BOLD-X Diet Study, Weight Loss Phase

Woot! I have finally entered the weight loss phase of the BOLD-X Diet Study. Over the last eight weeks, I lost eight pounds. It might not sound like much, but I actually wasn't supposed to lose any weight during the other phases. Thankfully, they let the poundage slip and only upped my calories once.

We'll see if I lose any more weight. I'm hopeful to be back in the normal weight range for someone of my height (I'm really close right now), and I'm looking forward to running again.

The best part of this phase so far? My Yamax Digiwalker W701. It's a super fancy-dancy pedometer that the study provides for me. It took a couple of days to get used to it always clipped to my waist, but now I forget to take it off when I go to bed! During the first week of wearing it, the study wanted to get a baseline of how much I walk a day. Mind you, the eventual goal of the study is to have me walking at least 10,000 steps per day. The people in charge were a bit dismayed to see my "average" step count per day was between 13,000 and 17,000 steps (and honestly, what the heck is up with the display on this photo? over 100,000 steps? yeah, right!) :-) They were even more surprised to see that my count went down significantly on weekends. Believe me, I had some explaining to do.

I've been watching my steps closely throughout the day, and between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. (the time that I get the kids ready for school), I have already walked over 2,000 steps. Let me go to the gym and work out for an hour and I'm up to 9,000 by 10 a.m. Sundays? I'm sitting at church all day and I'm lucky to get in 4,000 by the time my head hits the pillow.

Anyway, I love this pedometer. Being the goal-oriented person that I am, I have never walked so much in my life. Tonight, I was only at 16,000 by the time dinner was over, so I took Pearl out for another round of the neighborhood. Thank you 19,264 steps at last count! It has really made me appreciate how little movement is actually involved with driving and watching TV and how much movement it takes to actually work out again.

Today, I ran for 10 minutes straight, and it felt fantastic. No plantar fasciitis pain, no back pain. Just good old movement and sweat (and 4,000 extra steps to boot!)

I would be lying if I said I wanted to live this way the rest of my life. Eating the same meals, rotated every six days, is tedious, and I long for my own delicious cooking and baking. However, like I keep telling myself as I eat my spinach salads, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels!