Or with breakfast…

With an egg and 2% american cheese sandwich. This meal has approximately 371 calories.

I decided to sleep in this morning because M and I stayed up last night watching the Olympics. If you missed it, the snowboarding was phenomenal! I might try to get a bike ride in tonight, but we will see.

I forgot to mention that I got an Amazon package last night that included two new cookbooks.

The top book is French Cooking in Ten Minutes which apparently has been in print for a really long time. The other book is Cook Yourself Thin. I’m excited to have another cookbook option. This will help me plan new meals so look for some new stuff next week!

Lunch was a Jimmy John’s Beach Club (#12) and a pickle. Looked something like this:

Of course, I had it without mayo (and sprouts, although I should really start eating those!). ‘Twas delicious and only 576 calories (even less if you skip the cheese but I decided not to today).

Had about 4 unpictured mini Reese’s Cups at the office. Must avoid candy dish, especially since each one of these is 40 calories!!!

For dinner, Matt and I had our old favorite: turkey burgers and sweet potato fries.

These are almost always delicious. Occasionally the burgers can get really dried out but we combatted that today by adding some ketchup and soy sauce to the meat before cooking it (sounds odd but try it!).

And you can never go wrong with sweet potato fries. Never. Trust me. The key to sweet potato fries in my opinion is to cook them TOO long to make them a bit crispy. Putting them right under the broiler at the end for a few minutes helps. I cooked these in olive oil cooking spray by the way and don’t notice a difference at all from back in the days when I doused them in olive oil.

This meal had approximately 500 calories (didn’t measure the sweet potatoes or the ketchup).

Also had a weight watchers ice cream bar for desert.

Overall, I ate 1716 calories today. Burned approximately 600. According to daily burn, I could have used some fruit today. I didn’t have any! Oops!!

I know I said I was going to be doing all these restrictive things for my 60 day challenge – calorie counting, specific foods, etc. I need to be more realistic so for this first week I’m going to focus on calorie counting/food diarying – with hopes that I stay in my range but not requiring that. I’m going to slowly start doing the things on the list that are food related (I am doing quite well on the workout front and have been since Christmas so I’m just going to keep on keeping on there), and not try to be perfect overnight.

I have a confession to make. I haven’t posted about my 60 day challenge because I’m failing at it miserably. I haven’t met my food related goals for one solid day yet.

I feel like I’m in a never ending cycle: I make a plan, I start the plan (or don’t even get that far in this case), I do the workouts (I’m still going strong with those), and then I fall of the wagon because of one meal or one day or whatever.

The real confession is that I have no willpower when it comes to food. Many people have really valid reasons for their struggles with food (e.g., abusive relationships, bad childhoods, etc.), but I don’t have a good excuse for this. I’ve lived a good life filled with love and think I eat because I can and I enjoy it. Those are not very good reasons, but they are the reasons that I’m overweight.

I don’t want you to throw me a pity party. Besides these lingering 20-30 pounds, I’m healthy. In fact, with the 20-30 pounds, I’m really healthy. I have a great blood pressure, good cholesterol levels, amazing cardiovascular fitness, and some sweet muscles. So really these lingering 20-30 pounds are more about vanity.

I want to look as good as I feel inside because truthfully when I bust out 10 miles on the treadmill before noon on a Saturday I realize how awesome my body is. And when I lift 4,000 pounds in one work out (check out dailyburn.com which tracks the number of pounds you lift when you put in your exercises each workout). I’m strong. I’m fit. But I don’t see that in the mirror when I look after a great workout. Instead I see an overweight girl begging to burst out of this overweight suit I’m wearing.

The problem for me is my inability to tell myself no (which is something with which I struggle on more than the food front, particularly with money).  I’ve never had to tell myself no because I have lived the good life. In the past, if I wanted something I figured out a way to get it (this is also why I’m in debt up to my ears). This isn’t always a bad character trait – I’m pretty sure it’s benefited me in the educational and work spheres- but it’s definitely a trait that has it’s consequences and needs to be reigned in.

I guess what I’m saying is that my “60 day challenge” is starting tomorrow. It will probably end prematurely (at the end of day 56 when I go to CALI!) but I will do this. I will teach myself to say no. And more importantly, on day 61, I’ll be able to look at a Reese’s Cup in the secretary’s dish outside my office and I’ll be able to say no.

60 days from tomorrow I will be heading to beautiful California for the first time ever. M and I are going for the wedding of two of my law school classmates.  Several of my other classmates are making the trek as well and we are making a bit of a vacation out of the weekend. On top of that, 3 weeks later I’m taking a ladies only trip to Las Vegas. I’m really looking forward to both trips.  However, I decided that these trips are the motivations I have needed to buckle down and lose these last pounds. Seeing people I haven’t seen since last summer and some since nearly 2 years ago is great motivation for me to get in the best shape ever (not to mention that it’d be nice to be comfortable in a bathing suit). So I’ve created a little challenge for myself which I’m sure you’ve figured out by now from the title of this post.

Here are the rules of the 60 Day Challenge:

• Foods to eat: fruits, vegetables, lean meats, healthy fats
• Foods to avoid: processed anything, added sugars, white flour, and undocumented food (my dailyburn.com nutrition tracking has been lacking significantly)
• Plan meals for the week every weekend (probably Sundays)
• One meal per week will be a cheat meal. During the rest of the day I will consume between 800 – 1200 calories. That meal is free though. I’m not going to try to blow it at the meals but I want to have a bit of flexibility. I’m thinking that most weeks this meal will fall on my long run days.
• Think about each days meal the night before and do any necessary prep
• Take weekly pictures
• Take weekly weight (and no more than weekly!)
• Workout 6 days a week:
  • 3 days of running
  • 2-3 days of lifting (NROLW)
  • 2-3 days of biking
  • 2 days of swimming
• Calorie Goals
  • 1500-1800 on rest/light days
  • 1700-2000 on running/heavy days
  • Goals to be adjusted by the week depending on results
• Report weekly on my weekly goals
• Report daily on my food goals (with pictures ?!?!)
• Overall Goals:
  • Be in great shape for the wedding
  • Lose 20 pounds (2.5 pounds a week)
  • Continue to work on my fitness for the half marathon, marathon, and triathlons
  • Learn to enjoy eating clean healthy foods (this is probably the most important of the goals)

The challenge officially begins tomorrow. I’ll be taking measurements, pictures,and my starting weight in the morning, so be sure to check back in then!

But the real question is – who is going to join me?

Last Sunday, I did an indoor triathlon at the local JCC. I didn’t know what to expect and was quite nervous, but turned out I had no reason to. This indoor triathlon was 20 minutes of each exercise. A little different from a normal triathlon which is obviously biking > running > swimming in terms of time and as someone who does not enjoy the swim this was not going to be my best race.

As does every triathlon, we started out with the swim. I did 20 laps (1000 meters) in 20 minutes. I swam a large majority of this breaststroke because I’m just not confident with my freestyle stroke. The lack of confidence turns into a feeling of running out of breath in the water. This was before I started doing Total Immersion and this is exactly why I started TI. More on that later.

The bike part was done on spinning bikes equipped with bike computers. They looked at your wattage and divided it by your weight. I did well if you just look at watts, but because of my weight, I ended up 4th from last in this category. Frankly, given how I’ve done in previous triathlons, I’m not sure I buy this method of scoring, but I also don’t know how the competition in this race stacks up to a normal triathlon so I can’t really compare. If the competitors were more of top finishers in triathlons, then maybe this method is fine, but I won’t ever know.

The run went well. I finished second in my group (one guy beat me). I ended up running at about 6.6 mph. This is much better than my prior speeds in triathlons. Run Less Run Faster is paying off.

Overall, I finished 3rd from last among them women (13th from last overall). Again, given that I dont’ know how this competition stacks up compared to a real race, I’m not letting that poor showing ruin my training. Update regarding my recent training (hint: it’s going very well!).

I wish that I had good news to report, but somehow I gained 2 pounds since yesterday and a pound since last week. I had Indian for lunch yesterday which was an indulgence, but I can’t imagine it was a 7000 calorie indulgence. Oh well, I guess we’ll see what next week brings!

In other news, I redid my interval workout this morning. I did 2.5 of the 3 miles (yesterday I did 1.5). I probably could have completed the third interval but I didn’t want to push my luck.

After the run, I did Stage 2 of NROLW. I’m so glad to be on stage 2. Confession: I had a few more workouts left of Stage 1  but I feel like I’ve been doing that stage for 6 months so it was time for something new. Let me just say that I LOVED this workout. It was challenging and overall a great workout.

After lifting, I decided to try the first two skills in Total Immersion. As rudimentary as it may sound the first skill is lying on your back (in a specific way) and kicking the length of the pool. The other part of the first skill is to roll to your side and do a length.  The second skill was sticking one arm above your head for the first part and then rolling over for the second part.  I was okay with the first skill but the second was more challenging. I struggled with the breathing part. I think I’m going to retry these skills tomorrow.

And one more thing – I did a two-a-day yesterday. I ran and biked a bit in the a.m. but then I biked 10 more miles this afternoon.

That’s how I felt this morning as I attempted to do my interval workout for the week. My workout called for 3 1-mile intervals at 6.8 mph. I managed the first one just fine, but after that it was downhill.  I think I was hungry and worn out from the weekend. I decided to call it quits and try the workout again tomorrow.

I may have been running on empty for reasons other than hunger. On Saturday, I ran 9 miles in 1:33:36 which was the exact pace I was supposed to run.  This was the first long run on the treadmill that I actually managed to do the called for pace.

On Sunday, I ran an indoor triathlon. The triathlon was 20 minutes of each sport. I did 20 laps (1000 meters) swimming, biked at 155 watts (don’t have a clue what this means but with your weight they are going to calculate something using watts), and ran 26 laps (2.2 miles in 20 minutes – which was second most in my group!). The results of the triathlon aren’t out yet, but I think I did okay.

I also bought Total Immersion.  I have felt like I was just flopping along in all my swims lately and it’s been years since I’ve had swim lessons so my stroke could probably use help. I’ve considered lessons but decided that I may do that next year but this year will be a building year (including losing weight) and more importantly I need to spend the year saving some money so buying a $16.99 book seemed like a smarter idea for this year.

I wanted to try the first couple of skills this morning, but after discovering I had to go home instead of going straight to work because I left my shampoo and conditioner at home, so I’ll either be doing it tonight or tomorrow morning.

I will be reporting back tomorrow about this week’s weight loss.

Here are my current priorities in life:

• Working
• Working out
• Spending time with M
• Cooking each night
• Losing 30 pounds

The problem with those priorities is that they push the other priorities out: the thing that happens to fall out of the list the most is unfortunately this  blog. I just want to put it out there that if I have to pick a work out or blogging, I’ll always pick working out. Same with everything else on the list (some not by choice). It’s not that I don’t like blogging (because I do), or think blogging is important (hello accountability); it is just that I sometimes don’t have time. I wish I could update daily, or three times a day like some people, but unfortunately being in the business I am, I’m lucky to update the blog a few times a week. This month, in particular, has been super busy with work – in fact, I’m about to bill the most hours I’ve ever billed in one month and January was NOT a long month in terms of number of work days. Anyway, I wanted to let you know that as much as I would love to blog every day, that is just not realistic for me.

On a more positive note, Tuesdays have become my new weigh in day because that’s when I started using Daily Burn last week. Since last Tuesday, I have lost 3 pounds! I am sure it could have been more, but I’m very happy with 3 pounds. I didn’t do as well this weekend as I would have liked, but given the stuff we did, I think I did better than I have in the past. The goal this weekend is to eat at home as much as possible. We don’t really have anything going on so it shouldn’t be too hard to do that.

And an even more positive note: THE COLTS ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!! I was lucky enough to be at the AFC Championship game and can’t wait for the big game! The last time they went I lived in DC so I didn’t experience the hype in the city. I’m pretty excited to be here celebrating with the hundreds of thousands of other fans this year.

Turns out stalking people on Twitter pays off every now and then. Yesterday, I saw a conversation between two bloggers about their favorite place to track calories. One blogger was about to come over to daily plate which I have been using for a while, and the other suggested Daily Burn. Then later the one that was changing over changed her mind and said she’d be going to Daily Burn because of how great it was. I couldn’t help but look.

I can’t believe on what I’ve been missing out on. Here’s a bullet point list of features that make calorie counting websites good IMO:

• calorie counting (obviously)
• huge database of food
• good statistics
• (for bloggers) easily obtainable data
• ability to input workouts

And here’s what Daily Burn has:

• calorie counting that I can do on my iPhone by scanning the barcodes on foods. I couldn’t make that amazing feature up if I tried
• work outs that you can input and then track on  your iPhone

I promise if you don’t have an iPhone you’ll still love it:

• a database of workout suggestions
• videos of weight lifting moves
• meal and work out planning
• grocery shopping list creation if you meal plan
• challenges that you can join (e.g., lose 10 pounds, run 1000 miles, bike 1500 miles)
• the ability to take out your daily info as a CSV document (Excel compatible) meaning I can create nifty charts easily. I used to do these charts but with daily plate or fit day they were a pain to do. It was a breeze on Daily Burn. See:

• And best of all (again IMO) is that you can enter recipes item by item and it calculates the calorie content of the recipe. This is literally a dream come true to me. See the first item in the list above to see my first attempt at this.

I’m sure there are even more features that I am not including because I have yet to discover them. I’ve only been using the program for a day and this is all the stuff I’ve found in that short amount of time.

I’m not paid anything for this review. Quite the opposite in fact: I paid for Daily Burn. They have a free version but the paid one is much much more thorough and I thought worth it.

Honestly, I think I’m in love with this website.