A Tea Party

For a fun office get-together, we recently had a British style “High Tea.” It was a lot of fun and there was tons to eat.  Everyone pitched in and brought a dish, and ours were Ina Garten’s lemon bars. I wanted to make lemon bars for a couple reasons. I’d never made lemon bars from scratch before, and I’d never eaten one made from scratch.

As evidence of why I continue to treat Ina’s recipes like gospel, the response to the lemon bars was borderline ridiculous. We got multiple comments and requests for the recipe. People were talking about them days later. They were that good. Thank you, Ina!  If ever there was a case to be made for using fresh ingredients, these lemon bars would be it. Zesting and juicing 6 lemons was well worth the work. I wish I would have taken pictures, but I didn’t cut them until the next morning before work and I was running pretty short on time.

Here’s the catch: afterward, Jason calculated each lemon bar to be about 300 calories in square format. The recipe actually says to cut them in triangles which would cut the calories in half, but I had never seen triangular lemon bars before and wanted to go standard.  It was definitely a little depressing to find out just how high in calories they were.

The Weight Loss Thing

So you might be thinking, “what’s so bad about a lemon bar once in a while?” And my answer would be that normally nothing is wrong. The real reason it was so depressing to find out how many calories a single bar had was that it became pretty clear that even once in a while, those lemon bars would really hinder our fitness goals. It reinforced that there are lots of things we could probably do without.  I have to think to myself: “Is this lemon bar worth 35 minutes on the treadmill?” When I think of it in those terms, I realize I can probably live without it.

The Honeymoon

I haven’t written many posts about fitness, but it’s actually a main goal for me and Jason right now.  We obviously want to get healthy in a way that we can maintain, but another reason to start was because of our upcoming honeymoon in April.  We’re going to Hawaii and while I’m super excited, I want to be sure I look good in my bathing suit! Having the honeymoon as a goal has been very helpful because it’s something tangible that makes all the hard work worthwhile.

And it has been a lot of hard work.  Thanks to Jason, we’ve gotten back onto the calorie counting wagon and as a result, we’ve discovered that this whole weight loss thing is a lot more tolerable if you supplement with as much exercise as possible.  For example, without exercise, my daily calorie intake cannot exceed 1200.  That’s 600 less than I could eat per day to just maintain my weight. That’s a large meal or two to three snacks. Kind of a big deal.  If I go for a 35 minute jog, I suddenly get 200-300 calories I can spend while staying within my daily goal. The extra padding makes a big difference and I feel better because I’m improving my muscle and cardiovascular strength.

So that’s where most of my time has gone lately. As soon as we get home from work, Jason and I head to the gym.  Then we come home, make dinner, eat, and clean up. By the time we finish, I’m exhausted and just want to vege out a little.  So that’s why I’ve gone a little quiet lately.

The Progress

As much as I hate, hate, hate counting calories, it’s really the only thing that works consistently. It’s the only way you can ever really know how you’re doing.  I’m not going to lie-it kind of sucks being so accountable for everything you put in your mouth, but it’s the only way to have long-lasting results. It’s a complete lifestyle change.

I don’t know about you, but I’m always curious to see exactly how much people lose.  I think it’s what makes us able to sit through the insufferably long weigh-in process at the end of each episode of The Biggest Loser. I hope I don’t jinx myself by saying this, but since the beginning of July, I have lost 21 pounds. I still want to lose about 17 more before the honeymoon, but I would be more than happy to settle for 12. It’s still a long way to go, but I feel like I have the tools to do it.

If I don’t meet my goal I’ll only have myself to blame because after all, it’s all about the math.

Oh, Exercise

In the end of June, we got back into the Couch-to-5k plan that we had started earlier this year before we lost a family member and began planning the wedding. We have made it through 4 whole weeks so far and I’m very pleased with the progress.

We’ve definitely come a long way and I would highly recommend the program to anyone who thinks they can’t run or hates running. I hated running when I started because it seemed so impossible. The couch-to-5k plan shifts the focus from distance to time.

We also have started to integrate strength training exercise on some of our off days from running. Some days we do circuits of workouts with dumbells, while other times we opt for yoga.

The “D” word

Though we’re not following a specific diet plan, we’re watching our food intake by counting calories. We started out using a web app called Hot Cal, but have since discovered MyFitnessPal which seems even better. I have to say, counting calories is not my thing. I hate counting calories and having to figure out exactly what is in every single thing I ingest. Thankfully, Jason doesn’t seem to mind and has been faithfully calculating our meals. It has been really eye opening to see the numbers and how having a sedentary job makes losing weight even more difficult.

The positive thing we’ve discovered is that you can eat pretty much whatever you want a couple times a week. It’s really all about balancing it out with lighter meals and/or exercise.

New Job

To go along with all the changes in our personal lives, I’ve made a change in my professional life as well. I have accepted a position with the Center for Educational Networking, which is where Jason currently works as a Web/Multimedia Specialist. Everyone we’ve told so far has been left aghast when we explain we’ll be working pretty closely together, but I’m actually not too concerned. We have always made a good team and I think we’re both professional enough to make it work.

It has been a rough year, and we’re excited to start this new chapter in our lives.

This year, we’re trying the extremely popular couch-to-5k program. Friday, April 2nd was our first workout.

For Week 1, the schedule is as follows (do this 3 days in week 1):

1. Walk 5 minutes for warm-up
2. Alternate between 60 seconds of running and 90 seconds of walking until you reach 20 minutes (25 if you count the warm-up)

Getting Started

Our first run of Week 1 was on a Friday. It went pretty good and wasn’t difficult to where it takes away all your motivation. We ran again the following Monday and it still felt pretty good.

Then it started to rain. And by rain, I mean it poured. If it were 60+ degrees and pouring, I would have still entertained the idea of a run, but it was only 40 degrees out and cloudy. So we set our sights on Friday.

Cue the family emergency that thwarts even the best intentions. Again, our run would have to wait. Thankfully by Sunday, the madness had died down enough to sneak in the last run for the week.

Thoughts Overall

Though it took more than a week for us to complete Week 1, it feels good to know we were able to fit it in even when life handed us trash (lemons are nowhere near adequate to describe the weekend we had). The 60 second intervals for Week 1 were just enough to get us a little tired but not long enough to make us hate running—really important when you get easily discouraged.

Next stop, C25k Week 2. I’m not really sure how it will go, but there’s no harm in repeating Week 1 if need be.

Update 04/20/2010: While we intended to move on to week 2, we recently suffered the passing of a family member and have not yet had the time to get back into a routine.