Monday, January 13, 2013

Well, yesterday was eventful, which is why I am posting this a day late.  There was a city-wide internet outage which limited our access to recipes, support, and the ability to post this post.  Overall, the day went well, but before I post calories and such I thought I should share some decisions Carrie and I made concerning this program and how we will implement it.  First, I am still battling the congestion.  After seeking some advice from different people on the situation, we decided the exercise part of this lifestyle change will actually begin Monday, January 20....my birthday (there's probably a sermon or at least some poetic thoughts in there somewhere).  We made this decision for 2 reasons:

1. one of the very basic components of DDPYoga is breathing.  He spends 10-15 minutes talking about it, and the first 5-10 minutes of the workout is "learning to breathe."  Because of this, we thought we would wait until I COULD breathe before I started.

2. I am the world's worst person about working through sickness.  I never stop, and when I don't, I take 3 or 4 times as long to kick something.  So, for purely health reasons, I want to be congestion free to start the program.

The other hiccup in how we are implementing this program is in the nutrition phase.  DDPYoga nutrition has 3 phases.  Phase One removes all alcohol, Artificial Sweeteners, Fried Foods, Hydrogenated Oils, Soda, Sugar, White Flour, and White Rice.  Phase Two removes all Gluten and Dairy from the diet to give a final push.  Phase Three moves toward organic when you can get it and food combining.  This plan really isn't that difficult to follow, but we just bought groceries almost 2 weeks ago.  We do not want to be bad stewards and waste the food God has provided; we also cannot afford to completely buy new groceries right now.  So, we have decided that we will use the foods we have bought for now, but phase them out over the next few weeks.  We already eat semi healthy foods in our household, but we sometimes eat them is very unhealthy ways.  So, for now we have added a Phase Zero to the nutrition plan.  For the time being (until about the 30th of the month) we will begin phasing out those things in our diet that we have in our pantry.  For the most part, this simply consists of getting rid of our Vegetable Pastas (they still contain white flour!  Who knew?) and using up the various specialty wraps we had used for burritos and such along with our cereal.  We also need to use up some canned foods like Ranch Style Beans, chili, and our peanut butter with sugar added.  So, our goal is Phase Zero is to begin using up and removing these things from our diet and controlling and tracking our calorie intake.   Also, for those of you who don't know it, Carrie and I are planning a special date night for our 11th anniversary in March.  With that in mind, we will not enter phase 2 until at least after that night.  We do not want to go gluten and dairy free only to eat both on this trip and feel horrible because our bodies are not used to it.  With that being said, here is the calorie count for yesterday:


Basal Metabolic Rate                                                                                                       4590 calories
Breakfast (Potato, Vegetable Egg Scramble)                                                                   -625 calories
Lunch      (Chopped Beef Steak 95/5 lean, Brown Rice, Green Beans)                          -526 calories
Snack       (1/4 cup Macadamia Nuts)                                                                              -240 calories
Dinner      (Pepperoni Pizza on Whole Wheat Crust with Onions & Bell Pepper)         -1106.25 calories
_________________________________________________________________________________
Total Calorie Deficit                                                                                                        2092.75 calories


Now, let me introduce you to the problem I always have when counting my calories and cutting things like carbs out - I have a hard time eating enough calories.  Honestly, the only thing that saved me yesterday was the whole wheat pizza crust.  Many of you are thinking 2500 calories for a day is plenty!  That is true for the normal person, but for someone my size it is an extreme calorie deficit and can actually cause us NOT to lose weight.  Our bodies can go into starvation mode and begin keeping every calorie we eat.  I will be honest and say I do have concerns about having enough calories once we enter Phase Two, but maybe by that point I will have lost enough weight to bring my BMR down to a normal level.  We will see.