Health Updates & Why I Disappeared

I know I've gone and disappeared right in the middle of the cookie diet.  I'm still eating lots and lots of Lenny & Larry's, and have actually become an ambassador for the brand, but I've had a few health issues come up that have taken me away from regular exercise.

Starting the beginning of June, I noticed my left knee was hurting pretty terribly.  I chalked it up to stress from running and decided to let it rest for a bit.  Unfortunately, I found in the coming weeks that not only was my knee not getting better, but the pain and stiffness spread to my other knee, then down into my ankles, and started to travel up into my right hip and my lower back.  I immediately made an appointment with a nurse practicioner that I absolutely adore now, and got some rather alarming news.

That, coupled with additional symptoms and past diagnoses, led her to connect some dots together for me.  She thinks I have some sort of chronic inflammation and pain disease, whether it be Lupus, Fibromyalgia or even Rhuemetoid Arthritis; I have long suspected as much.  I'm not one to cry woe is me or panic, so I've been working with her for pain management, as well as symptom management.  Overall, my pain is better, though if I sit too long in one position, it's very painful when I start using my limbs again.  Overall, I'm finding I'm better off if I keep moving.  Now that I have the pain mostly managed, I am feeling confident that exercise is going to be okay again.  I also have an inhaler now to help with the shortness of breath I was working through when running.

Am I going to start running again?  I don't think so.  I just don't think my knees can handle it.  I'm going to follow up with her in a few weeks and ask her what she suggests I do about that, actually.  Overall, I'm avoiding long term damage right now, and without knowing if it'll be a bad idea, I'm refraining from doing it.  This means my primary means of cardio is gone.  I don't have access to an elliptical or a pool, which would both be low impact cardio workouts.  I don't have weight machines, I just do body weight exercise.  I feel a little frustrated right now, but I'm going to push forward.  My pain is much better now, so it's silly to spend any time feeling sorry for myself or demotivating myself.  I still work on my feet in a fast paced retail environment and walk to and from work each day.  I think I'm going to start taking dog on our nice long walks again.  The only drawback to those is the amount of bugs at night time, and the heat during the day.

I am only posting this here because I wanted to explain why I dropped off the face of the cookie earth after hyping up this cookie diet.  It's not my style to quit in the middle of something, but it's not fair to judge my progress in a diet based off of a TDEE that doesn't currently apply since I've becoming a little more sedantary.  I haven't really gained any additional weight (steroid side effect; if only I hadn't been in too much pain to weight train, haha), but I am sitting at my start weight, and I think I'm retaining a lot of water for some reason.  All things to talk to my doctor about, I know.

The Cookie Diet!!

Losing weight is calories in < calories out.  It's a simple enough equation, and while I need to drop some quick weight, I felt like it was a chance to have a little fun with it.  If I were trying to build muscle, or cut body fat quickly, we'd have to do it with a little bit better control over nutrients and macros.  Also, this is not a long term, sustainable lifestyle change.  It is, however, delicious and kind of hilarious.

My TDEE is generally around 1,600 calories, on a particularly active day at work, my Fitbit claims I burn about 100-200 extra calories.  I shoot for 1,200 calories a day.  Being realistic, I eat closer to my TDEE, and on some days, I eat well over it (obviously).  I am probably estimating it to be a little low, but despite the amount of walking I do each day (10,000 to 15,000 steps), I don't think I'm off by much.  I used multiple calculators to land on this number.  For this fun little experiment, I will continue with my daily goal of 1,200 calories, with motivation to exercise for extra calories for snacks.  I am lucky that the math works out perfectly in my favor.. you see, three protein shakes and two full cookies are almost exactly 1,200 calories.  Yes, I just said cookies.

Lenny and Larry's Complete Cookies are a little piece of fitlife heaven.  For a whole cookie, which is 4 oz, you eat 380-420 calories, 12-14g of fat, 54-58g of carbohydrates, and an impressive 16g of protein.  They come in eight different flavors, so hold on to your seats here: Double Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter, White Chocolate Macadamia, Oatmeal Raisin, Lemon Poppyseed, Pumpkin Spice and the newest Snickerdoodle.  The most important part about all of the different flavors?  They're actually good.  These cookies are the perfect mouthful of cookie, not too crumbly or dry or even too moist for that matter.  They're fantastic dipped in coffee or eaten plain.  I have yet to try one I don't like (and I've had a lot of them).

My protein powder for this experiment will be from True Nutrition.  It is their gemma pea protein (non-gmo) formulation, and the massive tub we have this time is in Creamy Peanut Butter.  That said, they have ten vegan protein sources, and more flavors than you can shake a stick at.  Seriously, if you manage to try them all, I will be impressed with you (and if you decide to do so, use my discount code BBE100).

For those curious of a breakdown of my day, they can follow me on MyFitnessPal.  If you just want to casually follow along, check out my Instagram!

Disclaimer: Lenny & Larry's did provide me some swag for this diet.  It did not influence whether or not I took on this cookie diet challenge.  True Nutrition has provided me products to review in the past.  The protein I will be using for this challenge was purchased.  They did send me a True Nutrition Blender Bottle to use for the challenge.  As always, I reserve the right to my open and honest opinion.