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Sunday, February 03, 2013

A rough week

I had a little bit of a scratchy throat on Sunday, but I didn't think much of it, and went ahead and went to swim practice. Monday I woke up with an even worse sore throat. I took it easy all day Monday and most of Tuesday because I don't get sick days -- I have to teach if I possibly can, and I have 4-hour classes on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and then was supposed to guest-star in a friend's class on Thursday night.

I had signed up for a Lose It! challenge to exercise every day in January for 30 minutes, so I did try to stick with it by taking a walk Monday and Tuesday. By Wednesday, I was feeling even worse and was facing another night of teaching so I decided to give up on the challenge -- 29/31 days isn't bad, especially considering that I exercised for more than 30 minutes most of those days.

Lose It uses a bank-account method -- it gives you credit for the calories you burn, but it keeps the baseline low enough that I should lose even if I don't exercise if I stay in the green zone. According to Russ and Jeff, my calorie goals should be higher but I shouldn't eat exercise calories. It works out about the same on weeks when I am exercising regularly -- I suppose I could mess around with the settings on Lose It, but I haven't bothered. This week looks worse than it really is as a result. It doesn't matter. I don't expect to lose this week, and because I have been drinking so much water, I have also been eating foods that are a little higher in salt. I weighed in this morning and was up about a pound from Monday. Not surprising, considering how congested I am and how much I feel off my game.

If I were on a diet, or had a weight-loss resolution, I might feel like I had blown my good record. What I really think is that things like this are going to happen, and once I am feeling better, I am looking forward to getting back to my new normal lifestyle, and I expect that I will go back to losing regularly. As Jeff would say (and I was thrilled to see that Russ had posted a new podcast), "You can fail a diet but you can't fail a lifestyle."

I have been feeling a little better the last couple of days. I even shoveled my sidewalk and driveway yesterday, which took about 45 minutes, and went out and swept and salted this morning. I am going to skip swimming tonight and hope that I wake up feeling better tomorrow and can start a healthier week.

2 comments:

  1. 11:47 AM

    What a great attitude ... and I do hope you're feeling back to normal very soon.

    Reply
  2. 4:54 PM

    Did the fresh/cold air make it easier or harder on your respiratory system? Glad you are feeling better.

    One pound is very little with the amount of salt you had described. Will be interesting to see next week.

    Reply

"Count your calories, work out when you can, and try to be good to yourself. All the rest is bulls**t." -- Jillian Michaels at BlogHer '07