Beets? Beats? It's All Good!

I avoided having any drinks on Saturday night, which was good considering I was offered them at least 3 different times. Granted, I had a piece of toffee bark goodness and some ice cream with hot fudge for dessert, but I stuck to my guns on having no alcohol. I also got in a brisk 30 minute walk, and the ice cream was a small serving. To keep from overeating on the fabulous mashed potatoes and baked ham we had Saturday night, I ate a lot of beets and beet greens before anything else. 90% of the beets were from my garden, and they were unbelievably sweet!

Yesterday, I seemed to be a pit of emptiness, but that happens the day after I have a heavily restricted calorie day. It's a good reminder to keep my calories relatively consistent and always eat back my exercise calories. What's that mean to eat back exercise calories? The quick answer is - assume you need 1,800 calories per day to maintain your current weight. Based on this 1,800/day, in order to lose 1lb per week you would need to cut back on 3,500 calories in your week - or cut out 500 calories per day. For almost all women it is not recommended that you eat less than 1,200 calories per day, EVER, so cutting back to 1,300 is cutting it pretty close. Now if you eat 300 calories less and burn 200 in a workout then you're good, because you still have achieved the 500 calorie/day deficit needed for 1lb/week weight loss. However, if you cut out those 500 calories and burn an addition 200, you are now in jeopardy of harming of your body and undermining your fitness goals.

Needless to say I ate back any calories I burned during yoga; the sweetened, dried mango started me on that road, but the yogurt covered raisins and yogurt covered malted milk balls for dessert really sealed the deal. I had a restricted day on Friday and ate too many calories on Saturday, and then Sunday I was bored and still recovering from how I had eaten on Friday and Saturday. My body really prefers a nice schedule from which I rarely deviate.

Bootcamp was tough this morning! We did not work with any weights, but spent a lot of time doing lunges, squats and step work. There were a lot of pushups, triceps work and ab focus - thank heavens for the loud, bumpy music with a fast beat. A great workout keeps me motivated to eat healthy throughout the day, which is great since I really don't want a repeat of yesterday!