60 Day Challenge

Well, Liv and I recently joined an accountability group that L and Richelle formed to reach their health goals. And, since I am serious about living a healthy lifestyle, I thought that this group would definitely help me be more conscious about my nutritional decisions, plus, get my butt in gear towards reaching those seemingly simple, yet recently unattainable goals, such as doing one pullup/chinup and running 1.5 miles in 12 minutes.

So, this space would be a great place for me to post my updates on the challenge, along with any insights I have along the way. I guess first I should reiterate my goals for 60 days, and my starting stats. (This is similar to what I originally emailed):

My physical goals that I wish to attain in 60 days include:
1. to be able to do one pullup--training for that includes incoporating lat pull downs, rowing, and hanging from the chinup bar uselessly.
2. to run 1.5 miles in 12 minutes--training includes running using high-intensity interval training, running, and running. I have my test day to see improvement once per week.

Nutrition:
Although my overall goal is to remove all processed foods from my diet, by the end of 60 days, I will remove all fried foods (i.e. french fries, potato chips), white bread (is this a good goal, since I hardly eat bread anyway, let alone white bread? ) and white sugar from my diet (including any foods that contain high fructose corn syrup, which is lurking in almost EVERY processed food, including supposedly 100% whole wheat bread).

On the flip side, I will incorporate more greens in my diet, and will begin to experiment with
green smoothies. Also, I need to be more conscious with my probiotic supplements and omega-3 fats. I will bring my lunch to work to ensure that I am incorporating more whole foods rather than processed foods into my diet.

As I progress past this 60 days, I would like to be able to fast one day a week, but that's an overall lifestyle goal, not something I will tackle at this beginning stage. I will also have a "free meal day" every two weeks to help with psychological issues around food. I think to help me out, though, I will start with one free day every week (on Sunday) for the first thirty days, and then starting September 01, have the free day every two weeks. As a lifestyle goal, I hope to never need a "free day."

I don't necessarily believe in a magical number for weight, but when I was the most fit, I was hovering between 118-120 lbs with 18% body fat measured with hydrostatic weighing. I am 125 lbs now, and nowhere near that in body fat% or fitness, so for my 60 days I should be at 120 lbs. I would like to say that my body fat% could be 20%, but I have no way to measure that right now, although I do have my weighing scale that has a bioelectrical impedance element to it with which I guess I can measure improvement. It's difficult since those bioelectrical impedance scales need the same exact circumstances to be anywhere near helpful in terms of gauging progress. But oh well, it's worth a try. In the meanwhile, I'll see how realistic it is to lose 3 inches around my waist in 60 days. Or maybe 3 inches overall? I don't know what the precedent is for inch loss versus fat loss. I hope that is a realistic goal. 3 inches

So, anyway, until I lose enough fat that I can see muscle definition again, and therefore gauge my fitness level with my eyes, I will use a scale to measure my progress (since just looking in the mirror would probably have more of a de-motivating effect on my right now rather than a motivating one).

Current (as of Aug 1) 125 lbs; arm: 10.5 inches; waist: 28 inches; thigh: 20.5 inches.
Will update stats every Sunday.