Game On! Final Week

Well, I am happy to say that Game On is over!  But, very sad to say that my team lost.  The scores were close. The winning team had a total (4 weeks) of 3148.7 and our team total was 3007.4.  This is disappointing and I feel bad because I had two really off days with low scores.  Oh, well it is done.

Now, this diet was about changing how you eat and about having good habits and getting rid of bad ones.  You had to be sugar free.  I have to say, that I was amazed at how many things had sugar in them!  Things you wouldn't think had sugar did and it was one of the top 3 ingredients.  Now, I don't think I could give up sugar totally but I am more aware and will read labels a little closer.

You also had to eat 5 meals a day.  This I really found difficult but did it.  You were allowed one meal off  for each week and on those days, I found that I was so excited to eat whatever I wanted, that I overdid it and never got a 5th meal in.  I didn't like that I was so focused on food and when and what I was going to eat.  The eating part was all about planning and that is something I am not good at.

Some of the easier things for me were sleeping.  Yes, sleeping.  The diet says you need to sleep 7 hours a night and you got 15 points for that.  Nice, I love sleeping and in that category, I got a perfect score.  Exercise was also not a problem.  You had to exercise for a minimum of 20 minutes a day.  I only missed two days so this was also a higher score for me.  Plus, I exercised way more than 20 minutes, but unfortunately, no extra points for that.

Next up, water.  I had to drink 3 liters of water a day.  For some reason, this one had me nervous.  I didn't think I could do it.  I was surprised to learn that I drank at least 2 liters when I was working out.  This made it easy and something that I will continue to do.

I had a weight loss goal for this plan.  You had to pick either weight loss or fitness goal.  I have never tried to lose weight before, not because I didn't need to, I just never focused on it.  I am happy to say that I am down 6 pounds and have decide that I want to lose a few more.  I will blog more about that in a different post.

On to my good and bad habits.  The good one I picked up was to eat breakfast everyday.  I hated this.  Don't get me wrong, I know how important that meal is, but I just don't like to eat when I get up and if I am in a hurry, that is what I cut out to same time.  I thought by eating breakfast, I would feel better but the only thing it did was make me less hungry at lunch.  Since stopping the program, I have eaten breakfast but not every day.

My bad habit that I had to give up was added salt.  I will take a salty food over a sweet one any day.  This was super tough for me and I was mad at myself for choosing a habit that was food related when I was having trouble with the new food to begin with.  I did it though and feel better for it.  I almost had a perfect score for this.  I messed up on the first day of the plan by using a product to flavor my food that I thought was salt free but wasn't'.  There is no room for mistakes in this plan so that was minus 10 points.

So bottom line, I am not a fan and would not do this again.  I think a healthy diet and exercise is all you need.  This diet, I see as more of a fad, and maybe, for some who like competition, this will work for them.  

So on to some good news!  My back is really feeling great.  PT has been wonderful for me and yesterday was my best day so far.  I am excited to see a difference in myself and will definitely come out of this stronger.  I also had a PR.  I went 10 miles on my bike and finished in 29:53.  I was psyched about this as my prior time was 33:03.

No one has gotten back to me about swim lessons.  I will call them one more time and then look for somewhere else.  I'll keep you updated.

Thanks for all the positive comments and support from my last post.  I am confident that I will be ready for 13.1 in October.

Run strong, think big!