Weigh-in 01.29.12

Goodbye 372, 371. I’ve lost two more pounds and now weigh 370. This brings my 2012 weight loss total to 9 pounds. Next week, that number should be in the double digits. I’m ready for that. I’ve been ready for that. There may be some challenges this week, but first let’s look at what happened last week.

Things I did right last week include eating out less, eating more fruits and vegetables and a bit of increased activity. The majority of my meals were cooked at home last week. I did have take-out (Taco Time) twice and purchased lunch from the cafeteria once last week. This is a major improvement and one I plan to continue. I’m still not eating enough fruit or vegetables servings, but I ate more this week than I have in quite some time so this goes in the win column. I only made an effort to exercise once last week, but once is more than none so again a win. My total walking steps last week were 16,317. This beats the previous week (11,980), but since that week was spent house-bound from the snow, it’s not saying much. My plan for this week is to walk over 18K steps. That’s doable.

Evening snacking and drinking too much soda were problems for me last week. I cannot remember the last time I did not have a chocolate snack in the evening. Last week the snack was either chocolate ice cream or some pretzels along with Hershey’s Kisses. Most often I am not hungry in the evening but still snack. This is a habit that I have carried for decades. I need to replace the snack with something healthy or just not have one. I will work on that this week. I would also like to cut back on the diet soda. Most days I have at least two and some days maybe three. The more diet soda I am drinking the less water I intake. This needs to be reversed.

Sometimes when I am not drinking enough water I tend to get leg cramps. I wish that I was only talking about charlie horses in the calves, but that is not the case. I will often experience cramps in my hamstrings (back of the thigh), which are hard to work out or worse the quadriceps specifically the Sartorius muscle (front of thigh) where the pain brings me to tears (and prayer) every time. Last Tuesday and Wednesday I experienced cramping in the hamstrings as I was walking back from meetings at work. I was surprised because on both days I had over 64 oz of water. So this made me wonder if it had anything to do with the additional blood pressure medication my doctor had prescribed a couple of months ago. On Friday I had a scheduled blood pressure check. It was 136/78, which is down from last time. I asked the nurse about the cramps, which lead to blood tests. This morning I received the test results in an automatically generated email. It looks like both my Sodium and Chloride are a bit lower than the standard range. My Potassium level was normal. I’ll have to wait until the doctor sends a note with an explanation and possible recommendation. My guess is that I need to eat foods with more electrolytes or find a low sugar sport drink. I will continue to work on drinking at least 64 oz of water. I would like to drink double that but will need to figure out the sodium/chloride thing before I do.

The water issue is one of the challenges that I will have for this week. The other is that it is my birthday week. Birthdays usually mean a one or two meals out and of course, birthday cake. I don’t want to gain weight this week, so I plan to do things different this year. I’ll discuss more about that later this week. After I weighed in yesterday, I had a horribly fattening breakfast. The rest of the day wasn’t much better, so recovering from that feeding frenzy will also be a challenge this week. I’ve got my work cut out for me this week. How about you? Do you have any challenges this week?