Living my life rather than letting it pass on by

One of the things I stopped doing in medical school was living my life. When I wasn't tied to my books, I felt as though I should have been and punished myself by not letting myself do things I really enjoyed, by not being healthy, and by not treating myself with respect. I'm going to try really hard not to do the same thing in residency. Yes, my job is important. Yes, the health of all my patients really matters to me. And yes, I want to do my absolute best all the time. But I don't want to lose myself again. I don't want to stop living life. I don't want to skip the gym because I feel I haven't earned it. I don't want to say no to social times with friends because I should be studying. In all honesty, an hour is not going to make or break me. And that's something I kinda reminded myself in fourth year (when we had a lot more free time). And that's also why I'm hoping I can sustain my blog this year.

Anywho, one of the reasons I didn't blog last night is because some co-workers went out to grab dinner and drinks later in the evening and of course, I had to go. But, I went after I worked out with my new personal trainer. I'm kinda skeptical about this trainer. Having worked out with a personal trainer before, I felt like the intensity was much lower than what I was expecting. That being said, Troy explained that yesterday was kind of a baseline check  for him to see what I can do. He seems like a good guy and I was very honest with him. I told him I would be using him as an additional source of accountability because I will lose weight and work hard if someone's keeping track with me, but I have a harder time/won't do it if I'm just doing it on my own. We're going to do weigh-ins and measurements and all that jazz, but he says he only likes to do that once a month. I personally think that once a week weigh-ins are better because it keeps me better motivated if the scale doesn't change in a week. He says that if I have a bad weigh-in he wouldn't want it to affect me. But we'll see. I might be able to wear him down. When I worked out with Mark, I used to have a 3 pound a week goal. I think that's pretty reasonable, but I think Troy is intending me to go a bit slower. We'll see. I have no problem telling him he needs to push me harder.

Other than that, things are pretty okay. Today was my second fasting day. It was a lot harder than it was on Monday because I sat idle during a lot of the day given that I was on triage when we had our PA (physician's assistant) who handles a majority of triage. I worked on my knot tying and chatted with the med students and other residents. I also did some circumcisions and made some calls I'd been meaning to make that I hadn't had the time to make up until this point. I did as much as possible to stay busy because you definitely feel the hunger more when you're not doing anything. I know it'll get easier because I used to fast in Uganda all the time - going home for lunch was too much of a pain in the ass. So, it was breakfast around 8 a.m. and dinner around 9:30 a.m. with some mango juice for lunch (which doesn't exactly count). Today, however, I had my typical breakfast and then had a buttload of shrimp for dinner since I was really hungry. I also opted out of the gym since we didn't get out until a little after 6 and I wanted to eat ASAP. I also wanted a chill night at home since I haven't had one of those in a while. I watched America's Got Talent and I'm going to head to bed soon, I think.

Two photos for you:

Breakfast (not pictured: yogurt protein smoothie)

Dinner

Thanks for the yummy dessert recipes! I'm thinking I'll try baking something this weekend after I hit up Eastern Market (a massive farmer's market in Detroit). Now, does anyone have a low cal dinner recipe they'd recommend? It would majorly help with my fasting dinners that should be about 300 calories max.

Staying on Track[ing]

So, one of the things that has worked really well for me in the past is tracking - tracking my calories, tracking my workouts, and tracking my weight. Now, I have a FitBit and will be tracking my steps too. So, I'll tell you what has worked for me and if you have any recommendations, you can share with me too!

Calorie tracking: I use a food scale and SparkPeople to track my calories. I weigh out most of my food and then log it online (with my computer or using the SP app on my phone). It was recommended to me to get a food scale because you'd be shocked at how off the measured foods are compared to the weighed out food - try it on cereal - that's the most alarming difference. And, if you're a cereal person (I'm not), you'll be sad at how little one serving size of cereal really is.

I recently tried the FitBit Dashboard to track my calories because their food library seemed larger. However, I found that a lot of the fruit wouldn't let you track by weight. And since I'd been using SparkPeople for so long, a lot of the food that wasn't already in the food library was already in my SparkPeople personalized library. I think the FitBit app for tracking is a little more user friendly and prettier to look at, but I'll be sticking with Spark People - it lets you put food in by weight.

Workout tracking: I also will be sticking with my heart rate monitor for calorie tracking during workouts instead of my FitBit - I have the Charge HR, which can supposedly take your heart rate. I have been using the same heart rate monitor since 2010. Unfortunately, they don't make that heart rate monitor anymore and I kinda sorta killed it by wearing it when snorkeling in Lake Malawi. Every time I try putting in a new battery, it dies again within a day. So, I forked over another $60 and bought a new one, which is better because it's green ;-)

When you first get the heart rate monitor, you input all your settings: age, weight, height, and sex. Then it calculates a target HR zone for you and you turn it on during your workout. Otherwise, it functions as a watch when you're not using it. You also have to wear a heart rate strap thingy ma jiggy. It's a chest strap and mine goes right under my tatas. Unlike my previous strap, this one is very thin and allows you to take the heart rate monitor part off to throw the strap in the wash. I couldn't do that with my last heart rate monitor, so I'm a big fan of this one.

The FitBit Charge HR claims that it tracks your heart rate so when my first heart rate monitor died, I almost didn't replace it. However, after wearing the FitBit to the gym a few times and putting my hands on the heart rate monitor hand grips, I found that my FitBit was anywhere from 20-40 beats per minute off. So, the heart rate monitor was a must - I really rely on it to make sure the intensity of my workouts are high enough.

Weight tracking: I have a Taylor brand scale to track my weight. I've had it for about 5 years and it's usually pretty close to the weights I get at the gym or the doctor's office. I weigh myself in the morning right after my morning pee to get myself at my lowest weight and will be doing so tomorrow so I can start my 2 week, 6 pound/get new shoes challenge! Starting tomorrow, I'm going to to try to lose 6 pounds. If I do, I'm going to order some brand new shoes - something I haven't done in a loooong time! Stay tuned!

Do you use anything to track? Or does getting caught up in the details stress you out?