This week has been good.
My trend weight has gone down by 0.6 lbs
I have met my calorie targets each day.

During the last few months of last year I found(developed) an eating routine that works well for me in terms of fitting my work/life schedule, keeping me satisfied and meeting my calorie targets.
I over indulged for a few weeks over the holidays (I decided to allow myself to do it), but have gotten right back into my routine without too much fuss, so things are going fairly smoothly.

I'm trying an experiment to see if I can manage without logging. I'm still mentally tallying everything that I eat (and using my fitbit to decide how many calories to eat) but I am not using a scale to measure things out, and I'm not actually entering the food into my diary. I tend to eat most of the same foods over and over again so I know their portion size and calorie content pretty well. I will keep an eye on the scale to decide whether or not this is working.

I am also going to try to hit 70,000 steps per week on my fitbit. Not easy ! but something to aim for.

Something good that happened this week was me walking past a table of free donuts at work. One of my weaknesses is when I find myself in a situation that I wasn't expecting. (eg on days that I know in advance that there will be donuts, I prepare myself and either fit them into my calories or decide that I won't have one. But when I am suddenly faced with a donut and haven't mentally prepared myself to not have one, I find it difficult to resist.) So this is quite a good achievement for me.

This week has been mostly good.

I exceeded 70,000 for my weekly steps and my eating has been mostly good.
My trendweight has gone down 0.5 lbs, my ticker is showing 82lbs lost, and I am still 2 1/2 lbs above where I was at the start of December.

I gave myself permission to eat above maintenance (ie to gain weight) through the December parties. I enjoyed it a lot, and it was a great mental break, but now I'm losing that weight again. I guess that eating at maintenance should be 'normal' and I should be able to enjoy myself without gaining weight but there was so many parties...

Its always the unexpected situations that challenge me. When there is good food available in front of me and I haven't made a mental plan on how to react. It happened a couple of times this week and I did indulge. I showed some restraint, and didn't take huge amounts. But I didn't feel that I had enough control to be able to chose not to eat any. Its that control that I would like to develop. Sometimes I have it, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I think its getting better but then I'll find myself in a situation with very little control, again. I feel as though I am always having to exercise control (It was not having to worry about this control that I enjoyed so much over December).

The simple fact is that if I eat the foods that I want in the quantities that I want I will gain weight.
I have learned how to meet my nutritional needs and to achieve satiety within my calories, with foods that I enjoy.
But there are many other foods that I love that I can only eat in moderation. If health and weight were not a concern, I could very easily exceed my calories every single day, eating those foods.

I have come to accept that in order to maintain my weight loss, I will have to exercise this control for ever - and it might never come easily to me.

Its an effort to exercise and watch what I eat but one that I am willing to make in order to be healthy.

50extra wrote: »

Total I love your approach for the party situations. I am not willing to put my life on hold just to lose weight, or to maintain weight when I get to my goal. If I am in a situation where there is amazing food and I want to eat it I am going to, the difference is now I am more aware of what I am putting in my mouth and also how much my body needs.

This is all an experiment to try to find what works for me. When I was losing weight I was a lot stricter, but to be successful at maintaining I need to be realistic about what I can continue doing indefinitely.

What seems to be working is thinking of things not so much in terms of what I want to do but rather in terms of what I would feel like I was missing out on if I didn't do it.

So, for example, I want to eat a piece of cake. But if I don't eat it, I won't feel like I missed out for not having eaten it.

By contrast, my first year on MFP I was a lot stricter over the christmas season, and as a result, I felt like I was missing out. I know that some people don't feel that way, but I did. So this year I decided to try a different approach. So far I'm glad I did ! It was a great psychological break from having constant awareness of everything I eat and drink (plus I had a lot of fun ), and even now, when I haven't quite lost all the weight I gained back I don't regret it. I plan to do it again next year. My only worry was that I wouldn't be able to get back on track, and that hasn't been a problem at all. But I have to be confident that it won't be a problem next year, too.

Also for me a 250 cal daily deficit (which is what I'm doing to lose the weight I gained) is not really difficult. I want to eat all day long ! The extra 250 cal might give me an extra 5 minutes of being able to eat but for the rest of the day I still have to resist wanting to eat.

This week has been good.

I exceeded 70,000 for my weekly steps and my eating has been good.
My trendweight has gone down 1 lbs, my ticker is showing 83lbs lost, and I am still 1 1/2 lbs above where I was at the start of December.

1lb loss is higher than what I am aiming for. It's a trendweight loss but it could still be hormonal variation, so I'm not going to change my plan just yet, though I will have a generous lunch today .

arghh...

So I decided to allow myself some extra calories because I lost more than expected last week and I am not really trying to lose the weight too quickly.

I stopped in at the supermarket after work to buy dinner. I was hungry (first mistake), had no fixed plan (second mistake) nor even target calories (third mistake). The salted caramel fudge was on sale. and I bought it. 1000 odd calories of caramel fudge. and I ate it. all of it. that was my dinner. I had some of it as I was leaving the supermarket and I thought to myself this is a mistake throw it away and go buy something else. I decided that I would have a bit more in the car but then throw it out when I got home and just make dinner with stuff that I could find at home.

Instead when I got home I ate some, and then some more, and just kept eating it. Until it was finished. I wasn't even enjoying it. I'd had enough but it wasn't really logic that was driving me to eat it.

This is definitely my weakness.
Give me a reasonable plan and I can follow it. But as soon as I don't have a plan, I just want to eat.

I have made the mistake of going to the supermarket hungry and without a plan so many times before. Sometimes because of my work schedule I can't avoid it. But this time I could have. I thought it would be fun - to walk around deciding how to 'spend' my calories.

So I'm a bit frustrated with myself. not too frustrated (to be honest) because I have been through this so many times that I'm used to it. Also I actually kept within my calories, and my macros weren't all that bad. But I really need to figure out how to get better at this. Life doesn't always go according to my plan.

Anyway, I can feel that I'm still 'on track', and I'm pretty confident that tomorrow will go fine. If I lose too much weight again I will have to plan my response a little better. hmmm...there's that 'p' word again. *sigh*.