Day 7... Tuesday

Well it has been a full seven days since I have started. I cannot believe I have already committed to a week. Today was one of those days that I could not get out of bed to go work out. I was exhausted. So as I pushed the snooze, I promised that I would be at the gym tonight.

I left for work with a banana. I think this is a great way to start the day. First of all it gets some fruit into my diet, second you can snack on a banana and make it last to leave you more full, and third, they just taste great! According to caloriecount.com this fruit gets an A- in nutrition with full serving of 105 Calories... 0 Calories from fat. Now let me be honest, I saw a Special K breakfast bar today, it had 90 Calories... but it was no where near giving me the same full and satisfying feeling that I look for in breakfast. So to me it is worth the extra 20 calories that will last a bit longer and are naturally healthy for me.

THANK YOU Mishayla Andrew! I was trying to decide what I was going to get for lunch (as I once again forgot my packed lunch) and was weighing out my choices to make sure it wouldn't weigh in on the scale. Just as I was getting ready to go to lunch, Shay sent me an encouraging email that helped me feel confident in the decision of my lunch.
I ended up going to Subway... eat fresh! I got their new Turkey Melt on a 6 in. whole wheat bun. It comes with provolone cheese, and obviously as many or little veggies you choose. I had mine with black olives and lettuce with yellow mustard as the condiment. The sandwich itself is 280 calories, the olives were 10 calories, and the mustard was 11 calories. Altogether it makes it 301 calories for the sandwich. I also had a 1/2 bowl of Subways chicken and dumpling soup... it is DELICIOUS!!! This was 170 for the bowl, but cut in 1/2 makes it 90, but I had a couple crackers in it, so I would average it at about 100 calories... Making my lunch a total of 401 calories!!! Not too bad!!!!

I did have a couple pieces of chocolate covered nut candies at my work today... I have no idea what kind of calories those might have, but I am sure at least 100 calories... I will make an educated guess for the total... they were good though!

For dinner I had some of my mom's homemade chicken noodle soup... yum! Depending on the recipe, the soup averages at about 367 calories for a bowl, but again, I only at half. Since I don't know my mom's recipe I will round the 1/2 bowl up to about 200 calories. I also had 1/2 a peanut butter sandwich on white whole grain bread. The bread is 120 calories and the peanut butter is 100 calories (about a tablespoon and 1/2)... My dinner marks out to be about 300 calories.

I desperately did NOT want to go to the gym today... I was so tired from work and I just didn't have the energy to go. But as I was debating the whole car ride home from work, I knew that I had to... because you guys have been so encouraging! And I appreciate knowing that when I don't have the determination to do it some days, you all will encourage me... and sure enough! Melissa Duggan, helped me to be determined at the gym today.... She mentioned she had read the blog, and I knew I had to go and put in all I had while I was there!

I did 20 min on the elliptical... I did 3 miles in the 20 min!!! I was so excited! And I bumped it up from level 10 to level 11. Let me tell you, that doesn't sound like much, but I sure did feel it! I burned 290 calories on the elliptical (almost my whole lunch!)
I spent about 40 min doing upper body and arms today. I did the machine I did yesterday (still couldn't find the name of it). But if you look to yesterday's post I repeated the machine exactly, but added in two more pulls of the rope at 20 reps each. I rotated around different upper body and arm machines, each one I did for 20 reps. I based the weight of resistance on what was somewhat of a challenge on the first one I did.
I wrapped up my workout with the StairMaster 7000... OK I added the 7000... that makes it seem more intense...
12 min on level 7 on calorie burn mode. PHEW... my calves were burning after 3 min. That thing will tone your legs so quickly! I did a mile of stairs and burned 120 calories.

Coming home was a bit hard. I had the munchies BAD!!! I at 4 Nilla Wafers to try to get a sweet taste in my mouth and hope that was enough (70 calories) and then I munched on a snack bag lauren had (about 1 handful) and finally just decided I was wasting calories.

In total what I ate today was just about 1100 Calories. Much much better than what I did yesterday. YAY!
The Calories I officially burned today would be about 800 at the gym, and during the day probably another 700... making my calories burned 1500! This means I took in 400 less calories than I put out... which means with I can lose weight!

Thanks again for reading! May the Lord Bless you!
Alyssa