A St. Patty's Challenge Update

The past couple weeks have been a bit crazy so it has been a while since the last St. Patty's Challenge update.  The challenge has now been going for 14 days and I still have a lot of work to do.  I have developed the training plan for both myself and my wife.  We should actually start implementing it this week.  I have tracked all my food as accurately as possible using http://caloriecount.about.com  The site is really pretty good.  You can create custom entries, scan foods that have bar codes, and the website provides pretty good analysis of your eating even if it is based on generally accepted guidelines.  If you eat out it's a little more challenging but not impossible to get a good approximation of the food.

Nutrition:

Up until now I had been estimating my calories and macro-nutrient content based on nothing more than my general intuition.  It has been nice to see some numbers that approximate reality.  My carb intake was right on with my estimates at 125g per day on average.  Checkout the full breakdown below.  My goal for the challenge is to not worry about exactly what I eat but keep tracki of what it is so ultimately I can understand how things are working or not.

 Fat - 43.9%
 Pro - 25.7%
 Carb - 26.8%
 Alcohol - 0%
 Other - 3.6% 

	Cal (kcal) 1,900	Carb (g) 238	Pro (g) 95	Fat (g) 63	SFat (g) 21	Chol (mg) 300	Sod (mg) 2,400	Fib (g) 25
AVERAGE INTAKE	1,868 98%	125 53%	120 126%	91 144%	33 156%	574 191%	2,328 97%	17.3 69%

Exercise:

I ran the Charlotteville Fall Classic 10K on the 13th of October so much of my exercise was with that in mind.  I did a handful of pull-ups, push-ups, and dips during the time but nothing structured or regular.  

September 30th: Ran 1 minute on 2 minute off sprint intervals for 15 minutes and then a slow 2 mile jog.  Total time 30 min.

October 2nd: Did my VO2 Max test which was 26 minutes of running

October 3rd: Ran 5 miles at a real easy almost 12 minute pace.  Total time about an hour.

October 5th: Ran 3.5 miles at a comfortable 11 minute pace. Total time about 40 min.

October 7th: Ran 1 minute on 2 minute off sprint intervals for 15 minutes and then a slow 2 mile jog.  Total time 30 min.

October 8th: Ran a little less than 3 miles at about a 9 minute pace.  Total time about 30 min

October 13th: Ran the Charlottesville Fall Classic 10K.  Total time about 53 min.

Total for the first 2 weeks, 4.5 hours of mostly jogging, which averages to about 20 minutes or 2 miles per day.

Stats:

So far my weight has stayed steady between 172-175.  As I expected my weight loss has plateaued but while it is difficult to tell from day to day I believe my body composition is still improving.   

General Wellness:

I have felt very good overall but did have a few nights in week two where I did not sleep well.  This was likely due to various work and family stresses that had my brain running overtime.  I think this led to a very difficult set of sprint intervals on OCT 7th.  This just highlights to me how huge a factor sleep can be in both performance and general well being.  I guess I need to jump on some meditation and get to bed a little earlier. 

Summary:

The first two weeks have gone great.  I have not got everything organized to keep me on track for the challenge but have taken some significant baby steps.  I am in the habit of tracking my food daily and it has really shed to light some of my good and bad habits as well as given me a good understanding of my macro-nutrient breakdown.  This will be very valuable tool as I may need to make some adjustments if I plateau for too long. I have put together a good training plan based on my families time constraints and what I believe will give us the best results with the least time.  I will give a rundown on the training plan after we have had a few weeks to burn it in and fine tune were necessary.

More details to come, thanks,
Chuck