Just tried this tasty burger from Low-fat Meals in Minutes.

Louisiana Blue Cheese and Chicken Sandwich, absolutely gorgeous and only takes a few minutes!

I am trying to lose some weight and I am slowly turning my diet around and I do emphasize slowly. The start of 2010 is not going too badly, alot of people I bet would disagree, ahem but I’m happy where I’m at for the moment. January was really a tester month to get into the swing of things and towards the end of the month, my hunger for junk has diminished somewhat.

That junk food is being replaced with healthy foods such as hearty meals, cereal, fruit, vegetables, even bloody broccoli and some weight watcher snacks, oh and Coke Zero and plenty of water.

I am also going to start weighing myself every week on Monday as I am coming round to the fact that ‘if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it‘. So that will be fun

For my birthday I got an Amazon Gift Card and bought two recipe books:

• Ainsley Harriott’s Low Fat Meals in Minutes
• Mens Health Muscle Chow

I only just started using Ainsley’s book and made a cracking meal called Cajun chicken fillets with Spanish orange salad (below) and it was absolutely gorgeous. Looking forward to trying out more dishes form this excellent book!

So that’s really it, onward and upward.

2010 is upon us and I think it’s going to be an absolute fantastic year, just a feeling

Now, the reason why this post is being written. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to get fit.. yet again! I seem to have put a good bit on over Christmas, but who hasn’t I guess. So what I’m trying to focus on is my diet. if I can eat fairly healthy and cut out junk food, I can then train to tone up.

A good day of healthy eating will get a green box on that day on the calendar and a bad day (meaning, I stuffed my gob with something that has E numbers in it) will get a red box. I might do a ‘cheat’ day every Sunday, not sure yet.

So, a little thing to help me focus is my 2010 calendar. I am trying out the Jerry Seinfeld Method. What is this method? Basically Jerry’s advice is to get a big year calendar and to do your task everyday and mark it off, after a few days you begin to see a chain of marks.

After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.

We will see, as you might have seen, I’m not exactly great at sticking to fitness plans. So, by the end of the year that calendar has to have a big long chain of green boxes, hmmm.

So I kind of floated away from my goal of getting in shape for about 2 months there, how the hell did that happen?! Well, I am down and but not out. I have to find the strength to do this!

Did a fair bit of training today. 30 minutes on the punch bag, I felt my arms were going to fall off. While walking the dog, I had a light 2 lap jog around the local football pitch and finished off the day with The PIT workout for 30 minutes.

Back after weekend and I didn’t go crazy, only had a few nibbles. Didn’t really feel like eating a ton which is good!

Today and tomorrow I will be having a break and eating some nasties.

Today will be the last day of my first week of trying to get into shape. It appears I was trying to celebrate by stuffing my gob with crap as seen in the stats below. No exercise at all done also as I had zero motivation, I know I know.

On the flip side, It really is great that I can see how I’m getting on each day by keeping a log. So here is my summary of week 1

Diet

I have to start eating more meals everyday as this should speed up my metabolism and I HAVE to eat breakfast. I find it a chore when I have to get off my bum and make healthy-ish food when I’m not in the mood. Lesson: Try and plan out each day’s meals in the morning so I have them ready when I’m not!

Now, snacks. Looking back over the week’s snacks I ate, something quite alarming surfaced. You know all those tiny little sweets, chocolate and coke I consumed? Guess what, It adds up! Whenever I have a few indulgences each day, I actually don’t think that’s a bad idea as it keeps my moral up, but they add up to a good few extra calories each week and I can see this is going to be the hardest part of my goal.

First off, I find that when I eat, say a bar of chocolate that It makes my taste buds go into overdrive and I find I want more and more bold foods. So I will be trying to cut down alot on these terrible snacks and will be buying more healthier food like nuts and fruit to stop the cravings.

Exercise

I don’t find working out that hard actually. I did 6 workouts this week and don’t think that’s too bad at all. I find the different things I’m doing great as I’m mixing it up alot and I don’t feel bored. One thing though, I have to push myself more. I do slack a little here and there and take an extra few seconds resting in between sets etc. but overall I’m very happy with where I’m at right now.

Statistics for Today
Water	Food	Exercised	Snacks
1.5 litres consumed.	2 nutrigrain bars, Grilled Chicken Salad.	Nout’	Breakfast Sandwich / 2 sausages / 2 rashers, 2 glasses of Coke, half a bag of sweets, 1 packet of maltesers.

Been pretty good today, lots of motivation and sweating and I ate pretty well. But by now, I thought I would have lost some of my belly. I know it’s extremely early on and I am still getting used to working out and trying to cut down on my little snacks, but oh well.

I had a chicken salad for dinner today, bought some ready made ‘mixed leaves’ in Dunnes Stores which tasted fantastic and were quite fresh, all for a total of €2.50 and there’s half a bag left over, so I have the option of eating the rest tomorrow. The dinner would have been perfect if I hadn’t tried to cut a corner and bought some cheap chicken breasts. They were absolutely horrible, every bite I could feel the chicken squelching around with ‘water’. Lesson learned, buy proper stuff next time.

I was supposed to do the Yoga X workout from P90x today, but thought it might be a little light and I was feeling energetic so I passed and did 25 minutes on my bag and 20 minutes of The Pit workout. The Pit is an MMA focused training DVD that will have you in absolute bits. I only managed 20 minutes of it today.

Today I fell off the wagon and ordered some takeaway from the Chinese, I would have loved to say It was the only option as there was no food in the house and I couldn’t walk to the shops to buy some as they were all closed for the day, but that’s not true. I simply hadn’t got enough will power to stop myself.

On top of the cheeky meal I consumed, I also didn’t finish my Shoulders & Arms routine for P90x, I did about 40 minutes and just gave up. So not one of the best days I’ve had, but we shall see tomorrow how I go.