139.0

Up from last week, but not appallingly so (I can't remember if I was 138.6 or 138.4, but in any event, it's about a half pound gain), and entirely explained by my snacking last week and overindulgence this weekend.

I meant to get on yesterday afternoon and post my snack plan for the evening. It wasn't much of a plan--I wanted to avoid ALL snacks so that I could have a piece of birthday cake after dinner, and believe it or not, I managed to do just that. And now the cake is gone so I won't have that for temptation anymore. We had pizza for dinner last night (the pizza sale fundraiser at Connor's school came in, so it was unavoidable) and I had one and a half slices. The thing I love about counting calories is that if you keep track during the day and have budgeted a certain number of calories for that day, you know how much you can eat and stay within your limit. If I hadn't known where I stood at that point, I probably would have eaten at least two and more likely three pieces of pizza (which is what Claire ate, the greedy pig dog!). As it was, I went just over my 1500 calorie "budget" for the day and ended at 1563 calories. At bedtime, though, I was really hungry and just had to put up with it.

I worked out a lot yesterday. I tried the "fat burning" program on the treadmill and hated it. The point is to try to keep your heart rate within a certain level, based on your age, so that you are burning the most fat. So I kept the speed at a fast walk (4.5 m.p.h.) but I pretty quickly passed the 134 b.p.m. limit for "fat burning" for my age. My heart rate was more around 146 for most of the workout. And then I felt like it wasn't much of a workout since I wasn't sweating and out of breath, so I added time. I ended up doing 40 minutes, but covered only 2.7 or 2.8 miles and burned 320 calories. In the evening, I did the "advanced" pilates DVD. This is the one I've only tried once before and is the only pilates workout that makes me break a sweat. It's hard! It wasn't as bad this time as the last because I sort of knew what was coming, but I was still worn out at the end, and this morning my butt hurts badly! I obviously need to do this workout more often! In the end, I probably burned about 500 to 600 calories through exercise yesterday. A few more days of this and I'll have my weight back down!