Although I am well on my way to getting in shape, the first assessment at the Lake County General Health District was quite sobering.  Both my BMI (34.3) and Body Fat Percentage (34.6) are ridiculously high.  So now the bar is raised AGAIN.

The goals I set prior to entering the contest were vague.  Now my goals are falling more into place.  I thought losing 50 pounds would really be something to shoot for, but perhaps that is not enough.

The BMI chart shows that I need to get down to 148 pounds to be healthy and not overweight.  Since the chart shows no method of increasing my height, which would be the easy way to go, I guess I shoot for 148.  This is a loss of 64 pounds!

After stopping in at Second Sole running shop last night, I came home with a beautiful new pair of Nike running shoes, my overdue treat.  When I can get down to what I call my "tipping point", about 180 pounds, running will be easier.  Training can be as tough as I want to be on myself.  Based on my mediocre distance running ability from my previous life, I compared what I think I can do to past race results by others.  I figure I should be able to finish in the top 5 in my age group (55-59) in the Johnnycake Jog which happens before this contest is over.

Finally, a great tool given to me today was the Vitabot Meal Plan.  Although I am not going to spend enough time to diligently plan all my meals using this system, I already checked my food intake for the last week.  From a nutritional standpoint, I have been dead on.  The only caveat is that I needed to set-up several custom foods to get accurate results.  The foods already listed in Vitabot that I chose, had incorrect nutritional values compared to my food's labels.  For example, I eat a lot of SteamFresh vegetables and rice because they are convenient and healthy and especially low in sodium.  Vitabot popped up ridiculously high sodium numbers and painted me as a walking heart attack.

Overall, Vitabot is s great program, if for no other reason than to give you a nutritional compass to follow.