Calorie accountability

So I've been slightly better about eating an actual dinner rather than just snacking for the entire afternoon/evening, buuuut I've kinda sorta majorly slacked on tracking calories. I'm going to challenge myself this week to track everything. I think this will really help me make some better choices about what I'm putting in my body. I'm also going to renew my efforts to not eat after 8pm.

Tomorrow I start my one-month anesthesia rotation. I'm looking forward to it. I'm not looking forward to being at work at 7 a.m. (which is about the time I've been waking up the last few weeks), but it's still not surgery early, so I can be thankful for that. I'm hoping to be able to do a lot this rotation and learn as much as possible because once upon a time I was really interested in anesthesia. Once I learned that your patients are unconscious for the most part, I lost interest. But I think I could definitely still learn a lot this month.

I'm also going to take my gym bag to work everyday so I can just go after. I imagine these hours will be a little more intense than my psych hours ;-)

Catch you guys later!

Recommitting...again...

So I haven't exactly been keeping up with my diet and exercise. I've really got no excuse. Well, med school is a pretty good excuse. But then I probably don't do as much work as the typical medical student. It's hard to motivate yourself to study after you've worked 12 hours at the hospital...

I started my OB/GYN rotation about a month ago and will be doing a week of obstetrics starting tomorrow. I did a 24-hour call already and delivered 3 babies. Now for a week of delivering babies! Hopefully enough women actually deliver instead of just labor for hours and hours.

I'm going to try to recommit this week by bringing my gym clothes to change into after work. And since I have to pack food, I'm going to log my calories. I'm hoping to be down about 10 pounds by the New Year. Ambitious, but I think I can do it. I'll try to make sure to blog a bit more.

Working out in style

Sorry for the lack of posts this weekend. I was very busy watching 16 episodes of 30 Rock with my little sister doing important things. Haha, but really, I was kinda busy? I did lots of laundry and went to see Paul. Turned out to be pretty good. I recommend it, but not if you're stingy. If you are, I'd just wait until it comes out because it's not like cinematic brilliance or anything.

Paul

Anyway, if you didn't notice (because I'm sneaky and didn't really mention it), I didn't go to the gym in the morning at all last week because either knee stuff or laziness got in the way. So, I told myself I'd do better this week. But when my alarm went off this morning, I really didn't want to go. In fact, I got my butt out of bed and set my alarm back two hours. But then when I got back in bed and thought of how I would justify this decision to my thousands of readers few loyal followers, I couldn't think of one good excuse. So I got my butt out of bed and went to the gym.


Now, since you're probably wondering, I wanted to share with you what I wear to the gym because I always wonder what/why people wear what they wear to the gym.


When I first started being healthy again, I wore men's gym shorts and larger t-shirts to the gym. However, I sweat pretty profusely when I'm at the gym. So my shirts would typically be soaked through by the end of my workout. So, after reading some articles on SparkPeople about good gym clothes, I decided to look into finding "quick dry" clothes. However, being in plus sizes, this is kind of difficult (mostly because it is assumed that fat people don't work out and thus no one makes workout clothes for them). But as luck would have it, I found some great shirts at JCPenney - and they were on sale! So, I bought a lot of them.

My favorite one is the pink one. But, I also have purple and black. In addition to having quick dry shirts, I decided that I needed quick dry shorts. So, after asking people for advice on SparkPeople's message boards about good women's shorts, I went to Dick's and bought about 8 pair of Reebok shorts. I really like them because they don't bunch when I'm doing a lot of walking on the treadmill. And the XL fit just fine, so I don't have to worry about hunting through plus size fitness stuff elsewhere.


However, one of the things that you can't really see that I'm wearing is a heart rate monitor. This small albeit expensive accessory has made a huge difference in my workouts. I am able to track how many calories I've burned and how hard I'm working out. You can kind of see it on my wrist in the above picture, but here's a close-up.

It comes with a chest strap that you wear right underneath your heart. It has electrodes in it that communicate with the watch so you know when to increase your intensity and so on.


Also, I also always wear my hair up when I work out and I typically have a headband to keep my hair off my neck and face. However, it's not the most flattering look, so I didn't take my picture with it on.


Anyway, I have to go work on a presentation for my medical terminology class, but I wanted to give you guys a quick update. I also wanted to let you know that I'm going to a new gym every morning this week. I'll update you on this decision tomorrow. Yes, I know. You will be waiting with bated breath.


Any updates on your life that I've missed thanks to my laziness?