Diet and Fitness - VERY eventful day

I really like that calorie counting web-site.  Not only does it make calorie counting darned easy, but it also lets you enter your fitness activities for the day.  It's doing a great job of helping keep track of calories in vs. calories burned.  Of course, it's not perfect.  It's basically working off of estimates, but it's far better than nothing and practically speaking, it's as good as it needs to be.

I also like that it analyzes your diet for nutritional completeness.  In yesterday's blog, I posted that the thing said my diet is basically perfect, except that it is low in potassium.  I went to the store and bought a bunch of potassium rich foods (bananas, etc.) and added a baked potato, V-8 and OJ.  Caused my calories for the day to go through the roof and still didn't meet the web-site's guidance of 4,700 mg a day. 

I considered a potassium supplement, but was still mulling over my options.

When I went to the workout today, they took measurements.  They're supposed to do it every 2 weeks, but I changed trainers, etc., and this is basically the first time in 4 weeks they've done it. 

He asked about my diet and I told him about the program.  He asked about sodium consumption and I said it's high.  My blood pressure isn't perfect, but it's good.  (Typically somewhere between 130-85 and 120-80.)  So, I figured sodium wasn't a big problem. 

He said that sodium was causing me to retain water, and that I'd probably lose 3 pounds pretty much immediately if I just took sodium out of my diet.  Then, he suggested a product called "no salt".

I wasn't that interested.  I already use Splenda on my oatmeal, and am not that excited about a bunch of chemicals in my diet.  The less, the better as far as I'm concerned. 

Then, he said, it's essentially 100% potassium.  I had to laugh.  Friggin' perfect.  It takes sodium out of my diet, which I get more than enough of.  It puts potassium in.  In fact, the stuff is so loaded in potassium that I won't have to make any extraordinary efforts to get enough in my diet.  Between the tomatoes I eat and the potassium in other foods, this will be more than enough potassium.

Win-win-win-win.  Add the potassium.  Lower the sodium.  Probably get a heart-rate that drops from pretty-good to excellent.  Drop a few pounds that will make running easier, faster, and less stressful on my knees.

That, alone, would make for a very eventful and exciting day for me.  In this quest for a perfect diet, I find myself getting excited about things like, for instance, ground flax seeds when I discover them.

Next, he did measurements.  Some progress.  Some parts bigger, some parts smaller.  It all seemed in order.

Then, he did the skin-fold caliper measurements.  I came in at 13.-something percent body fat.  Granted, these measurements aren't the most accurate, but that's still pretty encouraging.  I think I started out with 18-something.  I was 16-something at the last measurement. 

Considering I lost about 6 pounds, a 3% drop in body fat is right on the money.  Means that almost every pound I lost was body fat.

He's thinking that in the next couple of months, I should be down to 10%.  That'd basically be another 6 pounds. 

That would put me in the high 180s, which was my first fitness goal.

Okay, so that's two good things.  The third is that I told him I didn't think we were hitting pecs hard enough.  So, he really, really put me through a workout.  Like I said, I switched trainers a couple of weeks back and I think they don't like to go too crazy on their first few sessions because they're evaluating what you're capable of, and how much pain you're willing to endure. 

Today was, by far, the hardest workout I've had so far.  We hit chest and triceps.  I haven't been this muscle fatigued at the end of a workout yet so far.  Personally, I'd like to have more of my sessions end up like this.

So, overall a great day.  Got great news on my measurements.  Found a source for the potassium.  Will probably be lowering my blood pressure and letting go of some excess water weight.

I am anticipating a lot of lost weight due to fat burn in the next few weeks now that my mileage is up to 4.75-ish a day.  Running that distance feels a lot better.  My glycogen stores are depleted after 2.75 miles, and that gives me 2 miles of primarily fat-burn.  It also feels better to run while burning fat.