First day of exercising in the morning. Nothing too exciting… this morning’s workout took roughly 10 minutes and consisted of: 3 stretches, 4 mini-crunches, 5 leg lifts, 3 mini-push-ups, jogging in place for 160(x2) steps, and 7 jumping jacks.
This was “Level 2” on the fitness scale (see previous post for link to _The Hacker’s Diet_ chapter: “What, Me Exercise?”). It was pretty easy to complete, but I spent the next half-hour coughing up something from my chest, so I’m perfectly willing to follow Walker’s advice and stay at this “level” for a week before turning it up a notch.
The only exercise that was a bit awkward was what he called “Leg Lifts (Introductory)” – lying on your stomach, lift your head and left leg, smoothly lower both, then lift your head and right leg and lower. It’s not uncomfortable enough to make me stop doing them, though.
Food: Yesterday I tracked what I ate on WW, not trying to modify my eating but just tracking. Even with McDonald’s breakfast it came out to 38.5 POINTS! out of a possible 41. So, either something is really wrong with my POINTS!! total or else I’m doing mostly OK and just need to moderate my portion sizes a bit. (I love it how it’s always POINTS in the WW material, like they think they have a servicemark on the word. :)
The only exercise that was a bit awkward was what he called “Leg Lifts (Introductory)” – lying on your stomach, lift your head and left leg, smoothly lower both, then lift your head and right leg and lower. It’s not uncomfortable enough to make me stop doing them, though.
That sounds like it would be hard on your back. Seems like it’d be better (and more exercise) to be on your back and lift your head and legs in the more ‘natural’ direction for them to go.
Even with McDonald’s breakfast it came out to 38.5 POINTS! out of a possible 41.
I don’t put much faith in WW, but it’s pretty cool to have a diet where you could eat fast food if you wanted.
I have severe issues, though, with the idea that you could blow your entire points with one breakfast sandwich. Denying yourself food the rest of the day just seems like a slippery slope to me, but I am an avowed anti-dieter and pro-fat-acceptance activist.
Actually in my case the mcd breakfast sandwich was only 11 points out of 41. I had that on Sunday and was actually under my points (sorry, POINTS) for the day. On the other hand, today I’m actually over by a little so I’m cashing in some POINTS that are extra for the week.
They dress up the system with POINTS but it seems to me that one could get most of the same value by just tracking calories. Anyway, at least there’s a web widget for tracking everything.
So far I don’t know if this counts as being “on a diet”. I mean, I want to alter my eating strategy but I want to do it slowly, incrementally, so that I’ll be more likely to find something I can keep doing indefinitely.
I’ll keep everyone posted…
You might want to check out Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, it is a disturbing look at conventional wisdom about diet and health, and how it got that way, as well as what the available research shows.
Or, to put it another way, everything is wrong, really wrong. The first few pages badly need a rewrite, the rest is tolerable, though often a bit dense. It doesn’t say what we should do (well, real research before telling hundreds of millions of people to alter their diet would be a good thing), but it does make it clear why the conventional wisdom is wrong (sugar, white flour, other high glycemic index foods are really bad, fats and protein, not bad like you were told).