On the table: taking up tobogganing

I've been sicky/coldy/sneezy for the last half of this week, and now, after staying home from work yesterday and after two nights of 12+ hour sleep, I can't decide if I'm finally feeling better or just feeling the effects of my coffee's caffeine powering its way through my empty stomach.

A flatter-than-usual empty stomach, mind you. I do love being sick.

For the past two weeks, I have been kind of obsessed with this iPhone app called Lose It. You enter in your height, current weight, and how many pounds you want to lose over a period of time, and then it tells you how many calories you can eat, per day. You then enter everything you eat and how much you exercise, and the app calculates how many calories you have banked and how close you are to meeting your goal.

Like a good piece of technology, it has a lot of information pre-stored. So, for instance, you can enter that chicken drumstick you ordered at a restaurant and it will likely have calculated all the oil and fat that went into it. On the flip side, it has at least 50 different types of exercise, including my favorites like like running, walking, elliptical, and yoga; to sports activities like archery, badminton, baseball, and billiards; to the daily mundane calorie-burners like carpentry, gardening, house cleaning, and music playing. I always get a laugh when I scroll through these activities, as they include such random (to me) things as: Broomball (wtf?), Fencing, Hang Gliding, Jai Alai, Luge, Sexual Activity (!), Tobogganing, and my personal favorite, in case you are using this app in the mid-1980's, Slimnastics.

An hour of Slimnastics, by the way, burns 300 calories. An hour of sexual activity only burns 18. Possibly why people gain weight when they are in relationships.

The first week, I went over my daily calorie limit every day. Mostly because of wine/alcohol. That was okay with me, though, figuring I needed a week to see exactly where my calories were coming from before I could wrap my head around making changes. This past week, I have been under every day except one, though from Thursday on, that has been due to being sick. This coming week might be tough, as I have a friend from HS coming to stay with me, and I expect we'll go out to eat some and drink wine, some, but I know we'll also be exercising a lot as long as the weather holds up. Overall, I am only looking to lose five pounds or so, and it doesn't even really need to happen that immediately, but I have been the same weight and have had the same stomach/ass/hip issues for so long, I need a little help and reassurance that I can actually do something about them.

I bought my first pair of skinny jeans a few weeks ago. (Yes, I know - three+ years after they came back into style.) I fit into them and even look flattered by them; however I would just like to feel a bit more confident in them. I've never been one to care about the numbers on the scale as much as the numbers on my clothes - and those have pretty much remained consistent - but I think I could look just a little bit better.

I'm interested to see if/how much this changes my habits, or if I'll lose interest at the first sign that I can't change, at all. But, for now, it has been enlightening to see exactly what I'm putting into my body, and has made me feel like just maybe I have a little bit of control.