That'll Teach Me...

This afternoon, some of my piano students and I got together and had a party to celebrate Mozart's birthday.  We watched a movie about Mozart's life and music and had pizza for dinner and birthday cake.  (I'm very impressed by the woman behind the bakery counter at Festival who didn't so much as blink when I said I wanted "Happy Birthday Mozart!" written on a cake.)  I planned what I could eat all day so I could have 2 pieces of pizza, a breadstick, and a slice of cake.  I did great...right up until I finished my 2nd slice of pizza.  It was so good I talked myself into one more slice of cheese pizza, promising myself that I would walk it off on the treadmill before I went to bed.  The total I needed to walk off came to 305 calories.  So I came home and started walking.  I walked 84 minutes and was still 10 calories short!  UGH!  That'll teach me...

I'm a Loser

Before Christmas (in this post), I blogged about starting on a journey toward a healthier weight.  I'm really very impressed by the tool I found to help me...

I hate writing down every bite I eat.  It takes time to write it down, figure out the calories, points, exchanges, or whatever system you are using to keep track of how much you should be eating.  I'm usually fed up with tracking what I eat by the 2nd day.  www.myfitnesspal.com however, is working for me.  Once I enter a food, I never have to enter it again.  If I eat exactly the same breakfast I did the day before I can "copy yesterday."  Once I enter a recipe, I can always pull it up and add it to my day.  I can also enter any exercise I do and have it give me "positive" calories back for the activity.  The thing I like most is that I get instant feedback.  Weight loss is a waiting game.  The foods I didn't eat and the exercise I did today might not show up on the scale for 2-3 days.  I like to know that what I'm doing is making a difference, even if I can't see it yet.  At the end of the day, once all of my foods and exercise are entered, I can "close" the day.  Once I do that, a sentence pops up that says "If every day were like today...you'd weigh xxx.x lbs. in 5 weeks."  I know it's approximate, but it gives me some motivation to do it again the next day.  It's working, too...I'm down 4 lbs. since Christmas.

Happy Weekend!  (And Go Pack Go!)

Not Even a Taste!

In my post about Catholic (Christian) Morality, I mentioned that I struggle somewhat with my weight.  I always have...mostly due to my love of chocolate and that my #1 leisure time activity is reading (you don't burn a lot of calories turning pages).  However, my weight has gone up more, recently, than ever before.  I spent several years teaching part time at 2-4 different schools to make my hours (and my checks) add up to a full time job. Those were years I spent just surviving. I'd spend the weekend trying to get ready for the next week (but usually only getting as far as Wednesday), then Monday through Wednesday evenings getting ready for Thursday and Thursday night scrambling to get ready for Friday. Saturday would roll around and I'd start all over again. I didn't have time to take care of myself and my weight reflects that. Now that I've been teaching at just one school for over a year, I've decided it's time to get serious about getting back to the weight I was at when I graduated college (or a little less).  I firmly believe that I need to take better care of my body. 

So, with this new resolve, I created a profile at http://www.myfitnesspal.com/.  It's a free calorie counter in which I can keep track of the foods that I eat and the exercise I get.  I'm sure it's not perfect, but I haven't had any trouble finding the foods I ate today or the exercise I wanted to log.  You'll notice that I've added a ticker at the bottom of my blog's home page that shows how far I am in my weight loss (right now it show 0, but I'm looking forward to making it move).  The nice thing is that I don't just have to count walking or weight lifting as exercise to earn calories...I can even earn positive calories for playing my flute or time spent cooking.  It's also a bit of social networking because members are encouraged to friend each other for support.  If this sounds like something that would help you, feel free to look me up when you join.  My username is monsmusic.

One way I know I must be serious is that I just spent an hour in the kitchen chopping Twix candy bars up and making some bars to take to a cookie exchange and ALL of the leftovers are still downstairs in the kitchen.  I didn't even have a taste.