Do you allow yourself a day off?
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tracyannk28 wrote: »OK - so for those of you who log every day: Is this something you are planning to do for life? Or just until you lose all your weight? Or until you've been at maintenance for a while?
I spent too many years losing and gaining. This is the only thing that's worked. Maybe I don't have that internal "that's enough cake for one week" meter.0 -
I don't take a day off, but maybe a treat day. Not the whole day, but if it is date night I stick to the plan through the day, maybe even make a big salad for lunch. Then when we go to dinner I can have more freedom. Did it just tonight. I didn't have the Coke I always want, but had fries and broccoli with my STEAK,mmmmm!
Tomorrow back to the grind stone!0 -
No. Because I know there will be days when I just can't be as accurate or there is a celebration, and life in general. In other words, I don't PLAN cheat days. I let them happen when they happen though. And I always try to log as much as I can.0
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Hells yeah, every friday I have a higher day, I just eat what I like, BUT I use my new nutritional knowledge to not make my treats too excessive.
For example today I made myself a nice bolognese and I had a bottle of cherry sparkling wine, my total calories for the day were around 2000 , not bad for a chill day in my opinion0 -
Exercise; of course.
Diet; no.
I eat more on workout days and less on non workout days.
I do go over but I don't call it a day off. I call it part of whole thing. Lol it's going to happen, on those days I jjst try and keep it as close to maintenance as possible0 -
Save for a spot check here and there, I haven't logged since May 2013...but when I was losing weight I logged most days...but here and there, I didn't bother...holidays and special occasions and whatnot. Those kind of things are pretty irrelevant so long as they are actually occasions.0
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tracyannk28 wrote: »OK - so for those of you who log every day: Is this something you are planning to do for life? Or just until you lose all your weight? Or until you've been at maintenance for a while?
I love data so I find I actually don't mind logging daily. For me, it's like balancing my chequebook or entering my purchases into my personal budgeting software -- I've been doing it my whole adult life, and expect I always will.
On the other hand, I've seen quite a few people in the maintenance forum who seem to have decent success with the maintenance range strategy: Determining an upper and lower weight limit, and not logging unless they go over or under, at which point they start logging and tracking to "re-lose" those last 5 pounds or whatever over and over again. Maybe I'll try this if I get fed up of logging, we'll see.0 -
Thanksgiving thru Christmas.0
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tracyannk28 wrote: »OK - so for those of you who log every day: Is this something you are planning to do for life? Or just until you lose all your weight? Or until you've been at maintenance for a while?
I'll log through maintenance, and then I'll want to bulk and log through that, then cut again sooo....I don't see not logging in the near future.0 -
Not really. When I track, I track. When I've reached goal and have a good sense of maintenance, I don't track when I'm teaching during the school year because I'm exhausted. I'm tracking now because I want to go back down to 130.0
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tracyannk28 wrote: »OK - so for those of you who log every day: Is this something you are planning to do for life? Or just until you lose all your weight? Or until you've been at maintenance for a while?
Yes, I'll continue logging on maintenance forever. I'm very bad at eyeballing portions and it's so helpful to know that I'm meeting my calorie and nutrient goals. As others said, I like looking at the data, and it's like balancing my checkbook.
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It takes me a couple minutes to log my food everyday. It's no big deal, so yeah I'll do it for as long as it's working for me0
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Only special occasions, like Christmas.0
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OK - so for those of you who log every day: Is this something you are planning to do for life? Or just until you lose all your weight? Or until you've been at maintenance for a while?
Hell no...logging and keeping a diary for me was the equivalent of training wheels on a bike...it taught me a lot, but the point is to eventually be able to just ride.
I've easily maintained for over 1.5 years without logging...I don't eat anything resembling the SAD and eat very healthfully and am religious about my fitness...hasn't been an issue.
I guess others (it would seem most) don't actually sustain their diets (noun) without logging ...I eat pretty much the same as when I was losing, just a handful more calories.
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One of my goals is to be able to maintain (or slowly lose or slowly gain, as I see fit) without logging. Logging is frequently inconvenient for me, and I find it difficult to sustain. Instead of logging every meal, every day, I'm using logging to calibrate my sense of "enough" or my sense of moderation. I'm also using it to calibrate my sense of what "works" for me - what makes me feel full or hungry at meals.
Giving up that strict control -- that crutch of the food scale -- and learning how to eat within your calories in any and all situations -- vacations, social events, travel, restaurants -- is one of those key, important life skills that will allow you to maintain the lifestyle change and weight loss for life.
As the gif says - my body keeps a more relevant journal than I do. Can I ride my bike far enough? Can I kick hard enough in a martial arts class? Do I make my step counts? Is my weight trend doing what I want it to? Those are the milestones that keep me mindful.
I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty good and I'm getting better. I'm aiming at maintenance, with a preference to lose instead of gain if I don't maintain. In the last month, I've lost .75lb, which means I was under my TDEE by ~ 90 calories per day. Given that I logged about 5 days in the last month - I'm pretty ok with that. In the next month I'll try consciously adding some treats to each week - a mocha instead of black coffee, a couple glasses of wine, etc.0 -
doing it now...(as I'm eating a choc chip cookie)...I do it one day every weekend...cause I work my b @ LL Z off the rest of the week.
with that said...I still train on my IDGAF day0 -
yup0
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I don't log food or exercise when I am holiday. I realise that I am probably gonna have gained when I get home, but hey that's fine. I just get back to my normal lifestyle and any temporarily gained weight is gone within a few days.0
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Not so far as im too focused. If I do decide I want a break or a binge, then its planned for and can be used as a fallback. Id need a good reason to do so.0
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I can't see the point of logging only if you are eating like a bird. The whole point of this is knowing how many calories you have when you eat normally, understand how much you can eat to maintain and how much you need to eat to lose. Otherwise it's just a big fat lie to yourself.0
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No. In my situation, a day off means making myself sick. There have been plenty of times where I've thought oh it won't be so bad, just this once, etc, especially around holidays when everyone is saying one drink or one cookie or one whatever won't hurt. The hell I go through for the following week is never worth it.0
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I always count everything each day because it is not what you do daily but what you do overall that matters. From Mayo Clinic: "Because 3,500 calories equals about 1 pound (0.45 kilogram) of fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in to lose 1 pound. So if you cut 500 calories from your typical diet each day, you'd lose about 1 pound a week (500 calories x 7 days = 3,500 calories)." So if you don't track one day, you could eat so much (3500 calories) that you actually gained a pound just because of that day. If it is a holiday meal, I track each item, but I may allow myself a few hundred extra calories (and then possibly reduce my calories by some amount each of the other days to make up for it).0
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I just started too. I've been trying to really control myself on the weekends too, because, that is when I usually blow the whole week. I don't feel I'm entitled to a cheat day until I lose the initial weight. I guess I won't see any goodies for a year LOL0
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No....I use to but now if I go over I try to make it up either with exercise or whatnot. I do eat what I feel I crave so I'm not depriving myself but I'll eat it in moderation (a serving of m&ms and not the whole bag).0
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practice IF and save up those calories, then you can cheat everyday0
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I didn't log for about two weeks during the holidays. I ate well, mostly, but didn't log the food. And yes I gained, but only 5 pounds, which surprised me. My goal is to lose 1.4 pounds a week, so the re-gain definitely set me back but I'm slowly catching up to where I would have been if I had stayed the course. Along the way I'm learning to have a better relationship with food, which is priceless and will hold me in good stead for the rest of my life. No food is off limits, but I make a conscious decision when to have it and how much. I don't sweat the calories etc, because this is a marathon, not a short race. I DO try to plan for my extravagance instead of being caught by surprise, but I don't short my calories the day before or after. I just get back on track as soon as possible. So, to answer your question, yes I've taken time off from logging my food, but I won't do that again for a while. The accountability is something I need for right now.0
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NoblankFRplease wrote: »I can't see the point of logging only if you are eating like a bird. The whole point of this is knowing how many calories you have when you eat normally, understand how much you can eat to maintain and how much you need to eat to lose. Otherwise it's just a big fat lie to yourself.
I'm not sure if that was directed at me, since I mentioned very low calorie days are when I tend to log. If not, you can disregard this, because it doesn't apply to most people in the weight loss forum.
I'm looking for maintenance, and tend to lose weight - I log bird-eating days so I know how many calories I need to try to stuff back into myself. I find it useful to know if I'm 500 calories under target or 1500 calories under. The act of logging those bird-days also helps me change a 500 calories day into a 1000 or 1500 calorie day.0 -
No.0
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I don't "cheat" I'm on a very low carb diet and occasionally I'll eat carby foods (like going out for chinese rice and egg rolls) but on those rare days I make sure to keep my calories low and my carbs under 100 so it doesn't spike my blood sugar as badly. The goal for me is to only go over my carb goal on special occasions and ALWAYS keep my calories at a deficit.0
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