONLY doing the main set at 12 minute miles, I can probably add another 10 minutes to my main set.

It's hard to be patient with this because my running is so slow.  I've lost so much fitness over time.  A nice leisurely pace for me was probably a shade under 9 minutes a mile a decade ago. 

Still, it took me a long time to let my fitness lapse.  Plus, it hasn't helped that I've had issues with plantar fasciitis for the past couple of years and had a lot of months of zero running.

Also, as I continue to lose weight, the running will get easier and faster, too. 

It's hard to be patient sometimes, but I just have to remind myself that I'm moving in the right direction and that there's no benefit to getting off the path, now.