Saturday

And so, another day begins. I slept till 8:45 - can hardly believe that, but we were at the neighbors till 11 last night so I guess I needed my beauty sleep! Neither Norm nor I did too bad last night - I had about 600 calories to work with and had one lite beer, a couple small pieces of a baguette (is that even spelled right) with some light cream cheese and a few crackers with cheese. I don't know the calories for all that and I am not even going to guess. I think I did okay and am not going to worry about it because today is going to be a good one. I walked the dog and had my breakfast and am now doing a little computer time. I realized that since I have forgotten my password to the first blog (what a dummy!) that there is really no good explanation of how this diet works. So, here goes for what I remember from the other blog - Norm and I are both overweight and according to the body fat calculations we did, we are in the obese catagory! Yikes that hurts!! Anyway, we have decided that once and for all it is time to get serious about losing weight and trying to get healthier. We set up our gym equipment, nordic trac, treadmill, bowflex and some free weights, in the basement and were in the process of setting up a work out routine. I was reading through the bowflex power pro owners manual and came across an addition in the back of the manual entitled "Dr. Ellington Darden's 6 Week Fast Fat Loss - Body Leanness Program" . It sounded a lot like the rotation diet - if anyone remembers that one - with the additon of a somewhat light work out on the bowflex and a lot of water. The section begins with instructions about measuring body parts, taking your weight and figuring out your body fat percent (great way to start - gets you motivated when you see it all down on paper!). The next section talks about the bowflex exercises. The third part talkes about "eating guidelines". It begins with instructions about drinking ice cold water - the first week you need to drink 4 32 oz bottles, the second 4.5 32 oz bottles, the third 5 32 oz bottles etc, increasing each week until during week six you are drinking 6.5 32 oz bottles of water a day - that is a lot of water! I like to drink water and have not found it hard during this first week to drink it all. Norm does not like drinking water so much and has had difficulty with this part, but he is doing well. I bought some reusable water bottles at Walmart for $1 each - three for Norm because he says the water where he works tastes aweful (he works for the government so that figures) and two for me. We always have one in the refrigerator cold so that we can guzzle it when we need to! Then comes the part about the food. For weeks 1 and 2, men eat 1500 calories per day and women get 1200. Weeks 3 and 4 men get 1400 and women 1100 and for the last two weeks, men are down to 1300 and women 1000. The food choices are all right there in the book so there is no calculating necessary. It gives you three types of breakfasts - bagels with cream cheese, 4 choices of cereal, or two choices for a breakfast shake. You also are alloted some milk and orange juice depending on which breakfast you choose. For lunch you can have either a turkey sandwich - everything that goes on it is spelled out in the book, a can of soup (two choices here) with a slice of bread, or a Chefs Salad - again, ingredients and portions of each are spelled out. For dinner there are also several choices with each part spelled out - if you can read you can follow this diet! You also get an afternoon and late evening snack and that is where they cut the calories. Anyway that is the plan and I will keep blogging for the six weeks with progress reports!