Tools of the trade...

Well, I've been sticking with this thing for over 50 days now, completely on plan, balls-out, cheat-free.  (I'm not sure how adding the phrase "balls-out" adds legitimacy to my opening statement, but it just feels right.)  According to my log, this is as long as I've stuck with something in over 4 years.  Results continue to be positive.  I'm down another 5 lbs this week (holy shit, scale fairy).

With this post, I wanted to write about a few tools/techniques that I've found are helping me.

Now, I'm certain you've heard about Pandora, but it has become my go-to app for exercising:

For exercise tunes, in the past I would create a playlist on iTunes, listen to it until I got sick of it, and repeat the process.  With as much as I've been exercising lately, this is starting to get too repetitive.

So, enter Pandora.  If you drill down into some of the station menus, you eventually get to this:

a bunch of tailor-made workout mixes.

It also gives me an excuse in case I'm caught listening to a song that may be considered embarrassing in some social circles.  Witness a recent conversation between my wife and I:

Wife:  "I noticed you were rocking out pretty hard at the end of that workout."
Me:  "Yeah, good workout."
Wife:  "The song coming from your earbuds sounded like 'Flashdance...What a Feeling.'"
Me:  "Yeah, well that was just the 80's cardio mix on Pandora."
Wife:  "Ok, but I see that you also purchased the song on iTunes."
Me:  "Why don't you just shut the fu-"
Wife:  "Easy there, big fella."

With regards to food, I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can eat the same thing for many days on end without getting sick of it.  I'm pretty sure that for every lunch between grades 3 and 5, I had the same bologna and cheese sandwich, packed in a "Space: 1999" lunchbox.

So every Sunday night, I make all of my breakfasts and lunches for the next 5 days.  Breakfasts are made from this layout:

Whole-wheat pitas, meat and cheese of choice (this week it's ham and swiss).  I bag 5 of them up, put them in the fridge, and boom - instant breakfast (450 calories).

One minute in the microwave before I'm out the door in the morning, and it's all good.

For lunch I bag up 500 calorie portions of nuts:

This week it's cinnamon almonds and cashews.  (By the way, I'm aware I have mentioned "balls-out" and "nut bags" in the same post.  I promise it ends here.)

One of the main things I'm focusing right now, if not the main thing, is "calories in".  Obviously, I'm monitoring other things as well - exercise, water, bad/good carbs...but what is really keeping me on plan and motivated is watching calories.  I originally started with a goal of at least 1600 and no more than 2000 calories per day, and I've got a streak of 50+ days going of hitting that target (Cal Ripken doesn't have anything to worry about yet, though).  Paging through my log, I see that I rarely get above 1900, and it looks like most days are averaging right around 1850.

I try to prepare a lot of food myself, so I can control the calories as well as the ingredients.  But when there's nothing on the label to help me, or I eat out at a restaurant, I use this:

It was one of the first (free) apps I found in the app store when I did a search for "calorie counting".  I think many people use and like some tools called "FitDay" and "MyFitnessPal", which I may check out in the future, but for now, this is all I need.