A personal training & food journal. Read about our weight loss progress at Train With Ron in Chicago, our nutritional habits and the life changes we're making to get in shape and stay healthy!

Dan and I enjoyed dinner last night at Carmichaels with an old friend who came into town. Carmichaels is a steak place and that’s pretty much all they have. Yes, they do have fish, but you go for the steak. So we all had steaks. I ordered a plate of steamed asparagus on the side to share and our fiend (who is NOT on a diet) ordered garlic mashed potatoes. After I was done with my steak I did have a scoop of the potatoes and so did Dan. Typically we would have mashed potatoes on the plate first thing and more than what we had last night. What Dan I were really proud of ourselves for was the rejection of the dessert selection. I saw the waiter coming with the tray and I should’ve just stopped him there but maybe our friend wanted something. We let the waiter describe the Coconut cheesecake, the big cookie with ice cream, lava cake and many more and then we politely declined. Now this is where your mind starts working over time. Letting you know ‘it’s OK, you’ve worked hard and you deserve to treat yourself’. It’s amazing the amount of energy the body exudes on just trying to manipulate you to do the wrong thing. We prevailed and walked away feeling good about it.

Saturday we had our 8th session at TWR and with each we feel stronger and leaner. I look forward to posting a new picture of us to share our progress soon. Up until now Dan and I worked out together with the trainer but this past Saturday Dan worked out with Matt and I with DB. I was teamed up with a couple of people more advanced than me so I had to work extra just so i could sort of keep up with them. I can’t let it get me down though because I am still in the beginning stages and they’ve been at it for much longer. If anything, it’s positive motivation.

I look forward to next week when we have Dr. Chiu, a board-certified Chiropractic Neurologist at TWR to talk about healthy diets and what the latest in nutritional and genomic science has to say say about how we can use food not only as fuel, but also as a delicious way to activate the genes that can allow us to burn fat, build muscle, and boost the brain.