Day 10

I appear to finally be out of the woods on the evil tummy issues. Thank God. I don't know what it is about this particular friend's cooking, but whenever I eat something she's made I come down sick soon after. This really ought to give me a reason to avoid her baked goods from now on, eh?

My Hub had the Eureka! moment this morning. He hadn't eaten breakfast before we left, and got hungry on the train. This was discussed at length as we walked across the Loop; he kept kicking himself for not eating at home, where there were those nice mini-quiche/egg cup things that he would've just had to heat up, but kept explaining it (to me and to himself) with "but I'm just not hungry before 8 AM!"

"Okay, then," I said, "either you'll have to start bringing some of those breakfast cups to eat when you get to work, or we'll just have to stock your desk with emergency rations. Instant oatmeal and cereal bars and that sort of thing. You just HAVE to eat breakfast of some kind, because otherwise you're trying to make your body run on less than a thousand calories per day."

There was a long pause while he processed that. "Hey," he finally said, "that might be why I've been so run-down and tired lately."

"No shit," I said.

"I should have breakfast."

"No shit."

Right now he tends to eat nothing until 1 PM, then eat a lunch that clocks in around 300 calories, then nothing until 7 PM-- which, because he's ended up eating the same size portions as I do, is about 300 calories again-- and then he usually ends up craving sugar and fried things (which are, unfortunately for him, not available in our apartment) and snacking on whatever's available, taking in maybe, MAYBE 400 calories there. Totally undereating. I have so busted him.

So if I can get him eating breakfast, that's progress. I want to get him eating a mid-morning meal and a mid-afternoon meal, too, because if he eats healthy things regularly throughout the day he won't be so desperately drawn to giant fried carb-n-lard foods. I'm plotting to have one day happen where I feed him BFL-balanced meals every three hours so we can see how he feels on that... I bet he'll feel a lot better. I bet he'll be less likely to "need" a deep-fried calzone after stressful days, too.

(And hey, if he's not so tired all the time, the odds will be better that a miracle will occur and he'll decide that he might as well start exercising. Okay, probably that won't happen, and I know that. But thousand-to-one odds are better than million-to-one odds, yo.)

Today I'm wearing an outfit that I haven't worn since the last horrible office-related binge. I'm pleased to report that it fits-- which, considering that my last memory of this outfit is the sensation of a full-body strangle hold, is something of a relief. Very comfy. It's all good.

I did indeed do the HIIT. I had to drop my levels down slightly, because when I tried doing my normal levels my body started shaking in a bad way. It still sucked. But I still did it. I stretched and stretched and stretched after both the lower-body workout on Sunday and the HIIT treadmill session last night. As a direct result, I think, I'm getting a lot less DOMS than the first time I did the lower-body work. Excellent. I'll be able to handle the Fun Run tomorrow night.

Upper body work today, and it went well. I had an unfortunate moment when I thought "No, I can't possibly have the weight numbers set correctly on the PDA for the lying dumbbell extentions; my triceps are stronger than that." Moments later, I discovered that I had, in fact, had the numbers set correctly, because I am just not as strong as I think I am. Ow ow ow. On the up side, I'm doing great on the dumbbell bench press and am considering bumping it up a notch on Sunday. I think I'll keep the same numbers one more time, check my form and make sure I'm not rushing anything-- because I've thought the same thing about other exercises which, when I make sure I'm doing them right, turn out to be kicking my ass rather a lot. Double-checking is good.

I finally discovered how to run the HIIT timer portion of my BFL software on my PDA. (Too many acronyms in that last bit. OMGWTFBBQ!) Good deal. Combined with my iPod and the carefully marked MPH levels on my treadmill, I ought to be kicking a great deal of ass.

Hey, incidentally, I'm looking for good upbeat songs for HIIT. I like to have a beat that runs around the same tempo as "I Wanna Be Sedated" (original Ramones version), or higher. Any thoughts?