National Body Challenge 2006

"I, Isabelle Palmer, challenge myself to do my best to eat healthy, whole foods every day, to get up and move around more, to make the time to exercise, and to keep a log of my progress. By doing so, I'm improving the quality of my own life and my loved ones' as well. -- Jan 14th, 2006"

I went to the mall today and signed up for the National Body Challenge. This is a free 8 week fitness & weight loss challenge. I signed up last year, too, but only lasted one week. So my goal this year is to keep it up for at least a month, but it would be better if I can finish the whole 8 weeks. So if I write about it here in my blog and I fail to follow through, I fail publicly, big-time. And since keeping fit & trim never hurts an acting career, it fits into this blog. My starting stats:

Height - 5'6

Weight - 223 lbs

Clothing Size - XL or 18

Waist - 40"

Resting Heart Rate - 90 BPM

Body Mass Index (BMI) - 36

I'm planning to loose 10-16lbs, or one clothing size.

I have to admit though, that I feel conflicted about loosing any weight right now, and it's for a stupid, trivial reason. Last month, for the first time in years, I went on a clothing shopping spree, and bought $500 worth of cute, fashionable clothing from Lane Bryant. If I drop a size now, the cute clothes I just bought won't fit any more, and I won't be able to afford another shopping spree like that, so it's back to Ross and Target and the Five Dollar Clothing Store. Blah. That's such a freaking shallow reason to hesitate to loose weight over! Although I suppose if I drop another size, I'll be too small to shop at Lane Bryant anymore, which means I'll have that many more options in the regular-sized clothing stores, and therefore more opportunities to find cute stuff on sale. Hmm...

So, anyway, on to this week's Body Challenge plan. I start tomorrow. I plan to stick to a 2000 calorie per day diet, and to burn off 500 calories each day. (Which is about an hour of vigorous exercise.) So we'll see how that goes this week, fitting in an hour of exercise everyday. I get in about 20 minutes of walking at my uncle's office Mon-Wed between the morning & afternoon breaks, so that leaves 40 minutes when I get home, not too bad. And the rest of the week I should be able to fit an hour in, no problem, I'll be home at least half the day, if I have massage clients. (Yes, I'm still at the "if I have clients" stage of growing my business.) I'll estimate that giving a massage counts as a moderate level activity, 7 cal/min x 50 minutes = 350 calories per massage. Anyway, that's my plan for this week, we'll see how it goes, and tweak from there if necessary.