STATurday

Check in time again.  I hit the gym hard this week, despite having to take a rest day on Monday and Wednesday due to some doctor's appointments and a lengthy test at the hospital.  I planned ahead, however, and just made those days my two rest days this week.  

I finally got a battery for my Polar Fit watch, which monitors calorie burn, and my suspicions about the treadmill were correct: I'm burning a lot more than it says I am.  I sort of like the challenge of wearing the watch and strap during a workout--I shoot for a calorie target and see if I can meet or beat it.  I was going for a 300 calorie burn during a workout, but I'm kind of blasting through that, so now I'm shooting for 500.  

My workouts right now consist of doing a pretty intense hill workout on the treadmill for about 3 miles, 5 days a week.  A couple of those days, I add in 30 minutes of strength training before hitting the treadmill.  I'm also adding in 50-100 squats with the TRX bands at the end of a treadmill workout (or doing them during the strength training, depending on the day)  I'm definitely feeling it today--my abs and biceps are sore and I'm feeling slightly jelly-like.  I'll probably have to change it a bit once school starts back up, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  

Stats: I lost another pound, so I'm down a total of 7 pounds.  I did take measurements yesterday, and I've lost in a few places, but gained in others (what the heck??), so the net loss is 0.88 inches.  The biggest gain was in my waist, and that is the area that is most prone to change on a daily basis, so I might retake that measurement for a few days to see if it is different.  I lost the most on my hips--almost an inch.  I gained a quarter inch on my thighs, but that could be muscle, or it could be just getting the tape in a slightly different place--it is hard to get it in exactly the same spot every time.  I also lost almost an inch on my biceps and a quarter inch on my neck.

Food-wise, I'm not doing much else different.  Eating cereal in the morning, a ham and cheese sandwich at noon, a high-protein snack around 3:00, and then a small portioned dinner.  I get why nutritionists like dinners that consist of a whole protein, a whole starch, and vegetable sides, as it is very easy to calculate portions and calories, but I can't afford to feed my family like that.  I'm drinking more non-coffee fluids (mostly Crystal Light lemonade, and Sobe Yumberry Pomegranate Lifewater) and staying off the fizz.  My nails are really in a sorry state--peeling and brittle, and I'm not really sure why they are so much worse all of the sudden.  My nails are never super great, but they aren't usually this bad, even in winter.

As for supplements, I'm taking a gummy multi-vitamin (because I can't tolerate large pills), acai berry, vitamin D (5,000 mcg), and biotin (10,000 mcg).  I'm considering adding some other things, but want to discuss with my GI doc when I see her on Monday as I think I'm not absorbing nutrients very well right now, and I'm not really sure what to do about that.