I emailed my fitness challenge pals about my interesting weekend. Last weekend I was out of town and was treated to 3 buffets by my in-laws. Needless to say, I gained a lot of weight. In fact, I was at about 235 before the trip and by Sunday evening I was at 241 (which was my starting weight for the fitness challenge). I was pretty depressed about that, 6 whole lbs. To make it worse I haven’t had time to go jogging at all this week. I’ve had several job interviews and am behind on my school work. Well, I went back to my normal eating habits this week and, surprisingly, have lost all the weight I gained over the weekend. Not only did I lose the extra weight but I’ve lost 2lbs beyond that. I really think I triggered my metabolism with the all-you-can-eat buffets. This morning I weighed 233 which is the lowest weight I’ve seen in several months. I don’t really recommend this because who knows if it works everytime for everyone. Also, the rollercoaster weight is kind of hard to handle. Instead play this fun game. Maybe it will trigger your body to burn more calories.

Sorry, I haven’t been updating much lately. I’ve been busy and was out of town all weekend. That’s why I didn’t remind anyone to send me their results and that’s why no one sent me their results. I had buffets all weekend long so I’m in the negative weightloss range. Megan reported 11 miles and a loss of 1/2″ in her waist. Josh will join the challenge and has lost 3 lbs so far.

Ok, so I didn’t remind everyone to send me their results. You all obviously haven’t gotten too excited about this challenge yet. On the upside. Megan finally saw some results and took the lead in miles. Andrea continues to lose and has easily lost the most percentage-wise. I hope you like how I separated the lbs and inches in the totals chart. If you still want to add your information just send it on down and I’ll add it. Keep up the good work everyone. One Month Down. 2 more to go. Hopefully we’re still gaining momentum.

I’m at my third day of tracking what I eat. It has been interesting, to say the least. I did some research and found that at my height, weight and age I should need about 3200 calories/day to maintain weight. One pound equals 3500 calories. So to lose 2 lbs in a week I need to eat 7000 less calories than my body needs. This comes down to eating 1000 less calories each day. So if my body needs 3200 calories I should eat 2200 calories or less each day.

The first day I consumed about 1744 calories. Yesterday I was taken out to dinner at a pizza place and had pizza, salad and a rootbeer shake. This messed me up. I ended up with 3568 calories. The week is almost over and I’m still heavier than I was a week ago. Now that I monitor what I’m eating I feel a little more in control. When I think about eating something I ask myself, “How many calories does this have?” Sometimes it’s not worth finding out and in the case of sweets and junk food I figure it’s just easier to not eat them. As I lookup the nutritional facts of different foods I see what hurts me. For example, yesterday I took a test and needed a snack before taking the test to give my body some energy to think properly. I went to the vending machines and thought a blueberry muffin shouldn’t be too bad. I was wrong. The blasted thing was 400 calories, 22g fat, 48g carbs, 1g protein. STAY AWAY FROM THE MUFFINS!!!!!

For my results last week I was at 236.5 lbs on Friday. By Sunday morning I was around 241. I’m finally down to 239 but if I want to get down below my low it’s going to take something serious. I wasn’t able to go running yesterday due to extra schoolwork. Now I’ve gained weight and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to get my miles in. I’m going to have to do something drastic! I’ll just have to wake up extra early to run and try to run further than usual. Lately I’ve had limited activity on Saturday so I’m going to have to make sure and go running on Saturday.

On a happy note. My flag football team won on Saturday. This time the opposing team was short a player so that helped. We had a few more good guys that could throw and had some speed. I think we ended up winning 36-7.

I’m considering keeping track of my health on a more detailed basis. At the end of each day I’m going to record what I ate and maybe when I’m wondering why I’m not losing weight I can figure out how many calories I’m eating and how many I’m burning and make adjustments accordingly. By the end of all this I might end up created some kind of program that makes it easy for people to track their mileage and calorie intake and will give a suggestion on what to change.