Let the Slow-Carb Diet Commence! Day 1

I had a nice, proper little Sunday morning sleep-in, and woke up around quarter to eight. I was sore, but not crippled, so I took that as a good sign. I got up, took care of the usual morning business, then got on the scales to get a preliminary damage report. I weighed myself undressed and then dressed (essentially the same clothes I wear to every meeting), and my numbers were 148.5 kg (327.4 lbs) undressed and 151.6 kg (334.2 lbs) dressed. If those numbers are right, then I lost 0.8 kg (1 ¾ lbs) since weigh-in yesterday. If that's true, then that's totally freaking awesome! But I'm not getting too excited until I've done a few more measurements over the next couple of days.

After that, I got started on my first full official day of slow-carb eating. Breakfast was fried eggs, and the bacon, bean, and corn and spinach mix. Damn, that's a good breakfast!

Then I headed out to the garage, to spend some time suffering on the Cross-trainer of Doom. I varied the resistance, sticking with the normal level 6 for the first 12 minutes, then upping it to level 7 (or whatever the hell 4 bars is) for 3 minutes, then level 9 (5 bars) for 3 minutes, then back down to level 6 for a final 3 minutes. 21 minutes total, with the first 3k in 11:10, and burning 340 cals. Later I got back on to do a 10 minute session, but had some weird abdominal pains and stopped after 5 minutes. Five minutes is better than nothing, right? And it burned another 80 calories.

Lunch was chicken breast (marinated in tamarind, Blue Kitchen Hot Chilli Sauce, and lime juice) and a lentil and veggies (carrots, peas, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, and spinach) and some salsa.

I'd hate a late breakfast (around 9) and I didn't eat until around 1:30 because I really wasn't hungry. And I only cooked 3 out of the 5 pieces of chicken I had marinating. After the way I stuffed myself yesterday, I didn't want to eat too much today, even if it's all slow-carb stuff.

Since lunch I've put in two 10-minute sessions on the bastard of a cross-trainer. The first time I did 3k in 9:40, and the second time I did it in 9:15 (on level 4). So according to CalorieKing, I've eaten 1130 cals, burned 750 cals, for a net of 380 calories so far today. Weight Watchers says I've used 21 ProPoints and earned 18 Activity Points.

A good start so far for Day 1.

Update to include dinner, etc.

Dinner was, BIG SURPRISE, some meat and some mixed veggies!

Ok, maybe not a surprise, but the steak was delicious, the veggies were okay, and it got the job done. At some point today I'd started thinking that I might give the veggies a miss and go with a salad and a half an avocado instead. But for whatever reasons, it didn't end up happening. The boys had the same (the three of them split the other steak), with the bonus of mashed potatoes and gravy. I was a little bit envious, but not much.

Dinner was 578 calories, coffee afterwards was another 23, so I finished the day with 1725 calories consumed.
I did another 10-minute workout around 5:00, then another one after dinner. And to end the day, I just finished a 30-minute session, and now I am one tired ass. That's a total of 1560 calories burned, for a net of 165. If I'd done one more 10-minute session at some point today, I would've had net calories of 0. Unless I used a different program to count everything, and then I'd end up with a different number. So what the hell, the numbers are really only good as ball-park figures, right?

Alright, that's it. What a helluva weekend. It's time for bed.

Breakfast of Champions

Day three of the slow-carb test-drive started a little late (when the alarm went off at 5:30, Karen said she wasn't getting up, and I expressed my disappointment in her choice and then went back to sleep), but once it got started, it's gone very well.

For breakfast, I cut back on the carbs (1/3 of a can of beans instead of 1/2) and added an extra egg. So that's three eggs with a bit of homemade salsa, then a mix of borlotti (pinto) beans, bacon, spinach, and corn with more of the salsa.

I swear, it is an absolutely AWESOME breakfast. It doesn't feel like a diet when you're eating it (nor should it, I guess, since it's about 600 calories/16 ProPoints Correction: 8 ProPoints). But if that's 1/3 of my calories for the day, then it's not really a problem. As my daily calorie allowance drops, I'll cut down the serving sizes.

But one thing I've realized already is that, regardless of whether this slow-carb thing works out, it's already changed the way I eat.

After breakfast, I headed for the cross-trainer (I think I'm going to have to stop hating on it, because it's not trying to kill me any more) and went for 20 minutes. Putting new music on my workout playlist was smart, because I'd finished at 15 minutes, then when the next song started, I got back on so I could listen to it (my rule is that I only get to listen to those songs while I'm working out). I didn't go nuts, but tried to keep a steady pace, and did 3k in 9:40, 4.5k in 15:00 and 6k in 19:40 so I'm happy with that.

CalorieKing says that's a 344 calorie burn, WeightWatchers says 14 Points, and RunKeeper (gotta love it) says I burned 930 calories in that workout. I'll go with the CK number, because RunKeeper just seems WAY too high, and doesn't even come close to any other tracker I've tried. Also, I've just checked their support forums and apparently I'm not the only one getting weird numbers. Now people are saying the number is too high, 6 months ago it was too low. Hopefully they'll get it sorted soon, but at least it's handy for tracking my time and distance.