The first cut is the deepest

So I had my first sessions yesterday at SHS and was too tired to write. Turns out my "behavioral counseling" is actually next week, so I only spent 2 hours there yesterday.

First I met Tracy, my trainer, who's tiny. She also doesn't take any crap from slacker exercisers like me. She accurately pegged me as a person who doesn't do sports because I wasn't good at it when I first tried it and thus gave it up.

Sadly, I have 40% body fat according to their bioelectrical impedance measurement. She said she thought it might be off since I was dehydrated. Ugh. Let's hope it's off by +15%, that's all I have to say.

We spent the first session figuring out what my baseline was - what my heart rate looked like in 6 min of cardio, and how much weight I could lift for each exercise I had to do. The starting weight was one where I could just complete 10 reps with good form. I guess I picked the right weights because I am sore today.

She also made me do as many calf raises as I could do (30) and wall squats with the giant exercise ball (60, but for the record I could do more, we just decided to stop), and crunches in a minute (30).

Our first real workout is tomorrow, thankfully for only 30 min. I'm on my own to do cardio so I think I'll do that in the morning. I'm supposed to do cardio at 80% of my MHR which is 190 for my age.

After my meeting with Tracy, I went to see the dietitian Marilyn who reviewed my atrocious eating habits for the past couple of weeks: very few vegetables, a lot of deep fried goodies, and lots of eating out.

She also asked me to rate my motivation on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being "Nothing can stop me from succeeding on this program". I answered honestly, and gave it a 3.5. She asked me to rank my confidence in success from 1 to 5, and I gave it a 3. I've tried a lot of times to do this, so I'm a little worried about how this time will be different. But I do think this will work if I can figure out how to stick with it.

Marilyn emphasized that this was not a "diet" but just a way to eat. The first thing I'm going to work on is eating a better balance of carbs and protein. My target is 175g per day which is about 3 servings per meal, with some more left over for snacks. I'm also supposed to focus on getting around 45g of fat per day, which is fairly high for me when I don't eat out.

So the first two days haven't been too bad. I've been tracking my intake on SparkPeople so it automatically counts fat, carbs, protein and calories. Today was 1175 calories, yesterday 1560. And I didn't really have to think about it too much while I was eating - I just tracked it all at the end of the day.

Tomorrow morning I'd like to get to the Pro Club early to do my 30 min of hard cardio before we go to the Company Meeting and sit on our butts all day. So far, so good.