500-day streak: What I learned, why I'm quitting, and the best meal recipe

RyanTahiti

Well friends, I guess this is goodbye. I completed my 500th day in a row of logging every calorie in and out of my body - food, drink, and exercise. I ran a marathon and rocked it. My lifestyle has changed and I now feel in tune with my body. So this bird is leaving the nest. Thanks, MyFitnessPal, for teaching me to fly.

I also posted the best (aka most effective) recipe I've found here: http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10237388/

Some of the things I learned:

1. The second week is the hardest. Keep with it.

2. Accountability, Sustainability, and Consistency are the three keys to an effective lifestyle change.

3. Log that food. No matter what. Log every calorie you intake.

4. Round up for calories in, round down for calories burned.

5. If you cheat, you're only cheating yourself. And who are you doing this for, anyway?

6. MFP overestimates my "Default Goal" for net calories by 25.8%. That's a lot.

7. Everyone has a kryptonite. What's yours? Recognize it, and get it out of sight. Ask your spouse / roommate / cat / whomever to get it out of the house. Mine is chocolate chip cookies - and I have no power over them. You're strong, but we all only have so much willpower. Just make it unavailable.

8. Listen to your body, and learn from what it's telling you. When you wake up in the morning, you can feel exactly how well you did yesterday.

9. Only weigh once a week. Same day and time of day, and consistently check in with that. Look for long week-to-week trends instead of instantaneous judgments.

10. "How do I feel?" is much more important than "What does the scale currently say?"

11. I ate 639.5 cookies over the 500 days, totaling 63,953 calories. Mostly my grandma's chocolate chip recipe. It's amazing.

12. My average gross intake has was 2013.95 calories per day, with daily gram averages of 199.28 carbs, 85.52 fat, and 113.58 protein. I burned 491.24 calories/day averaging 5.93 days/week of exercise.

13. It's about feeling better today than yesterday, every day. That's why we do this, and that's what keeps us going. We set goals to get us to the destination, but it's really about the journey.

kami3006

Good luck to ya! I hit 500 tomorrow and certainly have learned a lot.

vanessasaurousrex

Good for you. Great info thanks for sharing & good luck :smiley

RyanTahiti

Thanks, kami - congrats on the streak! What have you learned that you would add?

RyanTahiti

Thank you vanessa - all the best in your journey as well

besee_2000

Those are some awesome stats. This inspires me to be more thorough so one day I can look back and see what worked and what didn't. Thank you for sharing!

BabyPhat90713

Good luck! And great job...i have a while to go before I can leave the nest. One day I hope to be where you are and be saying I can do it without MFP

wonna13

Thank-you so much for putting everything in perspective it was very motivating. I hate you are leaving. You would be a valuable asset to mfp especially for those of us just starting out.

IllustratedxGirl

This is great, but you did not address "why I'm quitting"

barbecuesauce

I'm glad you've found what works!

4carrera911

Thanks for sharing!!!

JenniferIsLosingIt

Best posti have seen here in a longtime!

RyanTahiti

Thanks for all your kind replies. Stay strong and keep up the great work!

vixtris

Awesome work man! I loved reading your post. Also, I was wondering how you came up with your average calories in/out? Does MFP have a feature that does that?

RyanTahiti

vixtris, it's a 3rd-party program that runs a big macro in Excel that taps into your log, then spits out a big spreadsheet with a lot of data to sort through. As a data nerd, I find it very valuable - but as far as I know, MFP still doesn't offer anything like that.

vixtris

Cool! What is the name of the program?

daisyls85

I'm also interested in the name of this program! You're will power is inspiring and you're right, the second week is the hardest!

PinkyPan1

Thank you for sharing your insights and tips. Be free and continue to soar!!! Peace out!

RyanTahiti

There are a few out there - search "Export MyFitnessPal data to CSV" and you'll find a bunch. I can't even remember which one I used.

RyanTahiti

I think this was the one I used: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/EvgeniZyntx/view/mfp-data-export-tool-the-overview-659927

vixtris

Thanks!

GaleHawkins

Great post. Thanks for sharing.

RyanTahiti

Thanks Gale. Hope it can help someone out there!

elarian

As someone in week one, thanks for the heads up on week two!

RyanTahiti

Stay strong, elarian! Incidentally, a recent HealthCare Triage video talks about why it's easier to diet at first until your metabolism starts reacting to it. I think that's the "week two" phenomenon for me. See at 2:51:
https://youtu.be/fCtn4Ap8kDM?t=2m51s

michaelafoor916

best wishes! this was a good read I'm on day 67 and I can agree with a lot of what you said!

morphedmai

Wow! Thanks and all the best. 500 streak!! Awesome!

cpower4604

Best of luck to you. Thank you for sharing your inspirational journey!

daliad30

Congrats and good luck. You are my inspiration.

mahya_03

I have been on this site for 2 years and have yet to make it to a 100 day streak, you sir are a champ! Good luck to ya!!

mevoy

Congratulations! Can you talk more about the "sustainability" part?