Fighting

Still keeping up with the workouts, folks!

I moved into "Phase 2" of the Body Breakthrough workouts. I think I may hit a snag as I progress through this bad-boys, though, because I do not have a gym in my basement... only dumbbells, a stability ball, a flat bench, and a yoga mat. The more challenging workouts definitely require cable pulls and pull-up bars. I'm thinking about purchasing a pull-up bar - one of those you can install in a door frame. But for now I'm just googling "dumbell alternatives for [enter exercise here]" like a crazy person. So far, so good, but I'm not really sure how much longer I will be able to substitute before it effects my results. Maybe that's a negative view to have and it will all be just fine. We'll see.

I'm going to do new measurements this weekend and see if I made any progress - which I feel like I definitely have! My posture is definitely improving, which naturally makes me look a bit slimmer. No more of my grandfather threatening to strap a board to my back!

Okay, so we know that exercise is going well (can't say enough how proud I am of myself for this!!) - now I will talk on some of the food stuff I've been doing:

• I recently boosted my calorie-intake to 1,900/day from 1,800/day. I said I was going to do 2,000 - which honestly is what I'm aiming for - but it was screwing up my charts on MFP to increase it by that much. Also, I'm trying to boost my protein intake a little bit... and at 2,000 calories they were suggesting I eat something like 250g of protein a day - right now it's at, like, 195g which is still RIDICULOUS! I'm starting to feel like these online tools aren't as awesome as I'd like them to be.. and wondering if there might be something better out there that always also (Freudian slip - ALWAYS IPHONE!!) has an iPhone app. 
• I have switched to almost all full-fat dairy. Full-fat cheese, full-fat yogurt (plain greek is the only kind I can find full-fat that isn't super expensive baby yogurt), sour cream, and 2% milk. 
• The biggest difference, though, is I am now cooking almost every night or eating leftovers from a night I did cook. I am also eating lunch at home during the workweek, with the exception of one day where I can choose a restaurant. 

Since we are nearing the end of September (where does the time go?!), I figured I'd update everyone on my vices; drinking and smoking. I'm doing much better. There are now nights where I don't drink at all, or will maybe just have a few sips of Mike's beer. A lot of nights I'm only smoking 1 or 2 cigarettes - however, I'm still having my half-pack nights. The weather is getting much cooler now, so that will help cut that down since I do not smoke in my house.

Edit:
I began drafting this post Tuesday morning and am just now getting about to editing and adding some things. Tuesday morning I felt awesome about my workout. Last night was rough. Our oldest son had an hour-long meltdown. By the time is was over all I could think about was go outside and having a smoke - which I did. And then remembered "duh, this is Wednesday, this is workout B day"... but I wasn't trying to go workout for an hour at 8:30pm after having smoked like 3 cigarettes. That just sounded gross to me. I haven't taken more than one walk this week, either. Having lunch at home I feel like it's a little harder to motivate and/or not enough time to go walk the neighborhood vs walking around the pond next to our office building.

I'm getting very down on myself for skipping this workout. And technically it wasn't "skipped" because I will make it up tonight, and according to the Body Breakthrough plan you can do as few as 2 workouts/week, so I'm not ruining the progress I've made so far. I'm trying to tell myself that just because this week didn't work out the way it normally would/the way I'd like it to, doesn't mean everything is ruined and next week can still be great.

Another thing adding to this self-hate cycle: I stepped on the scale this morning (even though it's not my weigh-in day) and came in at 201lbs. That's a 5lb gain in a week. Aunt Flo will be visiting in a little over a week - but 5 lbs is not just water retention. I'd like to think it's muscle. I'd like to also quit being so scale obsessed and focus solely on how awesome I'm feeling about my body and my back-fat disappearing (!!), how my clothes fit better every week and I have more energy and look forward to my workouts. I guess it's just hammered into my head that I "can't be healthy" at 200lbs when the media inundates me with BMI charts showing that my "healthy weight" should be between 150 and 165. I need to reprogram, but I'm not entirely sure how to do that.

Maybe I should challenge myself to 6 weeks scale-free, only taking measurements weekly or bi-weekly and tracking that way. 

Should I ban the scale for a month or so? What do you think?