My husband and I are two months in to goal-getting! Here’s an update on how we’re doing:

Becki

Goal #1: Lose 7 lbs to return to my usual body weight

• Use my daily food group checklist to stay within recommendations and get enough food from each food group each day.

How I’m doing: As you may have read in this post, I put on about 3 lbs throughout this month and I have since lost them again. So overall, this month has been basically a wash as far as weight and I’m still about 1.8 lbs above my previous normal. I’m thinking a couple things: 1) I may switch temporarily to a more detailed form of tracking intakes (like My Fitness Pal), just to make sure I’m not missing my goals without realizing it. 2) My body may be happy at this new weight. I won’t try to force it, and my weight is in a healthy range and not negatively affecting my health. If it doesn’t want to go down any more, that’s okay with me!

Goals #2-3: Decrease resting heart rate and blood pressure to normal ranges and increase cardiovascular fitness from “fair” to “good”

• Complete 40-60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise (heart rate 115-155 bpm) 5 days per week

How I’m doing: Pretty well overall. I haven’t been missing days, but I’ve had a couple of days of workouts that have been cut short by a tighter time schedule. I recently had my blood pressure checked and it was normal! Yippee! I can definitely tell that my cardiovascular fitness is improving because I’m having to increase the intensity of my workouts to hit my heart rate goals. Plus, I made it up and down “the stairs” 10 times the other day! I had hoped to do that by the end of the three months, but I hit that over a month early! I’m so happy with the improvements in my cardiovascular fitness.

A few months ago, it snowed here and my family and I went out to have a snowball fight. I had only run around for a few minutes and my chest was tight and I was pooped. Three weeks ago it snowed again, and this time, I snowball fought with the best of them (my family is just a tad competitive) for 20-30 minutes with no trouble at all! That was very rewarding and a sign that I’m heading towards my “end game” of never having my fitness (or lack thereof) hold me back from anything I want to do.

Goal #4: Improve posture by stretching chest and hip flexors, and decreasing anterior pelvic tilt, while strengthening back muscles

• Complete tailored yoga practice 5 days per week and strength training program 2 days per week

How I’m doing: I’ve been consistent with my yoga and I’ve been also completing some yoga challenges on Instagram that have been a fun addition to my normal practice.

My before-and-after pictures were really fun this month! I noticed primarily a HUGE difference in the position of my shoulders between February and March. Look how much less rounded they are! I’m so pleased with that. You can also see that each month my back is slightly less arched and my pelvis is slightly less tilted forward. It’s so crazy how you don’t notice the differences in your posture until you line the pictures up side by side.

Charlie

Goal #1: Lose 20 lbs/Button wedding pants without “sucking it in”
     • Track intakes with My Fitness Pal, aiming for goal of 2000 kcal per day.

How he’s doing: Charlie continues to track every day. He finds it gets easier as time goes on to stick with using the app to track. It became a habit for him and he never forgets. Occasionally he intentionally decides to eat more than his caloric goal, but it is not very often and he still tracks it for awareness, accountability, and consistency. Tracking is definitely not right for everyone, but it’s working for him. He lost another 4 pounds this month for a grand total of 14 pounds. He hasn’t tried the pants yet – he’s saving those for the end of the goal-getter package!

Can you tell he had just woken up in the last photo? Haha!

Goal #2: Increase cardiovascular fitness from “Excellent” to “Superior”
     • Follow the P90X workout program to do 60 minutes of exercise daily.

How he’s doing: He is doing well and staying consistent, but definitely ready for the P90X program to be over. He is finding the P90X videos to be very time-consuming and don’t leave enough extra time for other activities like weight lifting.

Goal #3: Improve flexibility from “Good” to “Excellent”
     • Do some yoga each day.

How he’s doing: Charlie has compromised to doing yoga three times weekly, and says his flexibility is WAY better than it used to be, which makes him feel better all the time and improves his workouts, posture, and the feel of his joints.

We’ve got one more month of our goal-getter package before we run all of the fitness and body composition testing again to see how far we’ve come! Check back to see how we did!

Want help meeting your own goals? Visit www.impowerednf.com for more information about meeting with me to set up your wellness plan!

I hear this from clients all the time: “It doesn’t matter what I do! My weight goes up and down and up and down. I’ll lose a few pounds and then I’ll gain two back and I just want to give up.”

Ahhh the scale…a mean mistress. It’s a rare person who has not noticed that, whether trying to lose weight or not, his or her number on the scale tends to fluctuate. This is true for just about everyone for a variety of reasons.

If you’ve been tracking my goal-getting journey, you know that one of my goals was to get back to my normal body weight by losing 7 lbs. If you haven’t been following along, well…now you know. So the first 4-5 came off in the first month or so. After that, things slowed to a screeching halt and began climbing…1 pound, 2 pounds, 3 pounds. I was sticking with my nutrition and workout goals for the most part, but it was still climbing.

How could this be, you ask? It’s actually very common. Read on and I’ll run you through a few reasons that your weight is not the “end all, be all”…or even necessarily a good way to measure your overall progress. It’s part of the equation, and it is certainly linked to health outcomes, but it does not warrant or deserve the intense focus we tend to put on it. Here are 7 reasons your weight may fluctuate that have nothing to do with eating too much or not exercising enough:

1. Time of the day – Believe it or not our weight changes, sometimes pretty significantly, throughout the day. During the day we retain some of the water we consume, so we tend to weigh the most at the end of the day and the least first thing in the morning after we’ve used the bathroom. I have a pretty small frame and depending on the day I’ve clocked as high as a 4-5 pound difference from morning to evening.
   
   
2. Hydration – Along the same lines as #1, the amount of water we drink during the day can affect our weights. On a day where we are sweating heavily or not drinking enough fluids, we will weigh less than a day where we are adequately hydrated.
3. Bathroom/food status – Gross but true. If you haven’t had a bowel movement in 1-2 days, your bowels may contain at least a couple of pounds (sometimes more!) of fecal material. Your bladder can hold anywhere from .5 to 1.5 lbs of urine as well.
4. Menstruation – Sorry ladies, but it can’t be helped. Most women retain at least an extra pound or two of fluid during menstruation.
5. Fluid retention/swelling – This can be caused by many different things, but in healthy people it is most commonly due to high sodium intakes. Have you ever noticed that your pants don’t fit quite right or your fingers look like sausages the day after the Superbowl party? Sodium and water are friends, so when we eat a lot of sodium, our body hangs on to extra water for a day or two.
   
   
6. Stress – In general, stress tends to make our bodies want to gain fat. Stress management is a very key component of overall health.
7. Muscle/fat – Most of us have heard the adage, “Muscle weighs more than fat.” It’s true, and it’s also true that if you start a new exercise program you will be gaining some muscle as you lose fat so progress can be tricky to track. Be careful with this one though, because you usually won’t be gaining enough muscle to really affect your weight for the first month or two of a new exercise program.

For these reasons, I try to encourage (and beg and plead) clients to focus on their overall health and fitness, their habits, and how they feel, as well as assessments like weight, circumference, or body fat to assess their overall progress. Given the things listed above, going up a pound or a few every so often is normal and should be expected. Don’t let it stress you out or discourage you! If you feel like you’re likely to quit on improving your health if the scale goes up, I have a strong recommendation for you – don’t get on the scale!

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I hope you enjoyed my husband’s guest post. Today, it’s back to me! Today I will show you how I take my goals from ideas to action. As a quick reminder, the goals I set in my previous post were:

1. Lose 7 lbs to return to my usual body weight
2. Decrease resting heart rate and blood pressure to normal ranges
3. Increase cardiovascular fitness from “fair” to “good”
4. Improve posture by stretching chest, hip flexors, and decreasing anterior pelvic tilt, while strengthening back muscles.

Some really great news about the goals I have set is that goals #1-3 all work together really nicely. All in all, I need to improve my cardio and that is also one of the key parts of a balanced weight-loss plan, so I won’t have to do double-duty on exercise there. Goal #4 is a little different and will involve some specific stretching and targeted strengthening exercises. Before I get into the nitty gritty of how I plan to achieve my goals, I’m going to start by asking myself some of the same questions I ask my clients. These questions help me make appropriate suggestions/decisions about the types of plans that are most likely to work for each individual person. Here are my answers:

My personality: I’m a nerd! Epitome of a type-A personality, I love to organize, have a plan, and make lists. I love structure but I also love variety and I love to have fun!

My lifestyle: I’m primarily working from home now, which makes cooking and food prep much easier, as well as scheduling in time to exercise. In the past, I have used a food tracker to help me meet nutrition goals but I’m not really feeling like tracking right now. Despite my nerdy, type-A personality, I would like to use something with more flexibility that is a little less labor intensive since I’m focusing a lot of my detail-oriented energy on my business.

My true confession: I ask clients this question to learn what kinds of things they think are likely to be “bad” or that they think might hold them back from their goals. In reality, it’s so I can make sure to find out the foods or exercises they feel very strongly about (for or against!) and make sure to tailor their plan accordingly.

For me? I love chips! A lot. And ice cream.

I also do not care for cardio, in a general sense. I get bored! I need more mental stimulus than a treadmill, elliptical, or jog offers to distract me from thoughts of, “when can I stop doing this????” It doesn’t help that I’m so out of cardio shape now that it hurts to do vigorous cardio. For a cardio plan to work for me, it’s going to have to include fun and variety – lots of variety. And maybe some social interaction. That helps a lot too!

Goal #1: Lose 7 pounds

This one will obviously take focus on both exercise and nutrition. I’ll discuss exercise more in goals 2-3. I’ll cover nutrition here.

Since I’m not feeling like tracking intakes right now, I’m opting for a more flexible option. My easy-to-use nutrition plan was born after I calculated the recommended amount of calories for a day to lose 1 lb per week, then translated that into portion sizes from each food group for balanced and well-rounded nutrition. That essentially leaves me with a quick-and-easy checklist of portion sizes, like so:

The list is designed to give me extra “slush calories” for treats, condiments, or whatever (like chips and ice cream!) so I don’t have to feel deprived or restricted.

Goals #2-3: Decrease heart rate and blood pressure, Improve cardiovascular fitness

The primary way I’m opting to attack these areas is by working on my cardiovascular endurance, as I happen to know that it is the primary cause of my increased heart rate and blood pressure. With cardiovascular training, you can decrease your resting heart rate, and decrease the work of your heart. Essentially, your heart becomes a stronger and more efficient muscle the more you train it.

“The” Stairs

Since cardio can be boring for me, I’m keeping my plan open to allow for several different types of cardio including (but not limited to):

• Cardio dancing videos from Youtube
• P90X DVDs with my husband
• Kickboxing DVDs
• Scottish Highland Dancing (an old pastime I break out every so often)
• Climbing a mean steep flight of local stairs

I’m going to make my action plan include getting my heart rate to a goal range (115-155 bpm) doing 40-60 minutes of any of the above cardio options 5 days per week. That way, I can choose what I prefer to do that day based on my mood and I’m less likely to be bored or skip.

Goal #4: Improve posture/target muscle imbalances

For this one, I was fortunate enough to have my dear yoga teacher friend Jessica at Zesa Wellness design a personalized, anti-desk job yoga practice to help me open my chest and hip flexors and strengthen my back. I’m planning to do this practice 5 days per week.

I have also designed a strength training program that targets my the muscles up and down my back. In general, I don’t recommend strength training programs that aren’t balanced (where they only train one muscle group or one side of the body), but this is my one exception. When I know there is already a muscle imbalance, I will sometimes temporarily train the weaker side only for a few weeks to help balance things out before incorporating a more balanced plan that trains the whole body. I’m going to complete this strength training plan twice weekly.

My Plan

To sum it up, my plan looks like this:

Goal #1: Lose 7 lbs to return to my usual body weight

• Use my daily food group checklist to stay within and get enough food from each food group each day.

Goals #2-3: Decrease resting heart rate and blood pressure to normal ranges and increase cardiovascular fitness from “fair” to “good”

• Complete 40-60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise (heart rate 115-155 bpm) 5 days per week

Goal #4: Improve posture by stretching chest, hip flexors, and decreasing anterior pelvic tilt, while strengthening back muscles

• Complete yoga practice 5 days per week
• Complete strength training program 2 days per week

I realize that may sound like a lot to commit to, but remember that I’m working from home and have quite a bit of control over my schedule. That’s one of the strengths of my current lifestyle that I’m taking advantage of with this plan!

Up next: Part 2 of Making My Husband’s Plan!

Since my new practice, i’mPowered Nutrition & Fitness, is offering a $20 discount on my Goal-Getter package to help you meet your New Year’s goals, my next project is going to be something a little different. Both my husband and I are going to show you what the Goal-Getter package is all about by laying out our own nutrition and fitness goals and documenting our journeys to goal-get them! Alright, alright…enough punning.

Husband and I will start off with the body composition and fitness assessments to test where we are at now, then use those results to create goals. Based on those goals and our individual personalities/lifestyles, I’ll make a nutrition and training plan — i’mPowered-style — and we’ll follow it. You’ll get to watch the journey!

Stay tuned for the results of our “before” assessments!

For my next experiment I’m going to do something a little different. Rather than having you vote from a selection of diets, I’m opting to trial an elimination of dairy because I’m concerned that my body may actually be telling me to do so.

Here’s why I think that may be a possibility:

1. For the last couple of years I have had an obnoxious frog in my throat in the mornings. Most days, *ahem* I end up *ahem* clearing my throat *cough, ahem* frequently. It’s annoying (I’m assuming you picked up on how annoying just by reading that sentence). In the past, I haven’t made a particular effort to determine what has been inviting my unwelcome amphibian.
2. The other thing that I’ve got going on is from time to time I get itchy and bumpy along my belt line. For the longest time, I thought I was reacting to the metal on my jeans buttons, but since I started working I wear jeans much less often and I still get this issue on occasion. I have no explanation for this either.
3. The final piece of evidence that really put the nail in my “you should try eliminating dairy” coffin? I have two close family members who have had similar issues. One has been officially diagnosed with a *ahem* post-nasal drip and *ahem* coughs and throat-clears *ahem* frequently in the mornings. After cutting out dairy, it got better. The second family member dealt with snoring, coughing, and a super-itchy shin rash, all of which improved with a dairy elimination. Darn you, genetics.

So here I am. This will still be helpful to my practice as a dietitian because I take patients through dairy eliminations if their bodies are having symptoms that may show they’re reacting to it. Unfortunately, I’m having to face the acceptance that my own body might be.  For those of you who personally know me (or particularly, know my husband) you know would be a significant change for me. My husband is the Dairy King…I’m convinced I stole him from our well-known Blizzard making friend somewhere along the way. When we started dating, he was delivering ten thousand gallon tanker trucks of milk all over the I-5 corridor and frequently being gifted dairy-laden treats from the farmers he visited. Needless to say, the Parsons family are big drinkers of milk. We tend to go through around 4 gallons per week.

Thinking about cutting out dairy is a little sad. Honestly, I’m actually not opposed to milk alternatives like rice milk or soy milk. I think they’re pretty tasty. I’m more concerned about the dairy that’s in things I love to eat. Hmm…time will tell.

I’ll be starting my two-week dairy elimination Dec 1, so stay tuned to see if my symptoms resolve. I’m kind of crossing my fingers that they won’t (because I don’t want to cut out dairy long-term), but I’ll tell myself the same thing I always tell my patients:  “If you do the elimination, at least you’ll know what is causing your problems. Then you’re empowered with the choice of whether to have symptoms and eat that food or not have symptoms and not have that food.”

The choice doesn’t have to be permanent, 100% all the time either. Life is a spectrum. If my problem is dairy, at least I’ll know!

Many recommendations have come out in recent years discussing the benefits of avoiding long periods of sitting. For those of us who work at a desk, that can be tough! While working, it can be difficult to 1) remember to get up, 2) realize how much time has passed since you got up, or 3) get up at all, depending on what your job is!

To help with this conundrum – I tracked down two apps designed to promote movement while I was on my carb counting stent (people with diabetes are recommended to get up and move for 3 minutes out of every 30!). Check out my assessment of these apps:

Move – Daily Activity to Stay Healthy (free from the Apple app store)

This one allows you to customize the frequency with which you want to be reminded to exercise, as well as the time frame in which you want reminders (like 8 am to 5 pm, for example). The app sends you an encouraging and/or Jillian Michaels-like reminder (“Don’t you dare think about skipping this one!” or “Come on, no excuses!”) to get up and move on the schedule you set. The app contains a list of exercise suggestions that you can tailor to your preferences. If you choose to do the exercise it suggests, you click a button that says “I did it!” and it will tack it onto an ongoing list of the exercises you have completed that day, complete with estimated calories burned. If you don’t want reminders on certain days, you can skip them for a day.

• Pros: Easy to use, customizable exercises/schedule, exercise suggestions, accumulating list of exercises throughout the day is motivating.
• Cons: Reminders could be a little less cheesy/condescending, several of the exercises would not be discreet in certain office settings (think jumping jacks and side-lying leg lifts – they have an “Office” exercise pack you can purchase that is supposed to remedy this).

Overall: I enjoyed this app – I liked that it gave suggestions for exercises because, even as an exercise physiologist, I do better with direction. Particularly when I’m in the middle of the work day – I don’t have to come up with exercises on my own!

Stand Up! The Work Break Timer (free from the Apple app store)

This app also allows you to customize it with a daily schedule and frequency of reminders. You can skip days as needed. On schedule, the app pops up a reminder that states, “Time to stand up. We want you to live longer!” If you go to the app at that time, you can select between options to skip that particular reminder or to acknowledge that you got up, which the app will track.

• Pros: Easy to use, customizable schedule, tracks the number of times  and when you get up throughout the day.
• Cons: Reminder is the same every time, no exercise suggestions.

Overall: It worked. I enjoyed the other app more, but they both will get the job done!

For me, snacks are key to carb counting survival. In general, I feel satisfied after eating a carb-controlled meal but I’m finding myself hungry 2-3 hours after the meal. Snack time!

Ideally, a carb-controlled snack for my plan would have 15-20 grams carbohydrate and some protein (even better if it adds in fiber too!). The carbohydrates keep my energy up while protein helps keep the carbohydrates from raising blood sugar too quickly. My struggle is I’m finding the protein portion tough for some reason.

Some of my favorite example snacks include:

• 6-8 whole grain crackers with cheese
• ¼ cup unsalted nuts with 2 Tablespoons dried fruit
• 1 small apple with 2 Tbsp peanut or almond butter
• 3 cups popcorn with a drizzle of olive oil, dash of salt, and garlic powder, rosemary, and thyme (it’s delicious – and even though this one doesn’t have much protein, it’s a whole grain, it’s high in fiber, and the portion is no joke)

My challenge is that often snack time ends up being on my breaks at work, and proteins are either tough to pack or they need preparation and/or refrigeration. I did a stint with mozzarella cheese sticks and they worked out really well but I got a little bored with them. I haven’t been able to make it to Winco to get the bulk mixed nuts at a decent price (I refuse to pay the prices at most grocery stores), and I’ll be honest, I’ve been too lazy to get a little container to put peanut or almond butter in. I could hard boil a bunch of eggs to have ready and take with me, but here again – too lazy, too busy. Gah.

Many times this last week, my snack has ended up being 15-20 grams carb only, without the protein. That’s less than ideal because besides regulating blood sugar, protein helps a snack be more satisfying for longer.

As I gradually add in diabetes recommendations to follow, I have to say that there is a LOT to it. I hear that from my patients all the time, and they aren’t kidding. Remembering to pack a lunch is pretty much habit, but the snacks are often a last-minute afterthought and making sure there’s protein with them seems like a nice idea that only happens when the planets align just right.

Anyway, this is all good experience for me as an RD and it backs up what I hope I communicate to my patients: do the best you can, take one step at a time, and be prepared that life is going to push you back. Life happens. Life gets crazy. Motivation comes and goes. Just be steady and do your best. After all, your life is worth fighting for!