Day 67: Semi-Successful Saturday

 

Day 67 of Nutrisystem 2.0 started earlier than I'd have liked, since it's Saturday ! I woke up right after 7 and was up before 7:30. I made my bed, fed the indoor & outdoor cats and settled down with my first cup of coffee. It had snowed overnight and a very light snow continued to fall. It was a bit windy as well, so I didn't think it was a good day for heading out to the grocery store. By late afternoon the sun was out and the snow was melting. Temps were in the 20's when I got up but the house was comfortable. Tomorrow looks to be snow free and with temps closer to 40 it'll be a nicer day to venture out.

Breakfast was 150 calorie pancakes with sugar free syrup and an 80 calorie yogurt. Morning snack was a 120 calorie chocolate shake. Lunch was green beans and a 220 calorie pepperoni pizza melt. Afternoon snack was 80 calorie cottage cheese (1/2 cup) and 90 calorie oatmeal cookies. Dinner was green beans and a 190 calorie spinach & artichoke stuffed chicken breast. Evening snack was a 140 calorie chocolate cupcake. Total calories for the day are 1070.

Even though it's the weekend I'm trying to keep to my exercise routine, so I scheduled an India workout along with 2 from the Spain series with Tommy Rivs that I'm trying to complete. I actually scheduled out all the workouts in both series to make sure I have time to complete the new Italy series with Tommy before the end of the month. India and Italy are both monthly challenges from iFit. The Namibia series was also a March challenge and it's been a while since I was able to legitimately complete 3 challenges in the same month. Last year I "completed" a lot of workouts while sitting on the couch just to qualify for a free $100 gift card, which I used to buy another year of membership. They did away with the incentives this year so completing the challenges isn't quite so stressful. The past couple of years you'd get a free magnet for completing the monthly challenges, a free t-shirt at 100 workouts, then a free iFit flag at 200, then the gift card at 400, then a free hoodie if you completed 500 workouts. I have a hoodie, a flag and 2 t-shirts. I didn't get last years hoodie, which is fine since I prefer full zip hoodies and rarely wear the one I have. I didn't bother to order last years flag either, since I haven't done anything with the one I have. A lot of people complained about the loss of the incentives this year (and are still complaining) but keeping that going would have meant increasing membership costs. Right now I pay $180 a year and with all those incentives their net profit on my membership would be zero. For a while they were also doing live events for 5k/10k etc. and you'd get a free medal for completing them during the live. The medals were not cheap and they did away with those too. They were also shipping the incentives around the world and that must have been incredibly expensive. I have a bunch of medals piled in a tote and they'll end up in the trash eventually. I also have a bunch of magnets stuck to my treadmill. You can't run a profitable business that way and I can't be mad at them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who basically scammed them to get the incentives and it's more important to me that they continue to put out such amazing content. I did earn everything prior to 2022 and I did stream all the workouts in 2022 to the end, so I don't feel too bad about doing that to get the gift card. The "workouts" I did were designed for off machine and although many were yoga and strength, does it really matter that I wasn't actually doing them ? In the end, I started with iFit for my health and weight loss journey. They had none of these incentives when I started so they were never my motivation. I actually found the incentives and monthly challenges were keeping me from choosing what series or workouts I wanted to do, because I had to make sure I got those magnets or medals. I actually stopped chasing the medals and magnets before they did away with them, so I don't miss that. Now we have a digital "trophy case" on the app and I like that better ! They're also selling t-shirts and a limited amount of other apparel, which people have been clamoring for but it's out of stock constantly. If they'd ramp up availability of that they'd make a fortune. So getting back to the purpose of this paragraph, I resolved to be on the treadmill at noon and I was ! I started with the 36m India workout but 17m10s into the workout I accidentally touched a piece of metal on the treadmill and the static electricity discharge shut down the workout. I was doing so well ! I had settled in to a 3 mph endurance pace and was past the halfway mark. iFit doesn't give you the option to restart a workout and there was no way I starting at the beginning again. I decided I would take an hour or so break and then do a Spain workout. I got back on the treadmill shortly after 2:30 for an 18m9s workout. I warmed up at 2.5 mph and at 15 minutes to go I increased to 2.6, then added another 0.1 mph every 3 minutes, ending at 3 mph. 

Instead of wasting the entire day, as I've been doing most weekends, I got a few little things done around the house before noon rolled around. Nothing major, just picking up and putting things back where they belong, a little laundry and restocking cat food. I enjoyed the rest of the day, maybe a little too much. I polished off the container of caramels that I opened yesterday. Not happy about it, but it's done. Not opening any more containers of caramels before APRIL, if I can resist. At least I got some exercise in today and that offsets the caramels a little. Yeah, that's pure justification at it's finest ! This journey is all about baby steps and I'm starting to make some progress towards better habits, and that is the goal !

On that note, I'm heading for bed before I get in more trouble !