Yes, Exercise!

So the last couple of days have been very interesting. I was really excited on Wednesday when I finally figured out what I think is the issue underlying my lack of progress even when I stick to my program like glue. Since I believe the issue is that I'm not exercising enough, I immediately began trying to think of ways to get more.

The most obvious answer is walking, but unfortunately that's not very practical right now. After falling and spraining my ankle and hurting my knee last fall while walking on the gravel outside the trailer, I'm very reluctant to do that any more. The footing simply isn't good enough. At the beginning of the year, I was using my father-in-law's treadmill, but he's moved things around and it's no longer accessible. So if walking is out, what about other types of exercise? Well, there's certainly no room in here for any type of exercise equipment, and even if I wanted to leave the house, which I don't, we can't afford a gym membership. Finally, I decided that since I've been using the Wii for exercise up to this point, I'd just step it up a notch and get the Wii Fit. The software's got a 330 lb weight limit, but there are workarounds for that.

So yesterday morning, very excited to start out with it, I started setting it up. The workarounds for the weight limit are annoying, but I eventually got it ready to go and started trying some of the aerobic exercises. Rhythmic boxing? Fail. Hula hoop? Fail. Basic step? Fail, plus run into the furniture. Ouch. I was very upset and discouraged, and about ready to give up on trying to lose weight altogether, but Chad said he'd help me try to figure out a way that I could actually successfully use it once he got home. I wasn't very hopeful that he'd be able to, but I figured it was worth a shot...and he did!

He discovered that an activity called "Free Step" is very simple, doesn't take much space at all, and best of all, is actually designed to be used while you watch something else on TV! Basically, all it involves is stepping back and forth onto and off of the Wii Fit Board. Even I can do that - most of the time. I did it for 20 minutes this morning...I had planned to do it for 30 minutes, but I just couldn't make it. It was probably a little overambitious anyway. The software even gives you a formula for figuring out how many calories you burned during your activity. I was a little disappointed when I discovered that my 20 minutes only burned about 175 calories, but it's a start. When I add that 175 calories to my 350 for boxing (yes, I'm doing the Wii Fit in addition to the boxing) I'm up to 525! Over a quarter of the way to my goal of 2000 per day!

Anyway, food for the last two days:

Wednesday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, turkey pastrami wrap - 14 points
Snack: Apple - 0 points
Dinner: Chicken and dumplings, milk - 25 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 5 points
Total: 54 points

Thursday
Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana - 10 points
Lunch: Tomato-beef broth, salad- 12 points
Snack: Greek yogurt with applesauce - 3 points
Dinner: Beef & vegetable stir-fry, rice, milk - 23 points
Dessert: Pudding with Cool Whip - 4 points
Total: 52 points

It's going to be a bit labor-intensive, but I think I'm going to start double-tracking my food and exercise. The WW tracker tells me my points values for everything, but since I'm trying to increase my exercise until I'm burning 2000 calories per day more than my intake, it would be somewhat helpful to actually know how many calories I'm consuming and burning, don't you think? So I'm going to go back to fatsecret.com and its associated Android app (thanks to Travis for reminding me of it!) to record everything as well. One of the really nice things about that site is that it automatically calculates the calories burned in 8 hours of sleeping and 16 hours of resting at your current weight, so once I enter my activities and exercise I'll actually get a fairly accurate number for my daily calorie deficit. Double-tracking is kind of a pain, but I can't think of another way to get all the relevant information, and once I get most of my main recipes entered it shouldn't take too long.