Saw my dietician, Stephanie, this morning for 20/20. Got a few changes to my diet.

First, instead of my snacks being a shake with 1/2 cup of berries, I can substitute any 2 ounces of protein for the shake. So I can have 2oz. jerkey or 2oz. soy nuts, etc. I can also substitute a small apple for the 1/2 cup of berries, since berries aren’t in season.

Second, vegetables are added in this week. Most veggies that aren’t very starchy are in. I’m supposed to have about 2 cups of them a day, half with lunch and half with dinner. For lunch today I had some grilled salmon with a cup of broccoli and a shake with strawberries as my first meal with veggies.

As to progress for the first week, I’ve lost 6 pounds so far. Some water weight in there, no doubt, but it’s still a good start. I need to figure out a good way to post a graph or chart on here.

Since I’m starting exercising seriously and I don’t know how old my tennis shoes are, I figured it was time to get some new ones. On the recommendation of my trainer, I went to a shoe store in Redmond Town Center called Foot Zone. They were great. Definitely best sneaker buying experience I’ve ever had.

The guy at the store observed the way I walked in my socks and said I "over pronated" or something like that. So he brought out a few recommended shoes to give me "motion control" and I walked on their treadmill a while in them. Eventually, I decided on the Brooks Beast.

I’m just about to meet Dave at the club to try them out. I expect I’ll be running marathons in no time now that I’m using the most advanced motion control shoes on the market.

First week of 20/20 is going well. Three personal trainer sessions so far for 1.5 hours each and tomorrow I’ll be doing my second "individual" session, without the trainer. These shakes are getting on my nerves though. You just can’t have five shakes a day without getting sick of them. Five of anything really. Except maybe bacon, but that’s right out.

Monday I see the dietician again. Hopefully I’ll be able to cut it down to 3 shakes a day, with meals, and eat something else for my 2 snacks.

I got a new flavor of shakes today: kiwi, orange, guava. I’m not so sure what I think about them, but they are a change from vanilla.

I wonder if I’m using the right amount of strawberries in these shakes. The dietician said 1/2 cup and I’m assuming that means volume of strawberries… It sure seems like alot though. Maybe they mean the dry volume complete with air. I’ve been submerging them in water and using the amount of displaced water to measure the volume of the strawberries. Seems reasonable to me.

I bought a pretty cool heart rate monitor for the exercising: a Polar S410. The nice thing about it is it keeps track of my rate all during exercise and when I get home I can download the workout log to my PC, which produces nice charts. And everyone loves charts.