Day 1

The 30 Day Challenge | Lesson 1: Your Changing World

The first step in living a healthier life is changing the way you think about yourself and about health. Once you have made a mental change, making and maintaining the physical change will be much easier. -Dr. A.

I will be suggesting the 30 Day Challenge to any person interested in making a lifestyle transition.  For a free program, this first email was packed full of helpful relevant information.  Dr. A. provides information on his "Habits of Health" approach to make a sustainable life change. After some brief info on human history, nutritional pollution, sarcopenia, obesigenic and leptogenic choices, Dr. A presents the first challenge.

DAY 1 Challenge: Make the leptogenic choice to take the stairs whenever you can. Obesigenic choices make you obese and leptogenic choices make you thin.

I was a little surprised to be presented with such a simple challenge on the first day.  I take the stairs every day, the elevator is never an option in my mind. However, with the challenge in the back of my mind today, I noticed for the first time that I get slightly winded after a climb up 2 flights of stairs.  I also noticed that particular muscle groups become strained and sore.  If that isn't a sign of my current physical health, I am not sure what is.

FOOD | Incorporating the new system

I will admit, I kinda jumped right into the first day with little preparation.  I do not consider this a bad thing.  When it comes to big projects, I have a tendency to get caught up in the details of preparation and organization.  In doing this, I take from the initial burst of motivation that gets the project going, this can be an issue.

Well, this is not a project, most projects have an end-goal.  This is a living, breathing thing, especially in the initial transition period.  I will be making adjustments on the fly.  With that being said, here are my results for day one:

Yeah, I was a little surprise.  My lack of preparation lead to a large deficit in calories consumed.  By the end of the day I was tired and crabby. As of today, my current Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is 2,167 calories/day.  Your BMR is how many calories you'd burn if you stayed in bed all day - basically, how many calories you burn just to stay alive.  My daily calorie goal is 1,710 because I am aiming to lose 2/lbs a week. I really should not be consuming any less than 1,710 in a single day.

Food Log Entries:

The morning was long.  I had a glass of water on my way to work, this kept me awake for the drive.
The plain oatmeal with a mashed banana was good, my taste for refined sugars will diminish over time as my pallet adjusts.
I started to show hunger around 9:00 am, I am drinking water when this feeling arises.
My lunch could have used more meat.  Leftovers.  However, I am feeling genuinely satisfied more than an hour later, I have more energy than normal as well.
The cutie orange at 1:30 should hold me over.  Drinking tons of water too.
I ran out of energy quickly after my drive home and trip to the grocery store.  Canned fruit seems to be a good option.

I have a lot to learn from today.  I will be relatively quick to adjust, tomorrow will be better.

EXERCISE

I did not record any exercise for the day.