Hubby and I have conquered week one of the Summer Shredding Challenge! As I was telling everyone about the challenge this week, many people asked what kind of a diet we were on. Good question! My response? “We are on a diet where we limit our food intake and watch our calories, and don’t eat cookies and candy”…. Because isn’t that specific? There is no 
fancy name for the kind of diet we are on… that I know of? We are on a “lifestyle” diet.
Um.. what the heck is that? What if my lifestyle involves eating cookies and cake? Well that was the lifestyle that got me into this mess, it obviously isn’t going to be the one that gets me out of it.
You will find the strategy we are using to get our summer bodies below. Each week I plan to update with progress reports or changes made.
Our Plan:
Eating Habits
We track what we are eating on an APP called myfitnesspal. Our goal is to stay under a certain amount of calories for each day. We also have a goal of having a certain percentage of our food be carbs, fats, and proteins.
For week one Hubbs suggested that I start out by consuming 1600 calories per day. My (macro) goal is to intake 40% of those calories as carbs, 40% as protein, and 20% as fat.
The closest I have been to hitting the macro goal was Wednesday the 21st. I
have inserted a photo of the totals to the right. Many of my days end with each category being somewhat even. It may take some time for me to hone in on the Macro tracking part of calorie counting. For now, I am happy if I am consuming fat at a lower percentage than carbs or proteins.
The main goal I have been focusing on with eating habits is staying under 1600 calories. At first I thought this would be really difficult, but I still feel fairly full with this caloric intake. In fact in looking back at the last week, most days my calorie count has been hovering between 1400-1500.
The best part about the way we are tracking our food intake is that we can make minor adjustments in order to eat some normal foods. It is not all salad, chicken and rice (at least not yet, haha). Wednesday we had a pretty intense leg workout. Before the workout, hubbs suggested going for pizza after. I 
looked at him like he was crazy, doesn’t he know we are shredding?! After the leg workout, it was a completely different story! I needed that pizza.
This is where things get tricky. We can’t simply splurge every day because we have a hard workout. Hubbs estimated that if we split a pizza from MOD pizza it would be 425 calories for each of us. Well I had a good 600 calories available for dinner, so the pizza completely fit within my caloric intake goal for the day. In fact as you can see from the macro chart I posted above, Wednesday (pizza day) was actually my best food intake day.
Exercise
Cardio: Each day the goal is to do a specific amount of cardio. The amount of cardio we do is directly related to how much food we can eat. My goal is two miles per day, either walking or running. If I don’t get the cardio in, I have to decrease my calorie intake for that day. Hubbs said that rule of thumb is that regardless of weather a person walks, or runs, they will burn about 100 calories per mile.
This week I did most of the cardio as walking, because I was afraid of burning out, and conveniently my schedule accommodated for the extra time most 
mornings.
The first two days of the summer shredding challenge we did not run at all, because on St. Patrick’s day ( day 3) we ran in the St. Patrick’s Day Dash. The dash is a 5k, and I wanted do as well as possible. I came across the finish line under 45 min which was my goal!
Strength Training: We are going to the gym 3-5 times a week to do strength training. Training with weights is important, because the more muscle a person has, the more calories their body will consume every day. Someone who has a higher percentage of muscle can eat more than a person with a lower percentage of muscle = without gaining weight. Heck yes!
So far, with the calories I have been consuming, I still feel pretty strong. During the winter hubbs and I were trying to gain muscle, and we did! Now I hope to be able to retain as much strength as possible while dieting by continuing to lift weights regularly.
Reflections
The car is where I get the most thinking done. Well the car and the shower 
haha. Last Monday was the fifth day of the challenge. There I was sitting in the car thinking about how tired I was. My first instinct was to blame the workouts and the lower food intake for being tired. Just as I was thinking those demotivating thoughts I was struck by the remembrance of being in the car two weeks prior thinking the same darn thing (about being tired).
Well two weeks ago I wasn’t on particularly lowered calories. Two weeks ago I wasn’t doing cardio every day. Two weeks ago I was weightlifting less frequently. I was still tired. Like a streak of lighting it dawned on me that “I am always going to be tired.” Being tired is a side effect of what Pulmonary Hypertension does to the body.
I thought back to all the times that I had been so much more tired because of PH than I was at that current moment. It made me feel blessed. Blessed that I am currently able to accomplish so much. I will always be tired, but I can’t let life and my goals pass me by. 
Now don’t worry, I am still cautious. It is important to listen to our bodies, but I think it can often be easy to misinterpret what our bodies are trying to tell us. There is a difference between tired and exhausted. There is a difference between wanting to take a nap, and feeling the need to sit down every 20 feet when walking through the mall. There is a difference between being sore and having a pulled muscle. There is a difference between the heart working hard during a run and having palpitations. Its learning to listen and identify what is going on in the body. Its pulling back a bit but not giving up.
Once this week, and there have been in the past, times that I have to back off of a strength training or cardio session. This usually occurs because my heart feels off. It is not a heart working hard situation, it is not palpitations. It is just off. I have attributed this to the heart having a hard time keeping up with pumping the demanded oxygen that my body needs. So I back off for a few minutes and assess how I am feeling. If I am feeling good, I can try again at a more vigorous pace.
Weekly Result
If you read the last blog, you may be wondering where the contest entry video I mentioned I would upload is. At this time I am not ready to post it. Right now I am feeling a little self conscious about it.
During week one I lost 2.2 lbs. I can already feel that I am fitting into my 
clothes better, which is marvelous because they had been getting pretty tight. I don’t expect to loose much more than this each week. In fact if I was loosing weight at a much quicker rate, that would mean it would be time to assess and make changes to the diet. Loosing weight too quickly is typically not sustainable, or healthy.
Overall I feel really good. My muscles are sore, so that doesn’t feel great, but the soreness will eventually go away leaving a nice lean muscly body in the aftermath. I am still feeling quite motivated and overall excited about this challenge. Bring it on week 2!