Health Check - Reality Check

I had my mock health check today at work. I say "mock" because it is completely worthless. A team sent by our health care insurance provider comes to our work once a year for a couple days and takes our weight, height, and do a little blood work. It takes about 10 minutes and then they give you pointers on how to live healthier.

Here's the reality check - as sad as it is, I wanted to get great scores on this! And not for insurance purposes. That has no affect. I wanted to see if I could get in the 170s weight wise. Well, I weight in at 194, even though this morning I hit 190.4 at home. That's not bad.

I still have a lot of changes to make. I need to snack better or not at all. I'll have to share stories sometime of my past weight loss successes. One that comes to mind is when I lived in Ukraine. I lost about 20 pounds one summer just because I didn't really eat, walked everywhere, and ran seven miles a day!

Of course, right now that's impossible. But maybe there are connections I can make from those experiences to improve my weight loss experience.

Lunch & Snack

I had some gumbo for lunch (a much smaller portion than normal) with some water. For a snack a few hours later, I had an orange.

As a small treat, I also had a Hershey's chocolate nugget with almonds. Did you know each one of those is 50 calories? I used to eat 5 or 6 of those at one time. If I can keep at just one or two a day, I'll keep eating them, unless I can't lose weight.

This is pretty hard to be honest. Food makes me happy. I don't know if that's sad or not.

Breakfast today

I've been eating PowerBars lately, chocolate flavor. I actually love them! You can get a box of 5 pretty cheap at Wal-Mart. There's 240 calories per bar, so not too bad.

I also had a Vitamin Water, Energy flavor. There's about 100 calories in a 16-oz. bottle. I'm drinking it because it has caffeine!

I'm a recovering Mountain Dew addict. My breakfast used to be a cereal bar and a 32-oz. Mountain Dew most mornings. And the sad thing is that it made me really happy! I looked forward to those early morning Dews. Giving that up is honestly the hardest part of the project.

So far that's 340 calories. Not too bad. We'll see how lunch goes.

Getting Started

I believe I need a certain level of shame to get into shape. I've made countless goals and attempts to lose weight and become more fit, but all have failed. Although friends and family are very supportive, I tend to give up quickly.

The goals I made on New Years are fading fast. I'm at that point right now of giving up, and I don't want to. I plan to log my daily diet, exercise routine, and struggles as I go again through this process.

My goal is to lose 21 pounds by Christmas 2010. Let's see how it goes.