This Weigh In Brought to You by Mozzarella Sticks

Happy Friday!

I am typing this from home as I took the day off to give John and myself enough time to get to D.C. today. I think I mentioned this, but this weekend we'll be attending the wedding of one of his old friends, so I get the interesting prospect of attending a wedding where I know neither the bride nor the groom. Another perk is that I get to see some college friends over the weekend, most of whom I haven't seen in years.

The goal I set out for myself last week was to track. It was a small goal, just focusing on this week. I think it would have been too much to make a goal of "start tracking today and then continue until you die or they invent some kind of autocounter."

I'm happy to say that I have been tracking this week! Even when I ate, dear God, NINE mozzarella sticks last night at our office happy hour for a departing colleague. Aside from last night, I've been eating at a good deficit this week overall.

This week's weigh-in:

	Start	6/8	8/19	10/29	12/31	1/28	3/31	4/21	5/5	5/12	6/7	6/18	6/24
Weight	200	191.2	182.6	181.4	177.2	174.6	168.4	170.4	172.4	171.8	174.4	169.8	169.8
Lbs. Fat		82.7	72.5	70.8	67.1	65.3	60.3	61.3	63.4	60.9	65	60.5	61
Lbs. Muscle		67.3	66.8	67.3	63.9	64.4	61.5	65	64	64.2	65.1	62.5	59.4

Aw, man, was hoping for something better. Keep in mind this weigh-in was before my private fried cheese party. But it's exactly the same as last week, except more fat and less muscle. Fail. Maybe the weekend before I started tracking was worse than I thought, or maybe it's one of another million factors. Either way, I need to work really hard this weekend not to go overboard. 

Even though I can see and feel that my waist has gotten smaller in the last couple of months, I still feel like I haven't made progress in months. My failure is consistency. I can be great for a few days, but those one or two crappy ones really throw me off. I need to be better, or learn how, to incorporate reasonable choices into those difficult food-moments - happy hours, weddings, and parties. 

Slow and steady wins the race, right? 

30 Days Challenge: Day Four

Day Four, so far so (pretty good). I didn’t have any of the office cake at the latest farewell, and I also successfully avoided the bagels and muffins in the kitchen this morning. I haven’t been at 100% like I’d like - I did have a little candy from the bowl - but overall I’ve faithfully followed my eating plan, packing salads for lunch and avoiding snacking. I know that a piece of candy is far from the end of the world, and far from derailing a diet, but the point of this was to be stricter, knowing that it was just for 30 days, so I’m going to keep working on that part. But the big picture is looking good.

Tonight, of course, starts the weekend, when I’m the worst at eating. Maybe it’s the free time, or lack of structure, or just that there’s bigger chance of there being lots of food around in a way I’m not able to control like I can during the week. I have my plan - to give myself a reasonable calorie allotment for the meal - and if that doesn’t help, I’ll think of a new strategy. However, I do think that just being mindful of what and how much I’m eating can help me stay on track.

I’m going to try to post here more over the next month, because I naval-grazingly want to keep track of how well I do, and these posts will be the only “data” I have to work with. I’m not tracking, so I can’t go back to my food diaries and (over)analyze what and how much I ate.

It’s feels odd not to track my food. For the last year, if I haven't been tracking, then it's because I've been eating like crap. I am weighing and measuring everything that I eat, just not tracking it. Instead, with this new plan, I know that I can have 1/4-1/3 pound of lean ground beef, and then 1/2-1 cup of black beans, etc, and that it all works out to a good calorie deficit for the day. It's like I've pretracked the whole month.

On the one hand, tracking forces me to remember that piece or bite or bit of whatever. On the other hand, I want to get into the mentality that I shouldn’t be having those little things because I can’t track it, because I could easily forget about it and have another bit a few hours later. The only accountability is in my own mind.

Is it weird that I really like doing stuff like this, that I like giving myself little challenges with food plans? Does that make my weight loss more or less sustainable? I have no idea, but I do think it keeps me going.

xkcd.com