March Resolution Update

As I mentioned in this post, John and I vowed recently vowed to "get in shape, by golly!"  John found this fab website called SparkPeople. If you are unfamiliar with it, this site is basically like Weight Watchers online except. . .wait for it. . .wait for it. . . it's FREE!!  (Disclaimer:  This is not a paid endorsement, but I would gladly take it under advisement should anyone at SparkPeople decide that they should like to advertise in this very small and narrow market.  Clearly, this blog is an advertiser's dream!)  John and I are both experiencing immediate success.  Although, I have come to accept that there are some hard lessons to be learned:

1. Men can eat a lot more than women and still lose weight. (Especially men who are almost a foot taller than you!) The lower end of John's caloric threshold is the maximum of mine.  Tonight after dinner when I had reached my threshold level, John started to inform me "I still need to eat about. . . "  His voice trailed off when he saw the look of death I was giving him.
2. Men get more credit for the same amount of exercise.  Sunday, we had to trade off walks because of our schedules and Cora's naptime.  So, John speedwalked down to the trail and back for a total of 2.6 miles in 39 minutes.  He got credit for 319 calories.  I walked and ran the same distance in the same amount of time and only got credit for 150.
3. Men can just eat more.  John's basal metabolic rate (the amount of calories he needs per day just to stay alive) is 2500.  My basal metabolic rate is 1645.  This means that when we have reached our goals and just want to maintain our weight, John can eat almost a THOUSAND more calories than me - without exercising!  'Sup with that??

So it should not surprise you that John has lost about 10 pounds, and I have lost about 4.  But, I still love it, despite the fact that the process is cosmically (or is that comically?!) unfair.  The easy thing about it is that since you are recording everything you eat, you subconsciously make more of an effort to eat better.  Still, it will not necessarily stop me from a splurge now and then.  Like when I had a 500 calorie muffin for breakfast and washed it down with 250 calories worth of Dr. Pepper.   I balanced my 750 calorie breakfast with a 42 calorie lunch.  (It was a giant bowl of lettuce and some tomatoes with balsamic vinaigrette. You can eat about a ton of lettuce for about 7 calories!)  I realize this is not the best approach to dieting, but that was the one day it was really off balance.  So, friend, you have endured all of that drivel so that you could get to the point of this post - Cora anecdotes!!

Along with watching what we eat, we have been exercising most days of the week.  So, Cora (who has incidentally now mastered climbing into her stroller by herself) is in heaven.  The day of my muffin transgression I had decided that Cora and I would walk to the store instead of drive.  She gets so excited about going for walks that John and I have to be very careful not to say 'walk' within her earshot unless we are planning on going immediately.   Anywho, we trounced off to the store where I discovered all kinds of wonderful things that I should probably not eat.  And, where Cora found all kinds of wonderful things that she would like to play with - things including a shiny purple pinwheel which happened to be only $1!  Score!  Best dollar I've ever spent.  

She loved watching it blow in the wind so much so that her poor mother spent about 20 minutes trying to replicate the wind with her lung power after they were back home.  (Some free advice:  Make sure to stop blowing on the pinwheel when you feel your head getting fuzzy and your heartrate rapidly increase!)  So, every walk since, she has held her pinwheel proudly in the air 

(It's hard to get a great picture of a pinwheel in action, so I took the liberty of labeling it for you. ; )  And, because I am a sucker for her sweet little self, her is another jewel for you.

She loves her sunglasses!  (I think she kind of looks like a cute, girly Johnny 05.  Bragging rights to anyone who can identify that reference!) Well, I think that ends this excessively long and boring post.  Happy March Resolutions, y'all!