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

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.