Day 2 - Baby Steps

Last night was... long. I took my lessons learned from yesterday to heart and laid out my clothes, checked the weather, and then made my menu for today and started preparing ingredients before going to bed last night. I think planning out and preparing the initial two weeks of Zone meals is the most difficult part of the Zone diet. I had trouble with it the last time as well. It isn't that we don't have healthy things to eat in the house, it's that I insist on measuring everything out instead of following the eyeball or 1/3 protein and 2/3 vegetables/fruit plate methods mentioned in the book. The last time, once I'd made it through two weeks I had enough standard meals that I could whip them up in short order and was then able to experiment with more interesting cuisine. Getting to that point is the challenge.

I stayed up until 10:30PM to watch the Vice-Presidential debate and then went to bed. And laid there. And then laid there some more. I think I fell asleep just after 11:30PM. I'm not sure why that was the case, around 7:00PM I was ready to go to bed and call it a night. I did get up at 6:30AM this morning. I figure my body will figure this out if I just keep getting up on time.

I did the run/walk workout this morning, altering their recommendation a bit to do a warm up of 6 minutes followed by 1 minute running/5 minutes walking for four intervals (6 minutes warm up, 24 minutes run/walk). I felt my form was pretty good, but no matter how slowly I ran/jogged it took about 10-20 seconds before I could pump my arms to go from strolling to walking. Hopefully, that will change as I get better at this. I also found that I didn't mind running by the bus stop today. I'm not sure why, I guess it was because those particular kids had already seen me so what's the big deal?

To measure out my 1/5 minute intervals I wore a GymBoss timer clipped to the neck of my shirt (so I could hear it over traffic and my own breathing). I started out with it clipped to the hip pocket of my sweatpants, but moved it quickly after I missed hearing the beep and my first run interval was three minutes long!

Below is my meal plan for the day. Breakfast was "interesting". I got lazy and didn't want to dirty up a plate for the eggs so I mixed them in with my oatmeal (after I'd cooked the eggs! Those familiar with my culinary skills may have been in doubt). That was a bad idea. I was able to choke it all down, but I won't be doing that again.

Breakfast - Oatmeal and Eggs
1 whole egg and two egg whites [2P]
1/3 scoop protein powder [1P]
1/2 cup 2% milk [0.5P/0.5C/1F] - I decided I can't really ignore the fat content of the 2% milk so I'm putting it in as a source of fat.
2/3 cup steel cut oats [3C]
2/3 tsp. olive oil [2F]

Lunch - Tuna Salad Wrap and Milk
1 can of tuna [3P]
1/2 cup of 2% milk [0.5P/0.5C/1F]
1 tortilla [3C]
2 tbsp. Miracle Whip Light [2F]
1 1/2 whole almonds [1.5F]
1 tbsp. pickle relish [-] - The label on the jar of relish in the fridge shows 0P/0C/0F so I'm treating it as a spice.

Snack - String Cheese and a Clementine Orange
1 stick of string cheese [1P/3F!] - We don't have low fat string cheese at the house. However, I erred on the side of being cheap because going with this means I didn't have to drive to the store.
1 clementine orange [1C] - The Zone book I have only shows canned mandarin oranges or regular oranges. However, 1/2 orange is 1 carbohydrate block and a clementine orange is roughly that size.

I've been typing up these posts during my lunch break at work so I haven't gotten to my circuit training yet. I'll post again tonight after that workout.