I hit the scale last Saturday after a fairly physically strenuous day of outdoor work (OK, strenuous for me at least), a time when usually the scale is nice to me (hey, I know how to work the system), and I was not happy at what I saw. It wasn’t Garfield’s “one at a time, please”, but it was a few pounds higher than I thought it would be, and a solid 7 or so pounds higher than it was when I was at my low point back in February or so. Eesh. I haven’t been just totally letting myself go, I guess, but I have been snacking too much lately and well, we do all enjoy dessert.

So I declared this week to be “No Excuses” week for me when it came to exercise - I needed to do something every day. With the gym only 1 mile down the road I don’t really have much excuse anyway; in general, my natural laziness + staying up too late at night = not getting up to work out in the morning. So this week there hasn’t been anything compelling to stay up and watch on TV (World Series starts tonight, though… uh oh), I haven’t been involved in a really engrossing book (my other late-night weakness), and so it’s been better.

  • Monday: 2 miles on the treadmill.
  • Tuesday: 1 mile on the treadmill, some weights. I have only recently discovered the bench press, and it’s frightening how little I can press. Something to work on.
  • Wednesday: 2 more miles on the treadmill, with a better time than on Monday.

My other good accountability tool in this is an online calorie tracker. I’ve been using The Daily Plate off an on for a while now… this week it’s back on. It lets you enter your height/weight/age and a weight loss goal, and then gives you a calorie-per-day target. It has calorie info for pretty much anything you’d eat, so you can just look it up, indicate how much you ate, and it gives you a nice nutritional summary.

So that’s my big push for this week. It feels good, too. Hopefully the scale will be a little friendlier to me next time I get on. Then the challenge is continuing. I think long-term it’s unrealistic to think I will hit the gym every morning every week, but if I could hit it 3 times a week plus play basketball one night? Well, that will be a big help.