Upping the Goal

I forgot to report my DirectLife status for the week. Because the DL website asked me whether I wanted to increase my goal since I was consistently meeting it every week, I said, surrrrrrrre, why not? Now my ultimate goal is 1273+ cals/day, which according to my coach, would put me at a level 6. That seems awfully high but why not aim big? I figure I am burning on average 700-800 cals/day in exercise (sometimes way less, sometimes a lot more though) which would mean I would have to work for the additional calories burned.

This was the first week that I had the higher goal (1108 cal) and also the first week I didn't meet it. I got to 99% this week and was just shy of it. Boo. I hate not meeting goals! So obviously I will try harder this week. :)

I have a feature on my workout watch that lets you set an event timer (counts down to a specific date). Since IM is really my goal, I put it in a few months ago. I just looked at it yesterday and it said: 75. 75 days until Ironman! That kind of freaked me out. I am not feeling any more ready, mostly because the big volume increases haven't started yet.

Also, I am definitely NOT where I want to be weight-wise for this race. I really need to lean down for this and losing these last 10 lbs would help SO much. It irritates me to no end that I've been trying to do this for so long. I just want this to be done and over with so I can stop obsessing and feeling bad about my weight. It's time to get serious and just DO IT. I "do it" with everything else -- especially exercise -- I can't see why this should be any different!

I picked up some batteries for my scale so I'll finally know the damage (or not?) when I weigh in. That's right - time to weigh in, stick to the plan, and finish this.

I should catch you up

It's been a while since I posted anything. Between work, increased training, and now this evening class (that includes a surprising amount of homework!), I barely have time to do much but log onto PT and report my food and exercise.

So let's see... when we last left off, I was going through the assessment period with the Philips DirectLife activity monitor. I was assessed at a Level 3. This equated to "Elizabeth", who is moderately active and plays tennis for an hour twice a week. I thought the monitor grossly underestimated my activity. Vigorous exercise for 1 hour twice a week?? In reality, I'm doing about 14.5 hours per week of exercise with maybe 30% of that being high intensity.

Based on that information, the goal set for me was to increase my daily activity rate to 975 calories/day in 12 weeks. I will gradually increase the calories burned weekly. I'm 2 weeks into the program now and the first week's target was to burn 829 calories/day and the second week's target was to burn 843 calories/day.

Week 1 I burned on average 995 calories/day which was 122% of my target and week 2 I burned 1124 calories/day which equalled 136% of my target.

Hah.

It's not much of a goal if I've already surpassed the 975 calories "ultimate goal" in the first 2 weeks! It hasn't been too difficult to make the daily calorie goals. Though I don't always meet it, I end up burning huge amounts on longer training days which makes up for it since they take the average over a 1-week period. I admit that carrying the monitor around is somewhat motivating. I take it out at various times in the day to check my progress. However, since I know I won't have any problems meeting my quota for the week, I'm not particularly motivated to increase my daily activities, which I think is the point of the program.

I corresponded with my DirectLife coach, Erin, via email. I discussed my goals (Ironman + lose 10 lbs) but she didn't seem much help there. The coaches don't provide any nutritional or even weight-loss specific advice. They are just there to provide suggestions to increase your daily activities. I am mildly disappointed.

Now if I could find a similar device that works with monitoring food intake instead, I'd be set...