BFL Week 8 Update

I gained back 1.5 pounds this week putting me at 198 even. The program has taken a serious downturn. Due to recurring back pain, I did not complete a single workout during week eight (I went to TKD once and played softball). I did stick to the eating routine but we did not cook dinner even once during week eight either. I'm sure we ended up getting more calories than needed despite trying to make healthy food choices. Eating out is just nearly impossible to do in an entirely healthy manner, whether it's extra salt and butter on vegetables or bread made without whole grains. It's really quite frustrating because we've started to feel overwhelmed by just how much time it takes to cook and clean up every night, plus get food ready for the next day. Eating out is just, well, easier.

BFL Week 7 Update

Yea, we have some weight movement downwards. This week's number is down two pound to 196.5. Total fat loss at this point is 13 pounds! I missed another morning workout (aerobics) this week but went to TKD that evening so I think that makes up for it.

We also dined out on Saturday night and managed to find healthy choices and keep portions reasonable. The food half of the program continues to be easier to maintain than I had thought it would be. I don't feel tempted to cheat or snack on bad foods; I really don't crave much of anything. I'm very happy to be breaking my emotional bond with eating.

BFL Week 6 Update

We're now at the halfway mark! I am disappointed though because instead of losing three pounds this week, I've gained one, bringing my current weight to 198.5 pounds. I keep telling myself, this is a process and will take time but it's still somewhat discouraging. Overall, I definitely feel healthier and have more energy. However, on Thursday I missed my second workout due to, I believe, body fatigue. I just hurt and didn't want to get up. I got a massage later that afternoon and the masseuse worked on a knot in my right shoulder for at least 25 minutes and it didn't even budge! I went to TKD that evening to make up for the missed workout, though.

The food part of things is well on track. The only oddity is that because we tend to get up later on Saturdays, we're not getting in all six meals those days. I'm not sure how detrimental that is, if it throws our bodies into a fit or something. Anyway, I'm going to chock up part of this week's weight issues to bloating from my time of the month. I don't know if it's still possible to reach the 30 pound weight loss mark by week 12 now...

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

I've finally finished reading The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird (Sitepoint). And when I say finally, I mean finally. I think I started this book back in December! It's not a bad book by any means but it turned out to not be the in-depth "design" book I was looking for. It's a great how-to reference for anyone starting out in web design and gives the reader lots of points from laying out the basic grid to selecting photography. And it does cover the most basic of design points like using color and texture but doesn't go much below the surface of the vocabulary.

The most interesting take-away for me was from Chapter 1, "Layout and Composition," where he discusses the Rule of Thirds. I've started to notice in almost all design pieces this basic division of the composition. I also liked this line from the preface: "...the [website] design should be as intentional as the functionality." Little stings more to a designer than having people say we just "make things look pretty," as if design has no function of its own in usability.

I also liked how he ended the book, asking the readers to look to their own ideas for inspiration; "The most important thing you can bring to the design table is your own personality, experiences, and interests. These three resources should form the foundations of your design work." I have been more inspired to just go out on that limb and try some of my own design work and have recently redone my professional portfolio.

BFL Week 5 Update

Well the trend of losing weight on odd numbered weeks continues. I lost 2.5 pounds this week, bringing me below 200 again to 197.5. My progress is going a bit slower than I had anticipated. I'll need to lose 3 pounds to be down 15 at the halfway point (my goal is 30 pounds of fat loss during the program).

I had the actualization this week that my work on my body is just beginning. Even if I meet my weight loss goal during the program, I'll still have another ~35 pounds to lose just to be inside the "normal" range of my calculated BMI. Right now, I'm still easily in the obese range (which is still very hard for me to get my mind around). But I also have to remind myself that I put on these last forty pounds over the year prior to starting the program so it's not unrealistic to expect that it will take that long to get those plus the other 25 pounds off!

I've also started to really take note of just how many fat people are all around. It is of no surprise at all to me that the majority of Americans are overweight. While we're eating our turkey sandwiches at the mall, we look around and take note of what and how much the other people are eating and it's so unhealthy. Our society needs to learn portion control! And as one person put it to me, we need to grasp that food is fuel for our body, not a means to happiness, enjoyment or pleasure. Learning that has been part of my process as well because I was definitely a pleasure eater.

The other thing to note is just how badly we seem to feel on our free days. It's nice knowing we have one day a week we can eat anything we want but the desire to eat lots of bad stuff isn't really there and when we do eat poorly, we feel rundown and tired. And we eat so much less than we would have before. We almost always split any meal at a restaurant and even then it's usually too much food.

We missed our first workout of the program this week, sleeping in on Tuesday and not doing our aerobics training. I had fully planned to workout in the evening but we decided to play games with some friends instead. I don't feel too badly about it; real life happens, we just can't make skipping the norm! We also did not have TKD this week as the school was closed.

Don't Mess with Texas, y'all

The Don't Mess with Texas campaign has been running in Texas for over 20 years now with great success. My favorite tool of the effort is the Report A Litterer form that's available from the campaign website. If you're in Texas and see a vehicle with a Texas license plate litter, jot down the following info:

• Texas license plate number (Texas plates only)
• Make of vehicle
• Time of day
• Location
• Date
• Who tossed (driver, passenger or accidental)
• What was tossed

You can then visit the form and report the violation. They won't get a ticket but they will get some awareness in the mail: The litterer will receive a Don't Mess with Texas litterbag along with a letter reminding them to keep their trash off of our roads.

If you're a Texan and want to display your support for this anti-litter effort, you can request a free litter bag and "Don't Mess with Texas" bumper sticker or window cling.

BFL Week 4 Update

Gained half a pound this week...I sure hope it's muscle! That puts my weight at the end of week four at 200 lbs. I did some research on average daily nutrition intake and this is what I figured out for an approximate day:

• Calorie intake: 1700 - that's 85% of the USDA recommended 2000
• Fat intake: 37.6 grams - that's 56% of the USDA recommended 67 grams
• Carb intake: 225.9 grams - that's 78% of the USDA recommended 289 grams
• Protein intake: 152.3 grams - that's 305% of the USDA recommended 50 grams

So you can see, this diet is attempting to replace a lot of the normal fat and carb calories with protein instead, which should be building lots of muscle given that we're lifting weights three times each week.

Something I was wondering about is how fiber factors into all of this. Of those ~ 230 grams of daily carbs we're intaking, around 38.5 of them are grams of fiber. But US nutrition labels don't include calories from fiber in their total calorie totals. However other countries, like Canada, do. So by Canadian standards, our total calorie count should be 154 calories higher. The argument for not including these calories is that we don't actually digest fiber. But that seems to apply only to insoluble fiber. We do apparently digest soluble fiber like that found in fruits and vegetables.

On the exercise side of things, my legs took a beating this week! We had two days of lower body lifting, three days of aerobics on the stationary bike and two nights of TKD. My legs were screaming for a break by the weekend. And in class, I was having a hard time keeping strong stances because my muscles just felt so weak. I also played softball on Wednesday and wasn't feeling at my best, a bit sluggish with all the crouching and standing but just running felt pretty good.

Donating my Hair to Locks of Love

After a few weeks and about four years after the last time, I did it: I got my ponytail chopped off and donated it to Locks of Love. I'll tell you, that 11" of hair doesn't look like so much once it's no longer attached to your head! My hair is still barely long enough to where I can pull it back into a tiny ponytail to keep it out of my face. (I really don't like the way it looks so much down.) But no matter, I will grow it out again and hope to donate it again...in a few years.

BFL Week 3 Update

Bam! 21 days down, 63 to go. This week's weigh in was a little more promising with me dropping below the 200 mark with a reading of 199.5 pounds. And, I did something active every day this week. I played softball yesterday evening and actually felt good running around instead of sluggish and tired. I also made it into TKD twice and plan to keep going on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My welcome back on Tuesday included a broken board to the right eye and nice bruise, so that was fun. Sparring on Thursday was rusty but I didn't get overly tired or feel like I couldn't make it through class.

Food-wise, we're keeping steady on track every day. We did cheat on Monday evening and ate the four remaining chocolate-covered strawberries since they were expiring but I don't feel badly about that. The one funky thing that's happening is being able to get in all six meals on Saturday. This is the second week in a row we've missed one and it's really due to getting up later on Saturdays. We also ended up working out after we'd already eaten meal one. But I have been making notice of when I feel like eating something because it would make me feel better and I'm trying to be aware of those feelings and work on changing my behavior towards food specifically around that perceived need to eat. I rarely feel hungry!

BFL Week 2 Update

I sure hope I'm in the "building muscle" phase already because I went from losing seven pounds last week to gaining one pound this week! That's right, my weight sits at 203.5 pounds after 13 days. I'm hoping, too, that it being my time of the month has something to do with it. And I should also note, I didn't even cheat on the diet part all week unless you count a single chocolate-covered strawberry at 12:01am of my free day (that's today).

Cost for food on this program is definitely less overall than eating out every day of the week and I'm sure the total cost is even less when you factor in electricity/time for cooking. It takes around 45 minutes to prep dinner and do the dishes afterwards. It takes about another 15 minutes to prepare all our daily meals the night before.

The exercise half is going well too. It hasn't been as horrible getting up at 7am every day as I anticipated. Sure, I feel tired and would love to go back to sleep but after about 10 minutes, I wake up. Once we start the day's exercise routine, it's all good from there. No serious injuries to date and the muscles all seem to be adapting well. Next week, the plan is to return to doing TKD on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

BFL Week 1 Update

Today is day 7 (and a free day) on the Body-for-LIFE program. We weighed in this morning and I've lost 7 pounds in week one, down to 202.5. It wasn't as hard to stay on track as I thought it might be. I had temptations, like a Friday happy hour, but I just drank iced tea and enjoyed the conversation.

We did decide to make an alteration to the rules: We're allowing ourselves to drink after 9PM on the day before a free day. So for example, free day this week is Sunday so we drank a couple of beers last night during a movie. If we were to only drink on the free day, we wouldn't really get to have a night out since we plan to have free day on Sunday whenever possible. However, since we are drinking the night before the free day, we also agreed to stop drinking by 9PM on the free day.

The dinners were really tasty and it was pretty easy cooking each night, although Wes has taken the lion's share of that responsibility mostly because he enjoys cooking.

I'm still trying to get used to the time constraints of the program: Getting up much earlier; going to bed earlier; getting all our food prepped the night before; figuring out how to fit dinner in and still have time to do other stuff in the evenings.

The working out part was very brutal the first couple of days; I was constantly in pain. But that seems to have passed as I get used to moving my muscles again. Next week, I think I'll start going to TKD again but we'll see. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew.

I hope I get remembered

We had a guy here at work die last week unexpectedly and it's my sad duty to post the e-mails people have been sending in with thoughts, stories and memories of him. I read through many of them as I'm formatting the HTML and the sentiment often causes me to tear up. It was only last year that I even really understood for myself why we have funerals (since I've still yet to have a human close to me die). I used to think I didn't want anyone to make a fuss when I'm gone but I guess what I want is for the impact of my loss to be keenly felt and to have made such an impact in this life that people pause to reflect on what I gave back. I'm not sure I'm there yet...

Donation for Mr. Cat

Today marks the six-month anniversary of the death of my wonderful "Mr. Cat" Ziegen. I still miss him very much and keep this picture of him in the living room.

My Cat Ziegen

He's the second cat I've lost to feline leukemia (FeLV) only his illness came on very suddenly and he was gone within a week. His initial test for the virus when he was a kitten came back as a false negative. As with the first cat I lost, the lovely Cobalt in April of 2005, I decided to make a donation to the Cornell Feline Health Center at Cornell University where they do research on cat-related diseases. I hope one day they are able to cure this horrible form of cancer in cats.

We've started the Body-for-LIFE program

Today we finally started the Body-for-LIFE program after months of saying we would; today is day 1 of 84. My starting weight was 209.5 pounds. I was really planning on posting my "before" pictures but after seeing them, I decided I am honestly too embarrassed. Particularly with my "behind" photo, I didn't realize I looked that bad. I knew I felt bad but it's easy to cover up in clothes and ignore the reality. It's not so easy to ignore the fat bulging over your underwear against the glare of a white wall and camera flash!

We're simplifying the eating portion as much as possible, eating the same first five meals each day:

1. 3 egg whites; 1 slice whole wheat toast; 1 apple
2. protein shake; non-fat yogurt cup
3. fat-free turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread; 1/2 tomato; spinach leaves
4. protein bar
5. 1 apple; 2 low-fat string cheese sticks

Meal 6 (dinner) will vary each day and those recipes are coming out of a book complementary to this program called Eating-for-LIFE. As someone who has never regularly cooked in her entire life, this is the most intimidating part for me. But the recipes seem easy enough and we did all the shopping for the week yesterday. Costs for food on this plan for two people for one week is around $120. I will post a real breakdown of everything we purchase for a week and associated costs when that gets all worked out after a few weeks.

Only 83 days to go! :)

I've Given A Lot of Blood over the Last Nine Years

When I went to the blood bank on Friday, I saw my total and I was pretty surprised. It seems I have a lifetime total of 7.6 gallons. That's not including the eight times I donated with the Red Cross while living in California.

I've donated a total of 61 times with the two Blood and Tissue Centers, 20 times here in Austin. Now if that number seems inflated, well it sort of is. I've been doing platelet donations for the past couple of years and you can do that 24 times each year compared to the 6-7 times annually with whole blood. You could actually do both if you planned it out but I haven't done that yet. Essentially you'd have to first figure out all the whole blood donations, put those 56 days apart then factor in the 24 platelet donations within 10 days of each other or the whole blood donations.

I haven't gone as often as I should have so far this year, mainly because of work and meetings. The good thing, though, is that when I do go, they have free wireless and I'm able to work while I donate. Then I usually go home early!

If you are not currently a blood donor, I urge you to become one. Fewer than 5% of adults who could be regular blood donors donate at all. Commit to once a quarter. Locate your local blood bank and schedule an appointment.

My First South By: A SXSW Interactive 2008 N00b Write-Up

Introduction

Believe it or not, I’ve lived in Austin during the last three SXSW festivals and in San Antonio during the three previous to those but had never attended until this year (though my sources say Interactive only really got cool and more Web-related about four years ago). When I went to pick up my registration badge on Friday, 7 March, my first impression was one of holy crap, there are a lot of people here! And a lot of iPhones and Macbooks! Come to find out, more than seven thousand people were in attendance for Interactive (SXSWi) alone.

I was quite excited to be there because honestly, I feel as if I’m in some kind of developer vacuum most days; I don’t get exposure to other Web developer or designers through any face-to-face means so I set out to not only learn what others are doing with the Web but make some local connections for the other 360 days of the year. I’m happy to say I did meet a few people, despite my usually quiet and reserved demeanor (I’ll relate the arm wrestling incident later on).

SXSWi has something of a reputation for being just one big party. It’s actually nicknamed “Spring Break for Geeks.” Testament to this is that the various parties are listed on the conference schedule. But it also had a tremendous load of quality and engaging content. I got to see so many Internet Famous people whose work I’ve admired and whose books or blogs I’ve read. In total, I attended 22 hour-long sessions over four and half days, some of which I’ll detail next:

Friday, 7 March

• How to Rawk SXSW: The Basics (15:30)
• Respect! (17:00)

Saturday, 8 March

• Catching up with Accessibility: The Basics Quickly (10:00)
• The Contextual Web (11:30)
• Opening Remarks with Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson (14:00)
• 10 Things We've Learned at 37signals (15:30)
• What Women Need to Succeed (16:00)

Sunday, 9 March

• Wireframing in a Web 2.0 World (10:00)
• Sponsored Panel: Responsible Web Design (11:30)
• Keynote Interview with Mark Zuckerberg (14:00)
• Core Conversation: Global Design: Web Sites for the World (15:30)
• LOLWUT? Why Do I Keep Coming Back to This Website? (16:00)

Monday, 10 March

• Lost in Translation? Top Website Internationalization Lessons (10:00)
• Core Conversation: Design Metrics: Better Than 'Because I Said So' (11:30)
• Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again? (14:00)
• Client-Side Code and Internationalization (15:30)
• WaSP Annual Meeting: Don't Break the Web (16:00)

Tuesday, 11 March

• Future of Corporate Blogs (10:00)
• How to Rawk After SXSW: Staying Inspired (11:30)
• Tuesday Keynote: Jane McGonigal (14:00) – my top pick of the conference
• Take Municipal WiFi Back (15:30)
• Is Your Machinima Ready for Hollywood? (16:00)

Whew! And let me just say, the Austin Convention center is a very large, very spread out place. You need that 30 minutes between sessions because at times you’ll be at the far south end of level one and need to get to the far north end of level four and the placement of escalators and which floors they actually go to is suspect. That said I’m pretty sure I walked at least three miles just back and forth from sessions and the parking garage, which wouldn’t have been so bad without my laptop backpack and the books I kept forgetting to take out of it.

My Thoughts on Some of the Sessions I Attended

I’ve come to realize after the fact that I didn’t take good enough notes. I guess I didn’t think about the sheer volume of coolness I would be exposed to. I mean, I didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect. Being a planner and all organized and stuff, I really wanted a comprehensive schedule matrix before going to the conference and getting the pretty directory so that I could plan ahead of time what I wanted to attend. The reality: I pretty much had to just plan it out as I went because there was so much awesomeness occurring simultaneously that I just couldn’t see it all. Following are my general thoughts and impressions on what I heard and experienced. I’ve provided lots of links for further reading and more in-depth study of the topics. I’ve also included a link to each session’s summary on the SXSWi site.

How to Rawk SXSW: The Basics

Where should you go? What parties are cool? How can I meet those people that are *gasp* Internet FAMOUS!… – Full Summary

This seemed like a good place to start on my new journey in a confusing land, surrounded by geeks and nerds of all types. It was a fun session where the panelists managed to finish a fifth of something in a paper bag during the course of the hour. Some panelists gave tips on how to approach and meet those Internet famous people. Others insisted there wasn’t enough making-out at SXSW. I took away that very few people at this conference actually take themselves seriously and that made most anyone you felt like talking to at least seem approachable. With that in mind, I stayed in the same room for the next session and talked to the person I sat down next to. All these new people and the crazy amount of activity also gave me cause to reassess the usefulness of Twitter.

Respect

We create the web. Yet twelve years and two bubbles into its history, we get no respect as a profession. And nobody understands what we do… – Full Summary

Coming into the conference, I was most excited to attend this session because it was going to be led by my “Internet Hero,” Jeffrey Zeldman. Anyone who knows anything about web standards knows about Zeldman and his revolutionary book, Designing with Web Standards. This is the book that changed my professional life because it gave me a clear, straightforward look at the why and the how for separating markup (content) and design through standards-based use of CSS and HTML. It was inspiring to be in a room of other Web Professionals who also feel the frustration of getting little respect for what we do. Zeldman polled the audience to see in which departments we all work (IT, Marketing, Production, Communications, etc.) but no one worked in a dedicated Web Department. We’re all spokes on the wheels of other departments when, for the most part, we work for Internet-based companies who rely on selling to the Web or creating software and applications for the Web. I’d like to see some re-thinking of that organization strategy.

Catching up with Accessibility: The Basics Quickly

Accessibility is a key aspect of high-quality websites. Accessibility is about real people using and creating the Web... – Full Summary

I’ve done a fair bit of research on accessibility and the web but I’m always trying to learn more, especially from those people who get to work directly with people using assistive technologies. This session was pretty cool because I got to finally see a screen reader in action and have a live person demo how people with different disabilities try to use the web. And it not only touched on those using assistive technologies but made the point that this is about making the web accessible to everyone, including those with low-speed connections, those using mobile devices, those with aging eyes (I’m really beginning to feel this one!) or even those who don’t have good use of their hands. I think it’s a shame that accessibility is so frequently overlooked or ignored by organizations. Accessibility is about making the web and its content available anywhere, on any device. So often, the business gets caught up with making a site look cool and pretty but that site needs to work equally well if the user has nothing but the content available. This means using proper markup, especially heading tags, and laying out the content in logical order. Visual design is a secondary medium to getting across the point of the content. See complete guidelines and a checklist from the Web Accessibility Institute.

Closing

I really intended to write a summary of each session I attended but that proved to be too overwhelming! Next year (oh yes, I plan to attend next year), I will do a day-by-day recap instead. I will also attend more parties and meet more people. There was just so much cool stuff that I know I'm leaving out. One of my favorite parts was the "Web Standards Confessional Booth" where I confessed my sins of not making forms accessible because it's, well, hard. The conference has to be the best value anywhere; it’s dirt cheap for five days of awesomeness. I had one weird thought though – I’ll be 30 when next year’s Interactive starts.

I'll end with Jane McGonigal's four measurements for human happiness:

1. Satisfying work to do
2. The experience of being good at something
3. Time spent with people we like
4. The chance to be a part of something bigger
   

Trying Out New Browsers Today

I decided to track down IE8 Beta as well as try out the new Opera - version 9.26 for Windows. The latter I have not used in years, not even to test with, (well except on the Wii) but was intrigued when I saw the latest version at SXSWi and noticed it has tabs. I love tabs, can't do without them now.

IE8 Initial Thoughts

• It's interesting how it makes the domain name stand out with black text and everything else in the URL is gray text.
• I was working with an accessible form and noticed that the tag legend for fieldsets renders completely within the fieldset. Opera and Firefox render it at the top of the fieldset within the border, but I don't know which is correct, if either.
• Wow, so uh, I just looked at several sites I work on that render fine in Firefox but are now exploded apart by IE8. It's not clearing my floats and it's putting extra padding on some menu list items :( I guess I shouldn't feel too badly when microsoft.com has the meta tag to make it render as IE7.
  

Opera 9.26 Initial Thoughts

• It was a bit difficult to import my bookmarks and then get them to show up on the "Personal Toolbar"; also had to turn on the status bar.
• I like the "Speed Dial" option when you open a new, blank tab. Reminds me of the launch page on the Wii version.
• Kept looking for the security icon in the status bar area. Took awhile to realize, it's in the address bar along with other indications usually found in the status bar like page load progress.
• The Voice option seems cool but it was a little difficult to get it to respond. The reading voice is relatively clear and easy to understand. (Did you know Acrobat Reader can read PDFs aloud?)
  

On a side note, why doesn't Blogger have quick buttons for heading tags? *checks WordPress* Bah, none there either. I'd think there would be some backlash for not having these blog tools be easy to format text using standards-based markup. Honestly, the fact that it uses a double line break instead of p tags annoys me to no end. Not to mention wrapping bold elements in a span instead of using strong tags. I've tried just using the code view but that kinda defeats the purpose of this nice content entry screen. Oy just tried putting in encoded characters for greater than/less than brackets and no dice.

On Turning Twenty-Nine

Spelling out 29 makes it look so grown-up. I've been joking that this is my "last" birthday since women seem to say they're 29 for more than a few years (well at least she did on The Nanny). Anyway, as with most recent birthdays, I did not feel any different today. No golden light from the sky as I stepped out of bed; certainly no barrage of phone calls or happy greetings; no pile of presents on the kitchen table or birthday pancake breakfast. I think that will change next year for the big three-oh. I've never really had a big birthday party as an adult, make that since I was about 10.

I did get to go out for an awesome sushi dinner. (Yes, there is good sushi in Austin; I say this to you, snotty girl from San Francisco at SXSWi.) I was even greeted at the door with flowers when I got home. I don't feel older or wiser or any of that crap. Maybe if anything, just a little sad that my mom has resorted to text messaging me a birthday greeting.

Cancelling a PayPal Subscription

I can never remember how to do this, so I'm posting it here:

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Cancelling Your Subscription
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If you would like to cancel this subscription, log in to your PayPal account and go to the "History" subtab of the "My Account" tab. Choose "Subscriptions" from the pull-down "Show" menu and press the "Submit" button. Choose this subscription, and click on its "Details" link. You will be taken to a Transaction Details page from which you may cancel your subscription. Cancelling your subscription will immediately stop all future scheduled payments for this subscription.

Week 6 Update

Well, there was no week 5 update due to the holidays and in true New Year's fashion, I guess this will double as a resolution post. We've been making preparations for starting the Body-for-LIFE program on Monday. I've started our notebooks and got daily printouts made for the first two weeks. The scary part will be taking the "before" photos, as I've mentioned. This will also mean getting up a lot earlier than I'm used to, probably 7am to start and then moving back to 6am when Wes' work schedule changes. That means being in bed at 10pm and virtually no free time in the evenings Monday-Thursday due to TKD. *sigh* It will be odd getting used to eating six times a day too, and consciously getting an actual portion of protein in with each of those. I intend to look into protein shakes for at least two of those meals. As it stands, I think this will be the eating schedule:

• Meal 1 - 8am - fruit and toast
• Meal 2 - 10am - shake
• Meal 3 - 12pm - turkey sandwich and some vegetable
• Meal 4 - 3pm - shake
• Meal 5 - 6pm - yogurt and some protein (cottage cheese? still haven't tried it)
• Meal 6 - 9pm - chicken, rice and green beans

It's strange how daunting eating more is. I'm also just used to a carbo-full diet and am floundering with the idea of eating that much protein, especially as an ex-vegetarian who really only eats chicken. The key here will be planning. I don't think that can be overlooked or stressed enough! I do really like how there's a free day built into the week where you can eat whatever you want. I'm excited to get started.