day 148 (day 1 / week 22)

Today I stayed home to exercise again. I did Slim in 6's Ramp It Up (48 minutes) again. My tummy is still trying to recover from those sugar free coconut chocolate things I had the other night. It was a party and everyone was eating pie and ice cream, and I chose to have 3 of those sugar free candy things for 200 calories--it hit the spot, but I probably wont have any ever again lol.

I really like Slim in 6. You guys know this though :). Between the cardio, yoga and strength training with the resistance bands, I feel like I get a good workout. There are squats, lunges, push ups and all sorts of slimming goodness in just 48 minutes.

For the last few weeks I have been tweaking with my calories. Sparkpeople has me eating 1200 calories everyday along with my exercise. I realized that when I eat 1200 calories a day, I stay at a stand still with my weight. This small delay tells me that I'm not eating enough. I added another 100-150 calories to that (still staying in my calorie range that sparkpeople gives me), and my body reacts to it better. I find this fascinating. Exercise/diet misconceptions say that the less you eat, the more you will gain weight. Very NOT true. I learned this in school and have read articles about this over the years (including recently on sparkpeople), so if paraphrasing isn't accurate enough, please don't bark at me. I am not a professional! This is what sparkpeople has to say about it:

The SparkPeople program will NOT allow any female to eat less than 1,200 calories daily or any male to eat less than 1,500 calories daily.

When calories drop too low (usually below 1,200 calories for women and 1,500 calories for men), your body’s protection mechanism switches on because the body thinks it is starving. In order to conserve energy, the body lowers your metabolism and you will not burn calories as quickly. This results in a slower weight loss rate, or sometimes prohibits any weight loss from occurring.

At SparkPeople we call this “Starvation Mode”. When your caloric intake falls below these levels, it is also extremely difficult to obtain all the nutrients that your body needs for health and survival. These very low calorie intakes can also lead to other health problems such as eating disorders, gout, gallstones, and heart complications.

Your body, our bodies go into starvation mode, when we don't eat enough, and it starts storing, instead of burning thanks to our ancestor, Captain Caveman. They never had a guaranteed meal so their bodies had to adapt to that. I guess we still have this gene. Anyway, make sure you are eating enough! Eating too little on your weight loss journey can hinder your results! Sparkpeople provides and actually incorporates the formula into your account so that you are getting the estimated correct amount of calories to your lifestyle. You can even go in and see the formula, and do it yourself (I did!). Maybe I'll post the formula here someday so you guys can do it too :).

I can't believe it's almost Friday. Time is flying by waay too fast, so I am glad that I am not sitting here, saying "I'll exercise tomorrow." Tomorrow is gone, and today will be soon. Make it count!

I can do this. I am a star.