30 Day Diet Reboot Day 5
January 5th – 182.6 pounds, 12.4% fat
In today’s post we will cover the following:
- Snow Shoveling
- Progress
- Sabotage
- Avocados
- Hemp hearts
- The hard spot
We got an all-day blizzard yesterday. I ended up with about a foot of nice blizzard snow at my house. It was quite windy. The snow drifted deep in places.
We knew this storm was coming. I worked out of the house and fed logs into my fireplace all day to stay warm. When it slowed down around 6:00 PM last night I went out to move the snow out of the driveway. I finished up around 8:40 PM.
I’m frankly surprised I’m not making faster progress in my weight. Usually when I start these programs I drop the first 7-8 pounds almost immediately. Then it plateaus, and the real work begins. I think it’s because this week is a down week exercise-wise for me. Usually, when I’m in training I’m burning a lot more fuel. That will kick in as coach moves me into more aggressive workouts over the next couple weeks.
Entering snow shoveling into MyFitnessPal yields a surprising number of calories expended. Those 160 minutes of moving snow supposedly netted me 1,300 extra calories. Not sure I believe that, but my point is that if you stay active you burn a lot of fuel no matter whether it’s shoveling, chopping wood or walking the dog.
These extra calories came in handy. I was hungry early, around 4:00 PM. My wife, who was also in the house, came down and made herself a pizza. I think that got my stomach to rumbling. I had a big bowl of pinto beans and butternut squash with chili sauce. That used up all my calories for the day.
When I finally finished up shoveling it was late and I was too jacked up to go to bed. I used those extra shoveling calories to have a late snack of pickles, avocado and tomato. I know, strange, but I like all those foods. I also went off the reservation and ate a bag of nut-clusters that was leftover from a Christmas present.
Sabotage. When you go on a clean eating kick like this it will threaten the people closest to you. You are deviating from the herd, threatening the status quo. They will try to get you to stop. Case in point, my wife will go out of her way to dangle my favorite cheat foods in front of me every night and I will be forced to say ‘no’.
They are not a bad people. They probably don’t even know they are doing it. But, if you want to execute a successful clean eating campaign, you should expect and prepare for sabotage.
Avocados. I love Avocados. Some dieters will stay away from avocados because they are chock full of fat and calories. I don’t. I think they are super healthy, they fill you up and I include them in my healthy eating campaigns. I tend to not get enough fat and avocados fill that gap.
Avocados take some practice in selecting, timing the ripeness and even in preparing without cutting yourself, but they are worth the effort.
This morning for breakfast I threw a pinch of hemp hearts on my oatmeal. I don’t know what hemp hearts are. Rachel told me to buy them. They are certainly full of calories. They don’t taste like much, maybe a little nutty.
I’m coming into the weekend now and towards the end of the first week. This is when I will have some challenges. This is when the enthusiasm of the initial project starts to wane and you are at risk of relapsing.
I also find that towards the end of the first week you can experience minor withdrawal symptoms. You will be tired or have some weird physical anomalies as your body figures out it is giving up some substances (sugar, alcohol, caffeine).
We’ll see! I look forward to it! I already feel better.
Chris,