Well, week one is in the books and I’m willing to call it a success. I’m actually fairly surprised at how easy it was to eliminate snacking and unhealthy food from my diet (although Sunday was a little bit of a cheat day).

My daily caloric intake goal to lose a pound a week is 2, 120 calories per day, or 14, 840/week. This week I consumed 11, 998 calories.

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Day 1 is in the books!

My starting weight is 194.1 lbs. I will get some neck, waist, and hip measurements tomorrow. I have the myfitnesspal app programmed to lose 1 pound per week. This translates to eating 2120 calories per day, and expending 1280 calories per week.

Today I consumed 1612 calories and burned 462 calories stationary biking. At this rate I am going to run out of energy very quickly. I have learned already that I can eat more than I ate today. There is no doubt that I will burn way more than 1280 calories per week through exercise. That number will be over 2000 for sure, not including the walking and working out I do with the kids daily at school.

I feel good about my day (except for being hungry and craving junk food haha). I feel that I am off to a good start!

I begin my personal wellness project tomorrow, and I have to say I am actually quite excited about it. In the next two-three months I hope to establish some new lifestyle habits that will improve my quality of living. While one of my goals is to lose 8-10 pounds, my main focus is on improving my eating habits.

The myfitnesspal site/app seems to be a pretty slick tool. Both the food and exercise sections have a full library of foods and activities that simply allow you to select and add them to your daily lists. It calculates caloric intakes and expenditures for daily and weekly periods. It also generates daily caloric intake targets and weekly expenditure targets to assist you in meeting your pre-determined goals.

My nutrition goals are to eat more fruits and vegetables, focus on portion control, and reduce the amount of snacking that I do, which will in turn help me reduce the number of sugary foods that I eat. My diet as it currently is is not really that bad, but replacing morning cereal with fruit, yogurt, and granola is one simple way to improve it. Also, bringing only healthy food to school for lunch and snacks will force me to eat healthy during the day. Night will be my most challenging time as it is when I snack most often. Not buying snack foods, and sheer will power will have to get me through the evenings.

I have always been very active and diligent with my exercise habits. Work, completing my masters, and a two-year-old have made that more difficult. This project will force me to workout diligently to ensure that I am meeting my weekly caloric expenditure goals. The exercise routine that I envision is:

Sunday – muscular strength

Monday – aerobic

Tuesday – rest day

Wednesday – muscular strength

Thursday – yoga

Friday – aerobic

Saturday – aerobic

Aerobic exercises will consist of mainly running as long as the weather allows, along with stationary cycling. Muscular strength exercises will be mainly body weight and abdominal workouts. Yoga is something that will be new to me, but I think I will experience the most significant gains from it. I hope it helps my strength and flexibility. I plan to use some virtual workouts through youtube and other apps for many of my workouts. I will post them as I use them.

As tomorrow is my first official day, I will be posting my baseline stats and my progress for the day.