So, it's been a little while because we've both been incredibly busy with work stuff. Brian's had a few hockey games lately and I've had a ton of stuff going on at work.
So with all that, we were quite pleased to each have a snow day the day after MLK Jr. Day (aka Inauguration Day). Brian didn't go in because the roads were pretty bad in Knightdale and I worked from home. We ended up with 6 inches and they were quite pretty. Gatsby wasn't sure what to think of it and couldn't quite grasp that he shouldn't run really fast on the driveway because that was why he kept sliding all over the place. It was pretty hilarious. Brian and I each had to walk out into the snow to show him that it wasn't a scary monster that was going to eat him. After he experienced it once or twice he wasn't scared of it anymore and would run out in it, but always wanted to come flying back inside ASAP. As the following pictures show, he spent his day napping: http://picasaweb.google.com/lsleblanc82/Snow2009.
I started NS on Monday (1/26) and so far it's been incredibly easy and successful. The food has been quite good; there have been a few entrees that I haven't been incredibly stoked about, but all have been edible. The good thing about NS is that you have to add in a lot of fresh veggies, protein, dairy, and fruit, so if you don't like one of their entrees, you're still eating lots of other stuff. I have not been hungry once. The hardest thing has been drinking 64 oz./water each day. I've done it most of the days, but it's still hard. I like water, but not that much! The meal-by-meal layout for me is the following (it differs by age and sex):
Breakfast
NS breakfast entree
Fruit serving
Dairy or protein serving
Lunch
NS lunch entree
Salad with 2 tbsp of fat free dressing
Dairy or protein serving
Snack
Dairy/protein serving
Fruit Serving
Dinner
NS dinner entree
2 vegetable servings
1 salad serving with fat free dressing or 1 fruit serving
1 fat serving
Dessert
NS dessert entree
It's incredibly easy to follow and it's a lot of food each day. It's also quite flexible, so you can move things around during the day as long as you're eating pretty regularly. I've basically figured it out so that I'm eating every 2-3 hours.
I've lost about 6 lbs. in the first week, which I know will significantly taper off, but it's awesome to get a good jumpstart. Mom and dad have also done really well too.
With my plan, I ordered 20 days of food with the idea that you can take weekends off, but I've pretty much figured out that most (off) days I will stick with NS for breakfast, lunch, and dessert. So, last night, I ordered some extra breakfast/lunch/dessert entrees to get a bit more variety and to hold me over for the extra 8 days that I will have until my next month's worth of food comes. We also ordered a few extra dinner entrees for Brian to have. He's only had one thing that he really didn't like, which is good.
The other cool thing I've discovered is that they have a very active online community and it's unreal supportive. There are a group of people who started on the same day as me and so we're checking in with one another pretty regularly to see how it's going. It's good to have other people to talk to at the same stage. There are so many successful people on the message boards. One lady lost 204.6 lbs!!!!! and there are so many others who've lost between 50-125 lbs. It's really inspiring. They also have a lot of threads on different ways to spice up the food to stay on program or cool ways to combine servings. For example, today I realized that I could mix my granola cereal in with my yogurt and fruit to have a yummy breakfast parfait and I saved my snack protein until dinner and put a few small pieces of turkey pepperoni on my NS pizza for dinner. I've really been quite impressed. It might actually make me a good cook!
I've also decided that I want to do a 5K in April. I'm doing this Couch-to-5K training program that involves 3 sessions/week for 8 weeks. Basically, you start out doing mostly walking and then you add in more jogging until you're mostly jogging. On 3 of my nontraining days each week, I'm still doing just a normal walk to get some cardio in and I'm making Tuesdays my rest day (because those are the days I tutor Luz Marina and don't get home until at least 7:30p):
Sunday: 5K training session (~30 minutes)
Monday: walking (~30-60 minutes) & light weight/toning video (~10 minutes)
Tuesday: rest
Wednesday: 5K training session (~30 minutes)
Thursday: walking (~30-60 minutes) & light weight/toning video (~10 minutes)
Friday: 5K training session (~30 minutes)
Saturday: walking (~30-60 minutes) & light weight/toning video (~10 minutes)
So Gatsby and I started that on Friday and so far so good. The 5K training is hard, but good. I can tell from my heart rate monitor (and my sore muscles the next day!) that I'm working hard. Right now I'm at a point where I walk for 5 minutes, jog for 1 minute, walk for 1.5 minutes, jog for 1 minute and then repeat until I've gone 20 minutes, and then have a cool down walk for a little while at the end. Gatsby is an awesome partner. He loves, loves, loves the running parts. For the most part he stays on task with me and doesn't want to stop too often, but if he does want to stop, too bad for him! :-) I let him have a little bit more freedom during the warmup and cooldowns.
We're really lucky in our neighborhood to have a lot of sidewalks and these cool paved nature trails running in the woods. We're also lucky that the entrances are really close to our house! It's sooo nice to finally have a good, safe place to be walking outside!
So that's pretty much it for now. I'll keep y'all posted on the progress! If you have any good ideas for a 5K in April, let me know! I'm still looking for a good one to sign up for.
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