Junk Food Free July – Week 4 Result

Well, July is now over. I wanted to give you all my weekly update, as well as my monthly summary.

On the nutrition side of things, I’ve been getting more protein. This is mostly chicken that I’ve cooked, and some beef. Speaking of which, a burger on whole wheat toast is awesome! way better than just a white bun. I’ve also been drinking a ton of water at work. I haven’t done as well with the fruits and vegetable however.

The exercise has also suffered a little. I didn’t meet my goal of 16km for the week, although i did run 4 miles on Saturday morning without much trouble. So I’m getting better at it. I’m wondering if 16km was too ambitious. I’m usually sore the day after a run, so it’s not so easy to run 2 days in a row. That can be problematic if I don’t plan the week ahead of time. The takeaway here is that i need to stay on top of it. So I need to be mindful of when I last ran. I’ve been taking the bus this past week, so I walk around more. I doubt it had any significant impact, but it feels good. By the way, if you live in Seattle I suggest that you try out the bus system – it’s pretty good.

I am happy with my overall progress this month. I’m 10 pounds lighter than when I started. While I’d like to think “I’ll just do exactly the same thing for the next 3 months and I’m done” – something tells me it’s not going to be that easy. So, what have I learned? A few things actually. The biggest thing is don’t eat a lot at one sitting – space things out. By doing this, I don’t get super tired in the afternoon like i used to. Nowaday if I’m tired, its because I didn’t sleep well the night before and not because I’m in the midst of a food coma. Another thing is time matters. When you eat something, seems to matter. There were several nights where I hungry at 10pm or 11pm. Usually I’d just go to sleep. The metabolism is gonna slow down as soon as I go to sleep, so it’s best not to give it additional food to digest. It probably wont get to it anyway and just store it as fat. If the hunger pangs are just too much, drink some water. This will let you feel full, without the additional calories. This will just tide you over until you can eat something good in the morning. Also, progress comes from modifying your diet and exercise. Doing just one only maintains what you have.

I had started with the idea of twittering my daily status. I did do it for a few days, but it quickly fell by the way side. I think I just needed something to keep me mindful of the goal. Now I’m thinking that writing this blog weekly was enough to accomplish that. Once I got into it, it was easier. I kept the commitment to myself. Just like the life lesson that we learn from Back to the Future – you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it

Weight: 262 ( delta from last week is -3 )