Week 3 of 15 Review

Week three is over. I'm having conflicting feelings about the week, my progress, and the whole project. First, I met most of my goals which was a victory and felt great. However victory did not translate to change on the scale. It felt like I was getting worse so I am also discouraged. 

My motivation keeps shifting based on my feelings. Each new week feels like a fresh new start. Yet, by midweek it felt like I've been at this for months and the tasks are boring. As a result at times I am excited to keep going, sometimes it feels like a chore, and other times I want to stop all together.

Then there was the flu-cough-season allergy ickyness that was still around (don't actually know what was the cause. I almost think it was a mix of allergies and a cold). Thankfully, I think I'm on the mend. 

What I Am Doing?

• Drink 4 "little mermaid" cups worth of water (about a half gallon)
• Do an XBX workout
• 8000 Steps
• Meet the Noom food budget without going over the red foods
• Read two pages from a physical book
• On Mondays take a progress photo and post an update on this blog.

Week Three Review

Let's start with the victories of the week. Even with the sickness I was able to meet most of the daily goals. The only challenge I missed was 8,000 steps on Tuesday. This feels great. The less fun was the daily weigh ins, this is part of the Noom process. The previous and first part of this week I was only eating soups and sleeping. I was below the recommended daily calories. So last Monday I had drop almost three pounds. As my health has improved so has my appetite and with it some weight. It makes sense in my head but is still emotionally discouraging. Yet I kept going. 

I've also gotten frustrated/discouraged with the Noom food app. Specifically how it scans interacts with foods. This is not against the actual program more the tracking software. In Noon foods fall under three types green (vegetables, fruits, some whole grains etc), yellow (lean meats, avocados, whole grain pasta), red (red meats, oils, dressings, baked goods, treats). I'm working to have a primarily green and yellow diet with red foods in moderation. Where I am getting frustrated is in three areas. 1) When I search a food that have a package for and it gives the calories based on "a serving" and I have no idea what is considered a serving. 2) When the calories on the box don't match the information given from the scanned bar code. We had burgers at a friends the other night. The box said 230 cal. the app said 600. 3) Different colours for the same foods. I needed a breakfast cereal so I scanned all the boxes till I found something yellow or green (did the same thing for pasta). I bought the one that was a green food. Today I just used the search feature because the box had already been put away. Every version of the cereals name was "red". 

Let's end on a happy note, Friday night, I downloaded the new Pikmin Bloom game (similar to Pokemon Go). It encourages you to get out and walk to virtually interact with the game on your phone. I am not sure how long the game will captivate my interest but for now it has helped me surpass my walking goals three days in a row.  

Looking Ahead:

I started level 7 of XBX today. This is the first time I actually felt like the level up was a challenge. I hope I can keep up with the two levels a week. The walking will be fun as I continue to play Pikmin, walking helps me level up. And I'm going to keep following Noom. There are times it feels like cheating if there are two entries options for a food I'm looking up and one is yellow and the other is red.

Lastly, I'm thinking about a Noom article I read about how we recognize success. I know my motives for doing this 15 week challenge was ultimately dropping weight and dress sizes. When those markers don't happen as quickly as you like or expect it is easy to want to give up. What the article recommended was having multiple types of victories, for example, yesterday I sprinted up the street for about a minute. I haven't done that in years and I think it was only possible because of the XBX workouts. This week I am going to make a list of victories and other milestones.