Tuesday's Motivation

Good....er....afternoon, forgiving friends! :) 

SLEEP CHECK:
First, a sleep check.  Have you ladies all been improving the # of hours of sleep you get each night since our last convo about sleep last week?  I'm stealing this sleep blurb from my amazing sis-in-law, Erianne: 
 "Everyone needs 7 to 10 hours sleep. Children (ages 1 – 10) require at least 10 hours, Adolescents (ages 11 – 22) need an average of 9.25 hours, and adults (23+ years) require 8.25 hours of sleep, on average, each night. Athletes in each age group have been shown to have a greater need for sleep than the nonathletes. For anyone, a sleep deficit is defined as the sum of all night s in which you sleep less than your sleep needs (» 8-10 hrs). The average American adolescent is operating at about a 25 hour deficit. At a 19 hour sleep deficit, athletes perform on cognitive and coordination tests, worst than someone with a .08 blood alcohol level. In the United States, a .08 blood alcohol level is considered legally drunk in 42 states.  Some of the reported effects of a sleep deficit are: impaired motor skills, impaired cognition, impaired memory, inhibited creativity, higher stress levels, increased body fat, depressed immune system, anxiety, impeded growth, irritability, depression, mood swings, decreased life expectancy, and difficulty maintaining interpersonal relationships. Athletes who want to perform at their peak must outline and follow a proper sleep regime.  Another study just performed at Stanford on their swim team demonstrated that extra sleep (1 hour beyond normal sleep patterns), significantly enhanced the swimmers performance! Kind of cool.
Here is a link to a good article with some helpful hints and facts about sleep and athletic performance: topspeedschool.com/uploads/TopSpeed-Sleep.pdf "
So that's you! You're an athlete I'd say if you workout daily or try to.  So you need MORE sleep than others!  Can you put a high priority on sleep?  You're drunk if you don't! :)  That's a fun light to put the issue in. So, after that cool sleep check from Erianne, on to today's info. 
 
DECIDING ON A GOAL WEIGHT:
Leslie, to answer your question posed yesterday about the proper goal weight, there are oodles of BMI calculators and what not online.  I do agree that a given BMI number IS a huge weight range, though.  I've never asked a physician what my healthy weight was, or used a calculator other than my Wii Fit to tell me what my goal BMI was, but I'm sure those would all be good ideas.  I took the weight I was when I graduated high school and subtracted 10 lbs.  I figured that'd be a good goal weight, but that I'd probably adjust to see how it was when I got there.  It just so happens that right around that goal weight was my arbitrarily set 50 lb total weight loss goal.  I wanted to get to a round # (dumb, I know, totally not scientific or biologically genius).  And then the biggest thing for determining my goal weight was a weight loss success story I read last summer in a magazine where the woman was 2 inches taller than me and at that goal weight, and I liked the body type (not all muscular and ripped, just trim and athletic) and the body type corresponded with my own (pretty straight up & down, I've never been hourglass-shaped).  So I've determined, though, that my goal weight is a "decade" range on the scale.  Just in a range of 10 lbs.  If I stay between x lbs and x lbs I'll be happy.  It seems I can't really lose more unless I want to lose muscle and I am not about to do that and sacrifice my athletic ability, so I'm happy where I am, which is about 5 lbs more than what I had originally thought would be my goal weight, but my body seems happy where it's at, stable.  Like I said yesterday, I'm just working on being a little less gooey in a few areas and a little more solid now :)   What tips do you guys have?  How did you decide on your goal weight?
 
BEATING THE WEEKEND BINGES:
Leah & Jeanie, we all have a hard time on the weekends because it's just not in our routine.  What's helped me is my hubby getting in on the healthy-eating bandwagon.  If he wasn't, I know for sure I'd be a big sucker for whatever decadent or greasy foods he wanted to splurge on.  So Shanda, I definitely say get Mara on the bandwagon!  Have her join our group!  She's such a sweetheart- I know she'd love it.  Then problem solved with the healthy grocery shopping.  If she doesn't want to hop on, then I'd suggest flip flopping your arrangement.  Have her do the utilities and you do the groceries.  Or if not that, then put your heads together and plan a meal plan for the week that works for you both, and have her go shopping for it.  Or do separate meal plans and give her your healthy meal-plan-for-one (lots of little snacks you can have separate from everyone) to go shopping for.  So back to the weekends in particular, one thing you can do to counteract the heavy eating is to put in a heavy workout.  Usually we have an extra chunk of time to workout on a weekend than we do during the work week.  For instance, I like to do my longer runs on Saturdays, because it's the only day of the week I have enough daylight to go do that.  So my Saturday calorie burns are higher than any other day of the week, so if I eat more, it's ok.  Another idea is to try your hardest to maintain your routine throughout the weekend, like getting up at the same time, eating at the same time, working out at the same time, going to bed at the same time, etc.  If it's a matter of an extra 8 hours spent at home wearing a trail in the carpeting from the couch to the fridge because you're bored, plan a typical work-day long excursion from the house, either shopping or running errands, working out, or some other adventure.  This will help keep your body on schedule for what it's used to being away from the house at work during the week.  This article from Shape on the subject of avoiding binge eating says to keep up on your food diary (counting what you eat in MFP), explore food-free ways of socializing (like our active non-restaurant date night side challenge), bring your own low-cal healthy treat to a get together so you know you can eat at least one thing instead of being victim to whatever everyone else provided.  What tips do you have?  How do you keep from falling off the healthy-eating and working out bandwagon on the weekends?

Share, share, share :) Let's all help each other!