- No Coca Cola and limited consumption of other sodas
- Use Freezer cooking to help limit our eating out and fast food
- Run 4 times per week, starting with 9 total miles and ending with 12 total miles
- Do the “One A Day” challenge to maintain some situps and pushups
- http://www.quiltedaffair.com/1/post/2013/01/goal-1-140lb-weight-sub-2600-5k.html
As I mentioned in my 2013 Healthy Living post (http://www.quiltedaffair.com/1/post/2013/01/healthy-living.html), in addition to breaking my weight and running goals up by quarter, I am also going to re-evaluate my strategies at the end of each month to see where I am doing well and what needs improvement. In January, I did excellent with my goal of “no Coca cola” – I didn’t have a single sip of Coca Cola the entire month! But I drank more of other sodas that I don’t normally drink (like Sprite, Cream Soda, sparkling lemonade, etc). I did originally cut back on my Diet Mountain Dew consumption as well but by the end of January I am back up to the same amount I was drinking in December.
Carolyn and I completed our freezer cooking in January and this was another big success! Ryan and I hardly ate out at all and we didn’t throw out any food (sometimes in the past we would decide to go out instead and then the freezer cooked meal would go bad before we could eat it). We are going to run out of freezer meals exactly as expected so the duration and number of meals was planned nicely. However, we are still eating larger portions than necessary and our meals are heavy in carbohydrates (lots of rice and pastas) and too light on vegetables (if there aren’t veggies cooked in the meal then we don’t eat any).
I have been doing very poorly with the running goal unfortunately. Instead of running four times per week, I have only been running two or three times per week and getting in approximately half of my prescribed mileage. Additionally, I was supposed to run a 5k (The Tiger Dash) on Saturday 1/26 but we stayed up too late watching TV the night before and then I chose to sleep in instead of do the run. Bad Ashley!!!
I have been doing pretty well with the “One A Day” challenge. By pretty well I mean that I am caught up and have done the total number of sit-ups and pushups required for this month but some days I forget and then have to do double the next day (which is getting pretty difficult).
I was going to run a 5k loop to see if I had made any progress on my speed or endurance but I was too lazy even to do that.
So, based on the above evaluations, it sounds like I am doing pretty well with eating and drinking but not as great at working out. To help make sure I meet my first quarter goal of the 26:00 5k and 140lb weight, I am going to adjust my February strategy as follows
- No Coca Cola until after achieving Goal Weight #1. In addition, my drink choices for dinner at home will be limited to milk, water or Crystal Light (should help cut down some of the “other” sodas I was drinking) and Diet Mountain Dew will be limited to 24oz (two 12oz cans if I bought cans or one 20oz bottle if I am out of cans) per day.
- I will do another OAMC (freezer cooking) for February but one of the 10 recipes will be from Once A Month Mom’s diet freezer recipes and we will have a green vegetable (either frozen/cooked or fresh/steamed) with EVERY dinner. I am also revising our breakfast smoothie recipe to have less sugar and more protein and we will be switching from breakfast burritos to egg white and veggie omelets (maybe some turkey sausage too).
- I am going to keep the same running goal as previously stated except back-tracking by one mile – I will run at least 4 times per week starting with 13 miles (should be 14) and ending with 18 miles (should be 19). Running on the weekends is obviously not happening so I need to make it my top priority to go to bed on time and go for a run before work. Running before work also helps curb my morning snack appetite and should get my metabolism up and cranking for when I drink my smoothies.
- I will continue to do the “One A Day” challenge for sit-ups and pushups and I may need to start doing half before work and half after work as it gets harder and harder. I have already had to drop to doing some of the pushups on my knees because I can’t do that many regular pushups (I do as many as I can on my feet and then drop to my knees for the rest). In addition to the sit-ups and pushups though, I am going to add squats. To keep it from getting confusing, I will do the same number of squats as the sit-ups and pushups. So my starting number of squats won’t be 1 like it was with the original challenge, I’ll start with 32 to match the sit-ups and pushups.
I really need to make some progress towards my goal this month and I have a lot of busy weeks and weekends coming up so wish me luck!