Day 1 - Putting The Plan In Motion

I hit my goals for today! I can hear the comments of, "Congratulations on waking up, taking a walk, and eating breakfast," already but despite a pretty easy first day and set of goals I learned a few things:

1. I made a paper planning mistake. "Wake up at 6:30AM" does not translate into "start working out at 6:30AM". By the time I had dug my workout clothes out of the dresser, taken my medicine (I'm hypothyroid so I take a little pill every day) and put on a warm jacket (it was 40 degrees Fahrenheit this morning!) it was 6:45AM before I was actually walking down my driveway. Lesson learned: Set out my clothes and check the weather report before going to bed.
2. I found out I'm self conscious about being seen working out. There were kids walking to school and waiting on the bus this morning and I felt silly being seen by them. It kept going through my mind that they must be thinking, "Who is that old fat guy walking by and what is he doing here today?" I'm going to have to get over this, but for now I plan to figure out where the bus stops are through trial and error and plan my run/walks so that they avoid them. Perhaps as I lose weight this trend will reverse and I'll be more comfortable about being seen working out in the morning. Lesson learned: Plan a little, but mostly suck it up and get over it as quickly as I can.
3. I did remember that Zone meals take a while to fix. I didn't remember just how long that was. Breakfast was a half hour affair this morning and it really didn't need to be. I had to look food up in the Zone book to get the correct number of blocks for the meal and then cook it all up. Luckily, a few days ago I cooked a batch of steel cuts oats. Lesson learned: Plan my meals and prepare the ingredients the night before.
   

I went to bed at 10:30PM last night, but didn't end up falling asleep until after 11 o'clock. I think I'll try going to bed 15 minutes earlier tonight to see if that helps get me closer to the eight hour mark.

I weighed myself on the bathroom scale and I was very close with my guess from yesterday, I weigh 284 pounds. I'll use that as my starting weight to track my weight loss. I know that part of figuring out my blocks for the Zone diet is taking certain measurements and I'll post those as soon as I take them.

This morning I walked just over 1.75 miles (calculated using the Gmaps Pedometer) in 30 minutes.

Since I haven't reread the Zone book yet to figure how many blocks I should be eating I used my previous block count of 3.5 blocks per meal and 1 block snacks. Breakfast consisted of:

Protein
1 whole egg [1 block]
2 egg whites [1 block]
1/3 scoop of protein powder [1 block]
1/2 cup 2% milk [0.5 block]

Carbohydrate
2/3 cup steel cuts oats [3 blocks]
1/2 cup 2% milk [0.5 block]

Fat
1 tsp. olive oil [3 blocks]
1.5 whole almonds [0.5 block]

I scrambled the eggs and added a little bit of salt and pepper, nothing fancy there. The Zone book says that oatmeal is 1 block for 1/3 cup, but the nutrition information on my oatmeal packet says 27g of carbohydrate per serving and my batch made 4 servings. I went with the math (27/9 = 3) instead of the book, but I need to research the blocks for oatmeal. Regardless, I mixed the oatmeal with the milk and added the protein powder, a dash of cinnamon, and a dash of nutmeg and microwaved it to warm it up. It actually tasted really good so I'll probably stick with oatmeal as the carbohydrate part of my breakfast.

Tonight I need to plan my menu for tomorrow and Saturday morning. I also plan to lay out my clothes, check the weather report, and go grocery shopping to pick up anything I need after planning my menu. Saturday will be my big shopping day to get all of the things I'll need for full time Zone dieting.