Starting weight: 241.2lbs
Current weight: 232.0lbs
Weight lost: 9.2lbs

Week 1 Challenge - Water instead of juice
Weeks 2-3 Challenge - 10,000 steps a day

A week of triumphs:  
- I passed my exam!  
- I kept up with my 10,000 steps a day, despite spending my weekend doing nights on call. 
- I stuck to my nutrition goals over the weekend (mostly, barring two handfuls of crisps, which were just waiting to pounce on me at the nurses’ station during a 4am moment of weakness).

 

Progress on my challenges:

Week 1 Challenge - Water instead of juice
Still doing pretty well. I had some non-alcoholic ginger beer on Friday, but that was a special treat to celebrate passing my exam.  Otherwise, sticking to water and tea :)

Weeks 2-3 Challenge - 10,000 steps a day
I’m extending this challenge another week, because it is still challenging for me, and I can’t say that it has become an ingrained habit yet.  I have managed 10,000 steps every day this week, but it has taken some discipline and a lot of luck with the weather.  The type of day I am having makes a massive difference.  On days off, I actually like going for a long walk, listening to podcasts on my phone, so its easy.  Meanwhile, on nights, I would usually log around 5,000 steps overnight.  However, only about 2,000-3,000 would be after midnight, and therefore appear in my total for the day.  As the weather in the mornings was damp but bright, and I really hate to break a streak of good behaviour, I was able to talk myself into going for a walk to top me up to 10,000 steps before going back to the accommodation to sleep. I think that I like nailing the 10,000 steps before starting my shift because I worry that I might be stuck in theatre or have a freakishly quiet night and not hit my targets while working.  
Also, we have had a few beyond super morbidly obese patients in ICU (BMI>60) who have been struggling, so they were rather effective motivation.  The other doctor on nights with me is a bit on the round side, too, and even he mentioned being motivated to find a pool to start swimming again.  
I also think that the bit of morning exercise helped me to have better quality sleep during the day.  Win-win :)

 

Plan for the week

- Continue working on my 10,000 steps a day goal, trying to get as many steps in during the day from normal walking as I can - the mini stepper alternative is actually really hard work!  I’d like to think of dodging the stepper not as trying to work out less, but more as building a sustainable habit of walking more during the day… But, yeah, that machine hates me.
- Be more mindful of my eating habits.  I am generally eating pretty good quality food, but I am still feeling a bit lost about how much to eat.  After my stint of undereating last week, I have been consciously increasing my intake to around 1,500-2,200 cals a day to get my metabolic engine revving again.  I think that it is being balanced well by my increased activity, but I still worry that it is too much.  So, I will try to set a daily max of roughly 2,000 cals, and see how my body responds over the next week, and work out a set of goals for a fresh challenge from there.