May 4: ✅✅✅ (slightly more than 13,300 steps on the day - all food logged, most of 118 fitbit exercise calories earned were "left in the pot"

Monthly total:
✅✅ ❌✅

3x yes

I’m mostly at level 4 in regards to logging. i may deviate on vacation or other travels. Restaurant meals trip me up.

Exercise? Yes - I rode 28.33 miles on my Peloton indoor bike in an hour and a half.
Under calories? Yes
Tracked meals? Yes

2/3 Pass Days

@GrandmaJackie Oh my goodness Pete & Parker are adorable! And you are right, I expect their votes would each be a solid “no”. Great job today!

Well one today on three “yeses” for the Fourth of May:

@Caramel_Apple @tahm42 @eokoro @TerriRichardson112 @Winner_in_Life @jmu1965 @Maggie_MJ

@ snowshoe072 It is such a good feeling when it all comes together, right? 🌸🌻🌺

@SummerSkier The learning never stops — and thank goodness as it really does add spice to life. 🌶🌶🌶

@Tarann75 Cheering for your success today — hotel stays are really hard and you’ve conquered this one! We are here for you 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

Welcome @atoina ans great job today! 🌟🌟🌟

@ideas2 Super job tracking and so great that you have many years of practice too. 🌟

@Sumner100Christ_follower Amazing ride! 🚴🏻‍♀️🚴🏻‍♀️🚴🏻‍♀️

@LazyBlondeChef Well done! I’m with you on restaurant meals: they trip me up too. Good thing we don’t eat out often any more. 🌷

@biketheworld Awesome job today! You are in the groove with ZERO pass days! 🏆

@BMcC9 Super job! You’ve got this 🥰

Great opener today @enlightenme3 and it clearly was a great touchstone for so many of us today — thank you Marisa! 💐💐💐

I’d put myself down as a pretty solid 3, as long as we aren’t travelling or dining out.
😬 I’m still in the “track every leaf of romaine lettuce” phase, but am grateful for my own tenacity at this phase of my journey. Too early for me to get too confident in my “estimates” as my cross check of some of those last month gave me a couple of eye openers. I don’t mind tracking (but for restaurant meals which can be tricky — so good thing we don’t dine out often).

Well done today @loopydo2017 @ashleycarole86 @SilverSage1 🌻🌻🌻

Wednesday May 4
Exercise done prior to the drive ✅
Tracked it all (well, as much as we can with shared plates when dining out) ✅
Pretty close to using total calories (including using today’s exercise bank) but going to call it as a pass day. ❎

Beautiful day today and so happy to see our daughter sign the roll. Proud mama moment 🥰

@jamcnewman Kos is a Greek island. We will be self catering, but with unfamiliar food items. And eating out in the evenings.

May 4
Exercise: 15 minutes MommaStrong. Did not find time for any other exercise, so I guess that makes a pass day right there.
Tracking: Planned the day
Calories: Followed the plan, but added in a bit of nibbling but also tracked it and still under

I guess we have to call that my second pass day. I honestly have been so focused on the tracking that I forgot about missing 5 minutes of exercise until right now. A bit of a disappointment but that's the rules.

I don't even want to assess my level of competence at tracking. I've been doing it on and off for most of my adult life, but only for a few weeks at a time (my method of maintenance was scale based, and if I exceeded a certain number I would track until I was a few pounds back down). I started on MFP in February 2021 and that's the first time I've tried to track every day long-term.

I almost always plan out my day the night before. I find that to be a pretty easy habit - and tracking has gotten even easier as I passed the 1 year mark, because we have a few recipes that we eat only once a year and now all of those are in the system too. I did have to learn to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good and I do try to find equivalents for eating out/takeout. If it's takeout I will weigh things before putting them on my plate. (I don't bring my scale when we go out to eat!) We almost never get from restaurants that provide nutrition information but I often will research similar food from restaurants that do post nutrition info.

The difficulty comes with whether I am following the plan! Until a few months ago, I would add on a few nibbles of things - from off the kids' plates or from the kids' snack drawer - without tracking them, just pretending I wasn't doing it. When my weight loss stalled I started really looking at that and tried to just eat what I planned. Then I was starving! And realized that I actually had been sneaking a lot of calories.

So, after a fair bit of agonizing and getting some coaching from wise members of this challenge, I upped my daily calories. Now I have 1650 as my daily goal instead of I think it was 1300 before. And I try to plan around 1300-1500 of those, still leaving a little buffer for the nibbles. And I track all the nibbles -yesterday it was something like 5 pretzels, 1 cup of kettlecorn, 1/2 oz of pita chips, etc. etc. It works if the nibbles don't get too out of control. I really wish that I could stop the nibbling. I really wish we didn't have the stuff in the house. But skipping the nibbling is easier if I eat enough nutritious food, so I do try to make sure I plan that.