Not perfect but one week

First of all let me say that I did excellent this week and I lost 1 ½ lbs. In just a few more pounds I will be to numbers that I haven't seen in quite a few years. I also bought an elliptical machine which is truly kicking my butt.
I've had a few people ask me exactly what I'm doing so I decide to take a few notes this week and give them to you guys. I've already written about how I don't like diets but I must say I have found one that seems pretty good for me. While doing all of my research on high triglycerides I kept reading about the South Beach Diet so I decided to check it out. It fits with everything I've read about high triglycerides and how to lower them, although this is not one of its big claims. It even has the initial 2 week period of eating no sugar so that your body gets out of that way of thinking. I have to say it is nice to have guidelines to go by but I do not follow it to an exact T. I follow it pretty closely but there are things that I eat that aren't "approved" and I still keep track of my calories and fat. There is a great site called fitday.com that will help you keep track, I just leave it minimized all day and add stuff when I eat. I've also done a lot of research on how many calories I should be eating and this part really surprised me. If you starve yourself and don't eat enough calories your body will hold on to every fat cell it can find because it goes into starvation mode and does what it has to in order to make sure it will have the energy it needs. Guess which fat cells it holds onto the hardest ladies? That's right the ones in your stomach!! You just have to make the calories good calories with no more than 30% coming from fat (this is why I love fitday.com). I have been aiming for 1400 calories a day but really from all that I've read I could eat 1600, I just find it hard to get in that many healthy calories. I am also drinking the water that I should which I have never in my life done, most days that and 1% milk are all I have to drink. I try to drink 64 oz. a day, I don't always get there but I try.
Exercising is still something that I don't really understand a lot about but I figure if I keep working on it I will get it someday. There are so many conflicting ideas about what is good and what is bad that it is really hard to know what to do. For now I figure as long as I'm moving it has to be better than what I was doing. I'm trying to gradually build up and include more and more things. I stretch before and after every time I exercise.
Saturday-Food: 1422 calories (32% from fat)
Exercise: None
Sunday-Food: 1414 calories (29% from fat)
Exercise: 2 mile walk
Monday-Food: 1350 calories (31% from fat)
Exercise: 3 mile walk, Abs exercises
Tuesday-Food: 1407 calories (31% from fat)
Exercise: 2 mile walk, Abs exercises
Wednesday-Food: 1505 calories (23% from fat)
Exercise: 3 mile walk
Thursday-Food: 1471 calories (35% from fat)
Exercise: 20 minutes on elliptical
Friday-Food: 1385 calories (32% from fat)
Exercise: 10 minutes on elliptical, 1 mile walk, Abs exercises
Some of these days really surprised me. I figured Wednesdays and Sundays would be horrible because we always eat out. I have been making some very wise choices apparently. I had a grilled chicken club sandwich at McDonalds on Wednesday and a Chicken Chalupa from Taco Bell on Sunday (did you know most of the restaurants have online nutrition information). These days actually turned out to be the lower % of fat, go figure. Thursday was great considering it was Audrey's Bday and I had a piece of DQ Ice Cream cake. So like I've said Not Perfect but hey it's better than not trying at all.