Weekly Recap

Last week, one of the two things I’ve been afraid of happening happened.  The scale didn’t change.  It said the exact same weight, down to the tenth of a pound, as it did the week before last.  I was a little tiny bit upset, but nothing out of control.  No meltdown.  I focused that upset-ness into my efforts this week.  I wanted to “double down” and up my game; so I did.  While I splurged and ate an entire small pizza at one of those dinner and a movie theaters, I stuck to my daily calorie goal of 1300-ish. 

• Saturday: I made my way to the gym and swam 800 meters in 21 minutes.  Either I’m getting faster or I’m just pausing for shorter periods of time at the end of each pool length when I do my turn around.  I must note that I am not currently doing the underwater flip and turn technique.  I don’t want to accidentally push off with my right foot and mess up my ankle any further than it already is.  Also, I don’t have a nose plug at the moment either, so I really don’t want to go underwater just yet.  Which is also why I’m doing freestyle swimming with my head above water the whole time…I’ve tried swimming face down without a nose plug and I get so much water up my nose…ugh!

A short while after I got home from my swim, maybe an hour or so, I went for a walk.  A 3.8 mile walk.  It was a good walk and I really enjoyed the time outside.  The temp is getting more toward fall-like so it’s not ridiculously hot out and is actually fairly comfortable.  I can’t tell you just how much I love running in the cooler and cold temps!

• Sunday: this was the Run With The Heroes 5K!!!  This was the 3^rd year that I’ve participated in this event, but the first time I have walked it.  I was so afraid that I was going to be the last person across the finish line.  A person that is recovering from knee surgery passed me before the 1-mile mark and I decided to use her as a pacer.  I finished in 52:57 per my FitBit.  Not too shabby!  I was just hoping for less than an hour, really.

Later that day, I did my kettlebell w/stairs workout that has become my Sunday standard.  One of the ladies in this Facebook weight loss support group I’m a member of posted some workouts in the group last week.  One was a core workout and the other was a body weight workout.  The body weight workout consisted of 3 circuits of 9 exercises…doing 3 exercises each circuit.  So, I paired the 3 circuits with the first 3 rounds of my kettlebell workout and then held a plank for 45 seconds (my arms were shaking so bad at the 45 second mark!!!) with the 4^th round.  Once I’m out of the boot, I can do a rocking plank instead of just a static hold, but right now I can’t flex my ankle.  I was mostly just giving these body weight exercises a test run, but I have to say, these are keepers!!!

• Monday: I had my first physical therapy appointment this day and plans to meet up with a friend immediately after my appointment so if I wanted to do my workout, I had to get up a little early to get it done!  In my “double down” effort for this week, I had decided I wanted to start doing my “creative” gym workout twice a week, so this was day #1 of that workout and it went well.

• Tuesday: normally I have my therapy appointment on Tuesdays, but my therapist got called away on family business this week.  But, I still got my walk on!  4.5 miles!

• Wednesday: went to the gym and did my upper body + abs machine workout.  This was supposed to be followed by my swim, 900m now, but all the lanes were taken in the pool when I finished up with the weight machines.  There was also a 2 mile walk.

• Thursday: since I didn’t get to do my swim on Wednesday, hit the pool today.  I swam 900 meters in 25 minutes.  I then walked almost 3 miles around my apt complex for a little over an hour.

• Friday: 2^nd day of the “creative” workout for the week!  This was SUPPOSED to be followed up by my 900m swim but, you guessed it, all the lanes were full…AGAIN!  There’s always the next day and that’s exactly what I intend to do.  I followed up my gym workout with a 2.25 mile walk around the apartments.

Since I’m out on medical leave and swimming is really good therapy for my ankle, I have decided that I will start swimming 3-4 times per week while I’m out. 

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This week was definitely a strong success when it came to workouts.  I am more than satisfied with how things went exercise wise.  I’m looking forward to continuing this for the duration of my medical leave and being more fit than when I started medical leave.  One of the end products of all this effort I want to achieve is increasing strength in the stabilizing muscles of my lower legs and ankles and feet to help prevent potential future injuries.  I would like to say that I have plans to wear a lace up ankle brace on my right ankle after my doctor clears me from the boot.  I plan to wear that lace up brace for at least 6 months after I’m cleared from the boot.  I don’t think I’ll have the confidence to start running regularly again without it.  Without it, I’m quite sure that I’ll be constantly worrying about reinjury or about overcompensating and then injuring my other ankle.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I splurged and had a small pizza all to myself on Saturday while watching a movie at the theater.  While I definitely went over my daily calorie goal of 1300-ish, I actually did not exceed my daily calorie allowance with my exercise calories calculated in, so I didn’t worry about it.  Besides, I stuck to my goals for the rest of the week, even with eating lunch out with my friend Monday afternoon at an Indian restaurant!  Mmm, saag paneer!  Had them bring me a side salad in place of the standard rice, and no naan for me.  I got goals, yo!  But it is very reassuring that the restaurant had no qualms with subbing the rice with a salad, didn’t even charge us extra, if I remember correctly.

I have had some issues with feeling “snacky” this week.  I’ve been doing what I can to keep what snacks I do allow myself to have are 1) small and 2) not junk.  One snack was about 6 small pretzel sticks with some laughing cow cheese.  Another was 1 serving of baked sweet potato fries.  I am trying to get a handle on these snacky feelings and not giving into them.  When I have them, I’m not actually hungry.  It’s an emotional thing, not a physical hunger thing.  Therefore, I should NOT be giving into them. 

How did all that translate to the scale this week?  Let’s take a look…..

I'm not sure what I thought I had weighed last week when I stepped on the scale this morning in a sleepy-headed fog.  Or maybe I was just so convinced I hadn't lost any weight.  But, when I stepped on the scale today, I got mad. I was all like "how does this even happen?"  I thought I had gained 2-3 pounds.  Then, as I stepped off the scale I realized I had actually LOST almost 3 pounds!!!  I'm now only 6.4 pounds away from my goal weight!!!  I'm excited because now I don't have to cut calories next week; I can just keep doing what I did this week and maybe I'll see a little more lost on the scale next week.  And seriously, I'm okay with even the smallest loss as long as it's a loss!

Second note, I am up .7% on the body fat.  Sure, I'm a little annoyed with that, but I'm not going to worry about it right now.  I mean, I do want my body fat % to be as close to 30% as possible as my goal, but I know that I am gaining muscle.  And also, if I'm retaining a little water, then that can give a false fat reading.  And, after doing the little shin muscle dent test, it appears I am retaining at least a little water.  I've been drinking too many Diet Cokes.  I should cut back on those.

Next week I’m going to switch up some of the foods I’m eating.  The first change I’ll be making is to my yogurt w/fruit snack.  I’m going to keep the 0% fat plain Greek yogurt, but I’m going to mix it with a homemade ranch seasoning mix and then replace the fruit with celery sticks.  Celery has next to no calories and is packed with extra fiber and is also super filling (duh, fiber!).  This should help a lot with the evening snacky attacks.  The other thing I’m switching up is dinner.  I’ve been eating 3 roma tomatoes for dinner the last 2 weeks.  It’s coming up on fall, so winter squashes are all the rage right now and are all over the internet and on social media.  So, I’m going to bake up some acorn squash seasoned simply with black pepper and maybe some cumin or sage (or, if I can find it, with some stevia brown sugar!  Thanks mom!).  I’ve already switched up my breakfast ever so slightly.  I found a recipe for fluffy scrambled eggs.  The recipe calls for heavy whipping cream but does say that you can sub that with coconut milk.  So that’s what I did.  I melted the coconut oil in the saucepan.  I mixed my 3 eggs with 1.5 tbsp of lite coconut milk and a little sea salt, then poured it into the pan.  The recipe said to cook on low and that her eggs took about 8 minutes to cook.  Well, on low, my eggs had done nothing at the 8 minute mark, so I upped the temp to one line below medium.  You constantly stir the eggs.  The eggs are creamy and fluffy and yummy, and with the coconut oil and the lite coconut milk only adds like 65 extra calories to my regular 3 eggs for breakfast.  Winner!