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.