BlocksA little over a month ago, I wrote about how I was turning over a new leaf. Since then, I’ve been doing the basics of what FlyLady.net talks about. I’m not doing anything fancy, I’m just doing the basics. However, I have been trying to build on the basics and expand ever so slowly in all aspects of my life. I may not be catching up on everything that I’m behind on as fast as I would like, but I’m building good habits and replacing bad ones. In the past, I would throw myself into a project to catch up and let everything else slide, thus I would be done with something I was behind on, but there’d be even more to do after the one fire was put out. These baby steps are tough to abide by, but I’m starting to see results, so I’m sticking to my guns. One baby step that feels like a huge step starts tomorrow – Holly and I are going to get healthy.

This idea all started with an episode of Rock Bodies on VH1 called From Flab To Fab. In a nutshell, they took 4 normal women and did a 3 month makeover by giving them a team of people to help them lose weight. They had a trainer, chef, the works. At the end they all had lost a ton of weight and I was quite impressed! The regimen had them working out twice a day for 5 days a week. They were restricted to 1350 calories a day and they burned 1000 a day. Given that I’m a bit extreme by nature, that type of grueling workout touched a nerve and I wanted to do the same thing.

There’s not a lot of information regarding the day-to-day things they did, so I tried to find some supplemental information on the web. That’s when I stumbled upon a weblog at Men’s Health magazine where Lou Schuler wrote after seeing the episode, “Nearly lost my mind… How these idiot trainers get a special is beyond belief. ” (see “No-B.S. Zone”). That got me to thinking that perhaps Flab To Fab wasn’t such a good idea. Besides, Holly said there was no way she was going to do the liver flush.

Back at square one, I got to thinking that most weight management programs require that you monitor your intake and exercise. So even if I don’t have a workout program yet, I know what it’s going to require. Since I would want to log this information into my Palm, I figured I’d take a look at what was out there for PalmOS that I could use. I scanned a couple of freeware apps, but I remember reading an article in Handheld Computing Magazine on BalanceLog, so I checked out the demo and it looks like we have a winner. There’s a Palm OS application as well as a desktop application. There’s a variety of diet plans to choose from, such as the AMA Heart Healthy Plan, and a very detailed library of food to help enter your meals faster.

So what’s the plan you ask?

  1. Holly and I need to purchase a pedometer to count how many steps we take each day. We have to take a certain number of steps each day and this little clip on will help count those.
  2. Next, we have to find a local place where we can get our Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) tested.
  3. We also need to take a body fat test. This will tell us how much of our body is fat. We’re trying to see if our local YMCA can administer the test, or if we need to get a Body Fat Scale. Either way, this is one of the major vectors that we’ll be tracking.
  4. Begin regular morning walks. It was raining cats and dogs this morning, but Holly and I plan on walking in the mornings. This is how we’ll start, but who knows what type of exercise we’ll engage in over time? Cycling perhaps? Dare I dream!?!
  5. Evening workouts. Right now it looks like Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are the only nights that we can go to the gym. With morning walks, we’ll be focusing on some muscle building at night.
  6. As far as eating goes, that will be based on the diet plan that we choose after we purchase and install the software. Holly and I are going to talk about it tonight as we eat the last of the fatty foods left in our kitchen. I’ll keep you posted as things progress either here, or in the workout log edit: removed. Wish us luck!