31 Day Fitness Challenge, Day 6

Yes, I DID exercise yesterday, in case you were wondering, I just didn’t post today’s update before I went to bed. I’m trying not to stay up so late. Still, I went to bed at 1:30, even without posting a post or updating my fatsecret.com. Ugh!

To Do:

• Conquer the 31 Day Fitness Challenge.
• Learn to go to bed on time.

So I’ve been watching the numbers on fatsecret.com as I enter items into my food journal and I started thinking… what does it all mean?? I mean, sure it’s great to have this handy little pie chart that shows what percentage of my food intake was fat or protein or carbs, but are those numbers good or bad? I’ve often suspected I don’t eat enough protein so I started digging around on the internet and what I found was pretty interesting.

There are, of course, a variety of tools, formulas and opinions, but this article at About.com seemed to sum it up the best and represent the different methods of deriving your minimum daily protein intake. I also found a variety of health calculators at healthcalculators.org that I found useful, and their protein calculator gave me the same number as when I calculated it myself from the formula from the About.com article.

So.

I’ve determined that I should be eating at least:

• 256 grams of carbs per day
• 52 grams of fat per day
• 21 grams of fiber per day
• 70 grams of protein per day

Of course, those numbers are assuming I’m at my normal healthy weight, which I’m not, so they’d actually be a little higher for my current weight. I can still use them as a minimum, though, because as I learned on the About.com website, if you don’t eat enough protein your body will actually take it from your muscles!

So far this month I’ve consumed a daily average of

• 242.47 grams of carbs per day
• 55.16 grams of fat per day
• 23-ish grams of fiber per day (fat secret doesn’t automatically calculate an average for that one.)
• 54.18 grams of protein per day

Clearly I have no issue getting my carbs and fibers in. ; ) The last two days I’ve been intentionally trying to eat more protein, or my average would have been even lower! Not that I want to be very strict and legalistic, mind you, but it helps to know where your weak points are right? Mine is obviously protein. What can I say? I’m a carb person. =P

So.

So here’s the rundown for Day 6:

Activity: The 30 Day Shred, Level 1
Activity Length: 20/25 minutes
Difficulty: The first part of the work out was SO. HARD. The middle part got easier and then the last circuit was a bit tougher because I was worn out by then. The first circuit is, for me, the most difficult. Except for the bicycle crunches in the third circuit. I can not do those that late in the game when I’m that worn out. I think I probably could early on, but doing them last,… right now I have to opt for regular crunches. But I know I’ll get there. (And wouldn’t you know, Son had moved my 1.5lb weights.. so I had to use the 2 lb ones!)
How I feel: Seriously, I think I could have curled up on the floor right there and fallen asleep. Instead, I pulled myself up and with wobbly legs dragged myself to the shower!
Tomorrow: Day 3 of the Shred. With my 1.5 lb weights. =P

Tomorrow (or tonight, depending on when I finish exercising) I’ll be posting day 7’s update along with, duh duh duhh…, my first weigh in. Whether you weigh in or not, whether you weigh today or tomorrow, I’ll be putting up a “Check-In” post on Friday, complete with Mr. Linky. Feel free to use the original graphic in your post, or this updated graphic,…either/or:

See you then!

If you’re just now finding this challenge, start here.