Progress pictures!

Okay, as promised, here are a few progress pictures. You can click on them to make them larger.

First up, the before! Now I didn't specifically take any 'before' photos, but this picture was taken in early October, about a month before I decided to join WW, and to be honest, it was a huge part of my decision to start losing weight. I saw this picture and couldn't believe what I looked like: a three-tiered wedding cake. I saved it to my desktop and looked at it almost everyday, working up the nerve to change.

(Don't mind the mask and gloves, I was participating in a mock-virus exercise at work.)





Now, here's the updates! The photos on the left are about 16 lbs in, at 241 lbs. The photos on the right are from tonight -- 30 lbs down, 227 lbs. I can definitely see some difference, especially in the side-view photos -- the three-tiered wedding cake is slowly being eaten away. :)

a change will do you good.

I was about to write a post about how I was trying to wean myself off sweet snacks in the afternoon, but how it was really hard, and how badly I wanted a trail mix cookie or a Fibre 1 peanut butter bar. Then I was going to write that maybe I should eat more fruit during the day, when I need that little sugar spike. THEN I remembered that the cafeteria downstairs sells fruit salad! So now I’m sipping a coffee and eating The World’s Most Over-Priced Fruit Salad Ever (not its actual name) and you know what? I feel pretty great.

Life is good. Change doesn’t have to be the battle we pretend it is. Change can be as simple as eating fruit salad.

crunching the numbers.

To amuse myself last week, I finally put together a little weight loss spreadsheet, so I could see a graph of my losses so far. It was kind of cool. I also figured out, for curiosity’s sake, how much I’d lost each month, and what my average weekly loss was in that month.

November
Total: 3.4
Average: 1.7

December:
Total: 8.8
Average: 1.76

January:
Total: 4.8
Average: 1.2

February:
Total: 5.8
Average: 1.45

March:
Total: 7.2
Average: 1.8


I find it kind of hilarious that December, the month with all the food-and-drink filled festivities, was one of my best months, and January, the month when I’m supposed to be all motivated and gung-ho, was my worst month. I guess I just like to go against the tides!

lesson learned.

The move went well! It took longer than I expected though -- I thought we'd be done around 3pm, and instead it was more like 6:30. I hadn't had lunch and was starving so when Shaun suggested we go to the pub for some food and celebratory beer, I was all over that.

Okay, I confess: I didn't think about points at all. I ordered whatever I wanted. And what I wanted was fish and chips. With tartar sauce. And beer.

I did work out the points later, and it all still fit within my flex points for the week so no real damage done.

Fast forward to the next morning.

I wake up and say to Shaun, "Hmm, my stomach kinda hurts."

I'm lying in bed and I keep getting these stabbing shooting pains through my abdomen. Like, my entire abdomen -- from breast bone to pelvic bone. At one point I sat up and the pain got so bad that I almost fainted.

Shaun suggested that maybe I had pulled a muscle during the move but it didn't feel like a muscle, especially with the randomness of the stabbing pains. After 20 minutes of lying in bed, close to tears, I got online and looked up walk-in clinics near me.

Now the thing you have to know about me is that I haven't been to a doctor since I was 16. I hate anything to do with doctors and basically refuse to go, so the fact that I was seriously considering going yesterday should tell you something about the level of pain I was in. I was thinking HERNIA I was thinking GALLBLADDER ATTACK, I was thinking STOMACH CANCER.

Finally I thought, I'll take some Pepto-Bismal for now. It can't hurt.

Ten minutes later I was FINE.

Seriously. I thought I was going to die and it turns out it was just grease-induced indigestion. How sad is that? I had no idea indigestion could be that bad.

But in a way it's good, because it has DEFINITELY cured me of any desire to eat greasy food any time soon. I'm still half wondering if it wasn't a gallbladder attack, but from what I've read, those usually occur sooner after eating.

Anyway! That was my weekend. We haven't come across the camera yet, so no progress pics, but I'm sure I'll have them this week.

Hope everyone's had a great weekend!

A quick WI update.

I'm gonna update this tonight, since tomorrow is going to be HECTIC with the move: I lost another 2 lbs at weigh-in tonight! And that's 30 LBS TOTAL!!!

I'm really, really, really excited about this. Thirty pounds! It feels like a big number, but it also feels like a REAL number, if that makes sense. I'm really doing it this time. Thirty pounds is my proof.

I'm going to try to get Shaun to take some progress photos this weekend, if we can find the camera.

Wish me luck with the move! It's supposed to rain tomorrow ... ugh!

i'm exhausted just thinking about it!

Weigh-in / meeting tonight! Moving tomorrow! Cleaning the old apartment Saturday! Unpacking Sunday!

By Monday, I’m going to need another weekend!

I’m feeling kinda crappy today. Not sure if I’m getting sick or if it’s just stress, but I feel headache-y and nauseated and like I wanna curl up in a little ball. I took a 20 minute walk to try to pep myself up, and it worked so-so, but it made me realize that this is TOTALLY the kind of time I would have used food as a pick me up. You know, when you feel bad but there’s no one particular thing that’s wrong? If it wasn’t for the fact that I have to weigh in in about two hours, I think I would have caved this afternoon and got a Trail Mix Cookie from Tim Horton’s. I love those things! (Plus they’re only four points and made with good things like whole grains, nuts, seeds, and dried fruit! Plus a ton of sugar and butter, I’m sure, but you know!)

Oh well. Instead I’m just going to have a coffee, sip some water, and maybe bug my coworker to see if she has any Advil.

speaking of muscles...

Oy. I hadn’t done the 30-Day Shred in about two weeks, and when I finally put it in yesterday it nearly killed me. It’s so frustrating to think that it took me over a month to build up any kind of stamina at it, and I lost it all in just two weeks of not doing it.

It’s funny – I guess I sometimes think about health and fitness as if it were like money. You know, you work really hard to accumulate it and then you can sit back because … now you have it. You put money in the bank and it’s not like it goes away if you stop adding to it. You just have it. The money is yours. But health is like … you work really hard to accumulate it but then you sit back and suddenly it’s gone again.

I guess it just goes to show that this really is a life-long event. I won’t ‘get healthy’ and then be done with it. I’ll have to ‘get healthy’ and then spend the rest of my life ‘staying healthy.’ I’m still working on this idea, but at least it’s not QUITE as over-whelming as it once was.

it gets easier.

On Friday I picked up The Beck Diet Solution and have been reading it over the weekend. While I’m not really interested in following her plan to the letter, a lot of it did resonate with me.

She talks about ‘muscles’ a lot – not your actual muscles, but I guess mental muscles. She talks about how the more you get used to resisting temptations, the more you strengthen that muscle. The more you get used to eating slowly and savouring what you’re eating, the more you strengthen that muscle. The more you follow your own ‘food rules,’ the more you strengthen that muscle. And the reverse is true too – the more you GIVE IN to temptation, the more you strengthen THAT muscle. The more you rush through your food, not notice what you’re eating, and finish the meal wanting more – the more you strengthen THAT muscle. The more you break your food rules (or go off plan) the more you strengthen THAT muscle.

The practical effect of that is that – dieting gets easier. It really does. I think that’s where I am now. I’m used to turning things down. I’m used to ordering salad instead of fries. I’m used to saying no to cookies and chocolate and other treats that get brought in to work. I don’t even fret about it much anymore, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. Little things, you know? They were giving out chocolate samples at the grocery store on Saturday and I grabbed one and put it in my coat pocket, and it’s just been sitting there ever since. I don’t feel at all tempted by it. My ‘resisting’ muscles are strong.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely don’t think I’m home-free or anything. I know that it’ll get hard again. Just like with actual muscles, there will quickly come a day when I have to ‘up my game’ to keep being successful. My points allowance will go down, I’ll get bored of the foods I eat now – stuff like that happens, but it’s all part of the process. It just feels good that I have this … ‘proof’, now, that it’s true – that dieting gets easier. And that next time it gets hard, I just need to keep going, and it’ll get easier again.

I guess this is still kind of amazing to me because I know that even six months ago, I wouldn’t have believed it. I honestly thought there was NO WAY I could stop eating chips. I could NOT give up my muffin for breakfast. And even aside from specific foods, I really truly thought there was no way I could give up my ability to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I was addicted to that. But now I realize it’s just that my ‘indulgence’ muscle was the only one I’d been working, for so long, that it was the only one I knew how to use. And it was STRONG. But the answer was there all along, like the opposite side of coin – just make the other muscles stronger.

I wish I could pinpoint exactly what it was that made me decide to take the plunge and join WW, and what it was that made me really work hard at it the first few weeks. If I knew what that was, I’d probably be a billionaire. :) But what I DO know is that anyone can change, if they’re willing to just give it a few weeks of solid effort. It really truly does get easier.

WI results and I heart The Keg.

Well, after all my whinging yesterday about how I won’t be disappointed by a gain etc, what happens? I don’t even have a gain! I had a loss last night, and a pretty decent one: 1.6lbs, for a total loss of 28lbs!

I guess this means I’m better at this whole ‘eating out’ thing than I thought … that, or it’s all going to show up next week, which is a possibility.

We went out for our dinner at The Keg last night and it was soooooooo good. I seriously had to restrain myself from moaning a little every time I took a bite of steak. This is definitely evidence to me that we should really think quality over quantity/frequency when eating out. I’d honestly be pretty happy if I could have a nice steak dinner every two months, instead of food court / pub food every few days.

I stuck to my plan of ordering the filet mignon and baked potato for dinner – the only place I screwed up a little is the wine. (What else is new!) I did stick to two glasses, but of course they were ‘Keg-Sized’ glasses (9 ounces!!), so that ended up being 9pts instead of 4. The whole meal ended up being 30pts, which meant I had to use 17 of my flex. To be fair I took them out of this coming week’s points, even though yesterday is technically still part of last week. But I figured since I’d already weighed in, if I tried to count them as last week’s points, I’d be screwing myself for next week. Does that make sense?

Anyway, my brother is leaving this afternoon and to be honest I’m kinda excited to just have a quiet night in tonight. Then tomorrow I have to start packing up my old apartment! It never stops, does it?!?

Have a great weekend everyone!

the keg is trying to kill me.

Well. Tonight is my brother’s last night in town so we’re planning a trip to The Keg Steakhouse. YUM. I just looked up the points though and I’m sooooooo glad I did. I had no idea one steak could be 20+ points! Eep!

Luckily the filet mignon is ‘only’ 13pts, so I think I’ll be getting that. It comes with the ‘twice baked potato’ though, which is another 13 pts, so I think I’ll swap it for the regular baked potato (just 6pts). Add a couple glasses of wine, and I’m looking at under 25pts for the whole meal – considering if I hadn’t have checked, I would have ended up spending that many points just on the steak, I think that’s not too shabby. And I don’t feel like I’m really compromising on quality because come on, I’m having FILET MIGNON. Yeah, I’m fancy. ;P

Weigh in tonight, but I’m feeling a bit nervous. I ate out 3 times this week and I thought I had done okay with that, but looking up the Keg menu made me realize I have a habit of grossly underestimating restaurant points. I think that I think about the restaurant food and then calculate it the way *I* would prepare it. Like, ‘oh surely this sandwich only has 1 tbsp of mayo because MY sandwiches never have more than that so that is the normal amount.” Um. Probably not.

So we’ll see what happens. Worse comes to worse, I have a small gain and move on. I’m moving next weekend (kind of. I’m getting rid of my old apartment and FINALLY going to just have all my stuff at Shaun’s!) so this coming week is not going to be very social – just hunkering down and packing, so I’ll definitely be able to get back in my eating groove, and undo whatever damage I may have done this week.

And anyway, my goals for this week were just to eat reasonably and not drink too much, and I did that. And I did say I wasn’t going to worry too much about what the scale said at the end, and you know what? I’m not going to. It’s been a fun week and I’ve had my fill of eating out for awhile.

whole foods stole my money.

I managed to spend $40 at Whole Foods yesterday on pretty much nothing. Well, I guess I should say nothing 'useful'. I bought coconut milk and pomegranate seeds and goat's milk feta and those Ezeikel cinnamon raison english muffins that everyone keeps going on about. A few other things. Oh well. I'm willing to admit that I go to Whole Foods pretty much entirely for how it makes me feel (wholesome, in a yuppie type way.) So I guess that was worth $40. :P

Shaun and I are going to see Pontypool tonight -- a Canadian-made zombie movie set in northern Ontario! Yesssssss. I hope it's gonna be awesome. We're having dinner out first but since weigh-in is tomorrow, I have no plans to overdo it. Unfortunately that means no movie popcorn either. Sadness!

Happy hump day!

rhinestones are sooooo 2005.

Today I’m wearing a pair of jeans I haven’t been able to wear since 2005! Yessssss! Of course, I had to pick about 300 rhinestones off the ass of them before I could actually go out in public with them (ow, my poor fingers), but that’s beside the point.

I’m feeling pretty good about things so far this week, even though the scale at home isn’t showing any downwards movement. I went out for dinner twice this weekend (with my brother), and both times I ordered sandwich-and-salad combos, so that’s pretty good. I also stuck to just one pint of beer each time. (Though I also had a few bottles at home over the weekend). The week (so far) hasn’t been nearly as tough as I thought it would be, with having guests. I guess my good habits are more ingrained now than I thought they were. 

I’ve been kind of slacking on the exercise though – I got one hour-long workout in on Sunday, but that’s it. Okay – I’m going to vow to do another hour tonight. Hold me to that, ok?

Tonight’s plan:
- Trip to Whole Foods (need yogurt and a few other things)
- Laundry
- Workout

Now it’s on the internet, so I HAVE to do it!

i go around round round round i go around.

I finally bought some new sneakers! Yippee! I got these very cute Saucony's, which are good for people like me who over-pronate (meaning I put all my weight on the inside edge of my foot.)



So far they feel … strange, but the sales guy said I should expect that for awhile, because I'm not used to wearing properly fitting shoes. But I'm only going to wear them indoors for a couple of weeks, and wipe them off after every use, just to give myself the option of returning them if they don't stop feeling strange. But I did an hour of walking DVDs yesterday to try them out, and although they still felt 'strange', I didn't get the ache in my arch that I usually get, so I'm hoping that's a good sign.

The truth is, I'd really like to take up running but for some reason I've been hesitating. I love the idea of running – it just seems so healthy to me, to be able to go out and run and not have your lungs and legs buckling beneath you. I lost a bit of weight one time before, and I did start running, so I know I can do it. I sucked at first but I kept at it, and eventually I could run a mile without stopping which felt seriously amazing. But I've been really scared to go out and try it again for some reason. I guess I need to just suck it up and do it, right? Embrace hard and all that?

Sometimes, though, I look at people who are fit and it just seems like it's so far from here to there. Even just the other day, I challenged Shaun to do some push-ups, and when he was done, he leaped back to his feet. Like, leaped up, from push-up position, to his feet. I can't do that. At all. For me, getting up off the ground is basically a 12-step process. And I don't think that will change JUST by losing weight – I don't think it's just that he's 50lbs lighter than me. It's arm strength and leg strength and core strength and so on. It's a kind of whole body fitness that I have no idea how to achieve because I've NEVER had that, not even when I was a kid. Other kids would climb fences and trees and jump over hedges and I would … go around.

I'm tired of going around, but I have no idea how to do anything else.

WI results.

Another loss this week! Down 1.2 lbs, total loss of 26.4! To be honest I wasn’t sure I’d do so well this week – I thought I might have got a little cocky after hitting my 10% last week. I went out for dinner on Friday AND Saturday, and used alllll my flex points. But chezjulie and I made a pact to end the week strong, and that’s what I did! And it paid off!

I’m only 1.2lbs away from hitting the 220s now, but I’m not going to hold my breath for next week. My brother and his girlfriend are visiting this week and my focus is going to be to stay within my points and not drink too much. I won’t worry too much about what the scale says at the end – it’ll be enough of a victory just to stay on track, with all the restaurant eating and going out that’s sure to happen. I mean, HOPEFULLY if I do that, it WILL result in a loss, but I guess my point is more that I’m going to really focus on my actions and choices this week, rather than aiming for a particular outcome.

But damn, it will be nice to finally see the 220s again.

suitcase = travel

I bought a blue suitcase a couple weeks ago. THIS blue suitcase:



I LOVE IT. It was in a store window and I walked past it every day on my way to work. Every day I would stare longingly at it, imagining myself on some fun-filled vacation. Every day I would get a little tense, imagining the day when I would walk by the store and it would no longer be in the window.

So I finally bought it because ... my sweetie and I have decided to go to Vegas! Yippee! We'll probably only go in May but I'm already drooling over vacation packages and hotel photos. I finished up my passport application yesterday and will take it to the passport office sometime next week. I parked my new suitcase beside our bed and still stare at it longingly, every day.

It's probably a bit foolish to take a big vacation in the middle of a big recession but ... oh well. We're helping the economy. Anyway, I desperately need to get away for a little while -- It's been years since I went anywhere just for fun. It's always been 'obligation travel', like visiting my parents or going to weddings. Which is okkkkkkay, but trust me, New Brunswick is no Las Vegas. Believe it or not.

knitting and walking. that's all I got.

Last night I took a sock-knitting class! It was really fun. I took a mitten-knitting class from the same woman, back in January, and I really liked it, so when I found out she was doing a sock class this month, I signed up right away. I knitted a teeny tiny baby sock last night, and next week we’ll learn how to scale it up to an adult-sized sock. I’m a decent knitter but I’ve always shied away from socks because they look so complicated. But I couldn’t believe how easy it was – I turned a heel! I knit a gusset! Woohoo! I also bought some beautiful self-striping (variegated) sock yarn that has white, grey, pinky-purple, and dark purple (almost navy). My socks are going to be sooooo nice. (Not to mention expensive -- $26 for one ball of yarn! Oy.)

Anyway, sorry, to those of you not so interested in knitting! On to more WW-type things. :)

After hitting my 10% last week, I kind of spent a little too much of the weekend slacking off. I mean, it’s okay. I stayed on track technically speaking but I did use allllll my flex points and didn’t really get any exercise in. I guess I just got a little too pleased with my own progress. Does that ever happen to you? After I got my haircut on Friday I ran into one of my old coworkers – he took a second to even recognize me, and then the first thing he said was, “My God, you’ve lost weight!” And Saturday I went to a dinner party at a friend’s place, and people I hadn’t seen in awhile were there and were also noticing my loss and being very complimentary about it. So I ate (and drank) too much that night I guess because I felt like I deserved it? Or because I could ‘get away with it’?

By Sunday night, though, I finally got sick of my own slothfulness. I loaded up a couple Jillian Michaels’ podcasts on my iPod and ended up taking a 3hr walk! It felt good although I was quite sore by the time I got home – I hadn’t really meant for it to be that long so I was just wearing my jeans and regular street sneakers, plus my long winter coat and heavy purse. But I was glad to have done it.

I did it! 10%

I did it! I reached my 10%!

I’m pretty psyched – that means I’ve lost 25lbs! Actually, I’ve lost 25.2, if you want to get technical. ;)

It was so nice to get to stand in front of the meeting room last night and talk about the things that have helped me: tracking, keeping healthy foods on hand, ditching the guilt. It was so nice to feel like my leader was really truly proud of me. It was so nice to text my mom and my best friend, and to know they’d be proud of me too. It was so nice to be proud of myself.

I had sort of been wanting to get a haircut for the last couple of months, but at the back of my mind I thought I’d wait and use the haircut as a reward for when I hit that 10%. But I caved a couple weeks ago (my hair has turned into a solid triangle), and made an appointment for this Friday. So it all worked out anyway – this can be my reward for hitting that goal. I looooovvvvee haircuts. My sweetie is going to meet me afterwards for a celebratory night out as well.

Don’t think I’m going to rest on my laurels though – everything is still on plan, as usual. My next goal is to get into the 220s – I’m hoping to do it in the next two weeks.

Keep on trucking!

it's not you, it's your brain.

Every month, I get in this … mood. I look in the mirror and think – KNOW – that I am the most hideous person on the planet. I wonder how my boyfriend can stand to be with me. I wonder how my friends can stand to put up with me. I consider just staying home, as a favour to the general public. Surely they should not be put through that kind of horror. Surely there is enough wrong with the world right now that no one needs my hideous hosebeast face as the cherry on that sundae.

Then it hits me: It’s happy special lady time! (Also known as ‘that time of the month’.) I am not actually hideous just wracked with hormones.

Suddenly, all those feelings, which were throwing me into a pit of despair, are bearable. They don’t go away, but I know what they are and why I feel them, and now I can buckle down and power through them until they go away. Because now I know for sure that they WILL go away: they’re just chemicals in my brain trying to trick me. It’s not me, it’s just my brain.

Those realizations are important in weight-loss too – in fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s the number 1 reason I’ve been successful so far this time around. It’s the reason I have an easier time staying on plan, not being derailed by hunger, not giving into weird cravings.

Because I’ve realized: it’s not me, it’s my brain.

Let’s take this example: I get this and I’m sure lots of you do too. I plan to eat a nice soup and salad for dinner but by the time I get home I’m STARVING. All my thoughts of soup and salad go out the window – the idea of vegetables is downright offensive. I want a bag of chips. Or an entire box of macaroni and cheese. I want two bagels: one with mayo and cheese, and a ‘dessert’ bagel with cream cheese and jam to follow it up. Maybe I could get a brownie for later. Ooh, and opening a bottle of wine would be nice too.

EEEEEEERRRRRRRCH! (That is the sound of my squealing brakes.)

I used to fight so hard against these feelings. I’d beat myself up just for having them – you just love food too much, I’d say to myself. You can try to resist but you know you’re going to give in soon so why not just eat it all now and save us the waste-of-time. So I would.

But now I realized this: hello, there is 10,000 years of human history working against me here! Think about our caveman ancestors: finding food was a constant struggle. When food was available, you ate as much of it as you could, as fast as you could. Because who knew when you would be able to eat again? When would you find a wild boar to kill, when would you find some berries that weren’t poisonous? So eat as many calories as possible right now.

That’s what my poor brain is feeling when I get hungry too. We evolve as humans but we I don’t think we ever lose those survival instincts. My body feels hungry and my old caveman instincts tell me to eat as many calories as possible, right now.

As soon as I realized that, it’s like a switch went off in my brain. Or maybe that I FOUND the switch. I control it now. Recognizing how instinctive those feelings were gives me so much more control of them now. My subconscious brain might be encouraging me to eat as much as possible, but now my conscious brain can step in and say:

“Look, instinct, I know you’re scared. But there’s really no shortage of food here. Have the soup and the salad, and in 20 minutes you’re going to be full. And you’re going to feel pretty silly for panicking.”

And you know what? This works EVERY TIME.

Almost every food desire I have can be traced back to brain chemistry. Those times when I have a crappy day and want to eat ‘comfort food’: I know it’s just the endorphin receptors in my brain that want a ‘hit’. If I have a taste of something sweet and suddenly feel compelled to eat 58 more of them, I know it’s those some endorphin receptors, having gotten over-stimulated. (Similar to what happens when you drink, and you always want ‘one more’, even though you’re clearly drunk.)

For some reason, thinking about it as being ‘my brain’ and not ‘me’ is so liberating. I used to beat myself up like crazy for wanting the things I did, in the amounts I did. I felt greedy, and gluttonous. I felt like a pig, quite frankly. How can anyone who WANTS so much ever be ANYTHING but fat? So I would give in to those cravings, again and again and again.

So realizing that it’s not really ‘me’ has opened me up in a way that I’ve never felt before. I feel success is possible. I feel control is possible. I can reign in that crazy part of my brain, when I need to. And it’s a lot easier to think about it that way, than to think I have to change who I fundamentally am.

panic pants. like cranky pants but with, uh, panic.

The past couple of days have been a bit odd. I’ve been noticing that my pants are all getting too big – I only have a few pairs to start with, and my favourite jeans AND my favourite work pants are now big enough that I can take them on and off without undoing them. The butts are saggy and they’re all getting too long, because they’re sitting too low on my hips.

So this should be thrilling, right? Instead, every time I think about it, I get this small twinge of PANIC. Isn’t that totally weird?

I’ve been trying to figure out the reason for this. In the past (for the past, oh, 8 years), every time my pants stop fitting, it’s because I’ve GAINED weight. And this has happened quite a few times. So I think I’ve actually conditioned myself to view ‘pants not fitting’ to equal ‘bad’. I also think some part of me is secretly scared that smaller pants won’t actually fit – like I’ve lost weight but only in some weird time/space continuum that is my life, and that ‘in the real’ world (aka Old Navy) I’m still going to be the fat chick who can’t squeeze into the new pants.

I guess it might also be as simple as: I HATE BUYING NEW PANTS. Seriously, is there anything worse than pants-shopping? Ugh.

*****

In other news, some friends of mine have signed up for this Booty Camp Fitness thing, and I think I might too. Yes, that’s right, I said BOOTY Camp not BOOT Camp. One part of me finds it kind of horrible, but I also kind of think I might like it because it will be the closest I ever get to having Jillian Michaels personally bossing me into shape. And I do think it will be a good workout and have more of a focus on toning muscles than straight-up fat-burning, which I like.

a tale of two heart rate monitors.

So this weekend I bought my heart rate monitor!
And then I bought ANOTHER heart rate monitor!

I went to Sport Chek on Saturday with the intention of buying the Polar F6. (Yes, this is the same one Angie has. Does that make me a fangirl? Oh well. Let’s be honest, I kind of am.) The Polar F6 was 149.99. When I got there and started chatting with the sales guy he started selling me on the advantages of the Timex Ironman Triathlon – can monitor your heart rate all the time rather than just when you’re ‘exercising’, slimmer ‘lady-sized’ watch, etc. He said his girlfriend had one and loved it. I know what you’re thinking, he was trying to up-sell me, but the Timex was actually $20 CHEAPER than the one I wanted. So I figured he must be being honest, and I decided to get that one.

I got it home and excitedly sat down with the manual until I’d figured everything out. Strangely, it showed my heart rate fluctuating between 30bpm and 120 bpm, even just sitting on the couch. But not to be discouraged, I excitedly donned my workout clothes and put on the 30-Day Shred. Twenty-eight minutes later my HRM happily reported that I had burned … 708 calories. Yes, over 700 calories in 28 minutes. Houston, we have a problem.

I searched around online and found a few other people also reporting overly-high calorie counts. I posted on a message board I belong to and everyone agreed that it was way too high – a couple people mentioned they had Timex’s as well, and had to use only half or even a third of the calorie burn it reported.

Not pleased.

So on Sunday I went back and there was a different sales guy. I asked if I could buy the Polar F6 I’d originally wanted, take it home to compare, and then return whichever one seemed less accurate. He thought this was a good idea and added that I would likely end up keeping the Polar. “Polar makes the heart rate monitors they use in hospitals,” he said. “To be honest I’m not sure why our other sales associate would have talked you down to the Timex.”

So I brought the Polar home, figured out how to use it and gave it a go – my heart rate didn’t fluctuate this time but seemed to stay exactly where I expected it to be, even during the ‘OwnZone’ test where you have to gradually increase your exertion each minute. I did the 30 Day Shred again, and this time, it was reported that I had burned 365 calories. Yes, this seems much more accurate.

So, obviously I’m going to keep the Polar and return the Timex. Not just because the calories were more accurate but the whole thing just felt like it worked better. I think I got a Men’s kind, cause the watch face is pretty big, but that doesn’t really matter to me. I also find the chest strap a little more comfortable.

So, if anyone is thinking of buying an HRM, hopefully this post has been helpful. I know all the bloggers seem to buy Polars, and it might seem annoying and kind of like one of those things people do because ‘everyone else is doing it’, but I think Polar actually does make the superior product (at least compared to Timex). And the price is not much higher (and in fact, you can get the Polar F4 for only about $100.)

Now I'm going to have fun this week trying to burn as many calories as possible. :) 10%, here I come!