Into week four of the challenge

It's getting easier to get to the gym in the mornings. That's a relief, as I have another nine weeks of this to go. I'd hate to think I had to struggle every morning! Mind you, I still didn't get there until 6:30. There were clothes to iron and all the other things I should have prepared last night and didn't.

I did a cardio session as planned this morning, 20 mins of aerobic training at level 6, 5.6 km/h. Everyone around me was running which had me wanting to run too, just to show them I could, but I stuck to the plan and ignored my ridiculous competitive streak.

I managed to get myself onto the bus this morning, which meant that I got the extra 15 mins of walking that I do as part of my trip to work. I'm sure the people at the bus interchange think I'm crazy, walking around and around the interchange, but I don't care. I do find that I have to remind myself every once in a while that people don't pay attention, and that my fellow travellers probably haven't even noticed my "manic walking".

This walking is a habit I got into when I was doing the Global Corporate Challenge. My brother, Jim, is responsible for it, as he told me that he'd read about the concept of "stealing a workout" by not wasting time that would be spend waiting. I used to have a ten minute wait between buses. I now get off a stop early, walk to the interchange, and then use the rest of the time walking up and down the platform. All up I walk for about 25 minutes on my way to work.

This afternoon, I did the weights session as planned, and followed it up with walking to the supermarket. All in all, I burned about 600 calories in exercise today. The heart rate monitor is terrific. The machines at the gym seem to always say I've burned more calories than I have. I'd be at a loss to know why I wasn't losing weight if I trusted them. Mind you, the fitter I get the harder I have to work to get my heart rate up there.

Tomorrow, I'm doing the run with Leanne and Marianne at 6 am. It looks like we'll be going a fair distance, so I hope I'm up to it. Leanne's going to take her footpod so that we'll know. In the afternoon, I'll do some gentle cardio I think. After that, I'll be rushing off to trivia, and exercising my mind.

Oh, I didn't eat much today. I was hungry just after lunch and made myself wait a while, and then I forgot. I cooked myself a healthy dinner, and discovered it had next to no calories. Well, not compared to meals I used to eat. I made a turkey stirfry. I trimmed the fat off the diced turky thigh I bought. As I was checking each little piece out I had a quiet chuckle at myself. I'm not into cooking, so for me to be taking such care with preparing food is quite amusing. Mind you, it was worth it. I trimmed off over 50 grams of fat and was left with about 300 grams of lean turkey. I used to buy the turkey mince, but I think I'll do it this way from now on, unless I mince it myself. A mincer is on my list of things to buy, simply because you don't always know how much fat you're getting in mince.

Anyway, dinner was delicious. I had cheesecake for dessert as I had the calories left. I haven't hit the 1200 calories mark yet, so I'll be having supper too. Luckily I have some healthy snacks left over from the playstation afternoon. Oh, I took the chocolate into work and my workmates are kindly demolishing it for me so that I don't eat it myself. They are very thoughtful.