Exactness in Tracking

Being perfectly exact on a food diary is harder than I remembered!  I've done it before-- back when I first started the diabetes plan and the nurses were picky about wanting to know every single bite I put into my mouth and when, but over the last five years I've gotten sloppy.  Yesterday I really tried to pay attention so I could enter everything, but who wants to note down the 2 goldfish you popped in your mouth while getting a snack for your toddler?  Or the single chocolate chocolate chip you snitched?

I wonder how much that all adds up to in a day?  Is it significant or not?

I guess it depends on how often I'm doing it and how big my "snitches" are.  Today I'm going to try again to be as exact as I can.  Might help if I can keep from popping random things in my mouth.

Now, as far as weighing in . . . I've been weighing myself once a day for years now, so I think I'm going to continue to do that.  It seems to be the most effective tool for keeping tabs on where I stand.  But as far as my "official" number that I'm going to use here to track my progress, I think I'll use whatever number on the scale that comes up Saturday morning.  Perhaps I'm cheating a bit, because Saturday morning tends to be my lowest number of the week (maybe because of my long runs), but I feel that as long as I'm consistent it will still be an accurate picture of my loss.  (LOSS!  NOT GAIN!)

On to another day of accountable eating!

Taking Stock

I've been on my weight loss journey for awhile, and over my life I've tried a lot of things.  I'm long past fad diets but finding the right combination of rules and tips and tricks that work can be tricky.  I'm a firm believer that there is no one perfect weight loss solution that works for everyone.  In my previous 60 pounds of success, I found that three things worked really well for me: first, the diet that they put you on for gestational diabetes; second, keeping a food diary; and third, really ramping up the exercise.  I mean really upping the exercise ante (in my case, by taking up running).  But I gave up the diabetes diet plan as soon as I wasn't pregnant any more (I'm kind of a sugar fanatic), and though the food diary and exercise plans have served me well, it's obviously not quite enough right now.

Part of my problem is that I'm not sticking to my food diary consistently enough.  So what are my biggest problems areas, places where I need to do some tweaking or come up with a plan of attack?

Problems:

• Keeping my food diary every single day (even Sunday)
• Reading while I eat (distraction never helps)
• Making sure I am drinking enough water
• Making sure I am getting enough sleep
• The stupid chocolate chips sitting in my fridge!  I snitch all the time.
• Grazing throughout the day

The trouble is that I want my weight loss to be permanent, not a crash loss that only lasts for a short while.  So I need to make these changes permanent too . . . and that's the rub.  Hmm.  I think I'm going to focus first on making sure that I absolutely keep my food diary accurate and up to date.  I'll try to check in either every night or every morning about how I am doing.

Heidi's Intro

A fresh new blog and a fresh new start!

All of us deserve a fresh start, right?  Myself included.  Especially when it comes to weight loss.  I got the idea for this blog while searching for something new to motivate myself to make the changes I need to get back down to my pre-baby weight.  Or at least to my pre-fifth baby weight (which was slightly lower than my pre-first baby weight).  See, this is my second time going on a successful weight loss journey.  (Look how positive I am!  Hoo-RAH!)  By the time I got pregnant with my fourth baby, my weight had climbed up to about 190 lbs.  (I'm going to be straightforward about numbers here.)  I felt sluggish, I had no energy to keep up with my kids, and my depression had been debilitating at times.  During the pregnancy I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and it was kind of a slap-in-the-face wake up call.  All my gradual weight creep was affecting my health.  I started seriously considering what kind of future I wanted to have.  Diabetes?  (My doc told me I'll be at higher risk for that the rest of my life.)  Heart disease?  (Our father had to have quintuple bypass surgery in his early 50's, and Amy and I are both considered high risk just because of our family history.)  What about just being embarrassingly out of breath every time I tried to walk to the park with the kids?

All of that had an effect on me.  And let's be brutally honest here, I wasn't happy with how I looked.  A mom with young kids often looks frazzled and frumpy and I was tired of feeling frazzled, frumpy and fat, on top of it all.

So finally I had the right motivation, and I managed to lose a whopping 55 pounds and keep it off.  (Though my numbers pale in comparison to Amy's!)  But life doesn't always go like we plan and I got thrown a curveball.

That curveball for me was my surprise baby #5.  I put 60 pounds right back on during that pregnancy.  Yep.  Well, my sweet baby #5 is now a toddler and I am still struggling to get back down to my "success" weight.  I've been stuck where I am for about a year.  I don't know it's if my age (I'm nearing 40 now, yikes!) or just my love of food holding me back-- or both.

No longer!

I am taking my health by the reins, and I am going to succeed!  17 pounds to go!