I've been thinking about that article in the NYT that I linked to on Wednesday. Notably the part about the lag between eating and impact on weight. I think that's true for me. The only thing that has instant impact is salty stuff that makes me retain water, which I don't consider to be a real weight gain (even if it takes several days to get back off). Most of the time I don't see a real change in my weight if I eat one big meal. If I compensate quickly, I can avoid any impact at all.
That means that yes, I'm still going to need the daily (well, twice daily) weigh-ins to get a sense of which way the wind is blowing. But I need to be careful on a scale of weeks, not days or hours.
Calories in-calories out works pretty well for me. I'm probably eating about 1500-1600 per day (I've lost the mojo to track everything in MFP.) Still losing, but much slower these days. I do perfect for breakfast and lunch and then slip a bit for dinner. Maybe a drinky poo or a piece of bread with butter. That crap adds up fast!
I flailed a bit this week. I ran Monday at lunch, and then life happened and I couldn't go Wednesday. I was so, SO, SO tempted to give myself a break and take a few days off from working out (as a present for finishing the EMT class). I got scared because that feels like the slippery slope that takes me right back to being huge. If I reward myself with some days off from exercise, what's next? A fettucini alfredo dinner reward? A week off? Two weeks? Argh!! It should be a reward to exercise, not to NOT exercise! But it isn't. I don't look forward to exercising. I look forward to the exercise being over. That's when I remembered that Laina feels the same way about exercise, and she's been a successful maintainer for lots of years. It's OK to not love exercise - but not OK to skip it.
So I ran yesterday at a weird time at the end of the work day, but still during work time. I had to work through lunch so technically it was my lunch hour that I took at 4, but it still felt weird. Then, it was SO, SO hard to run. I stopped 3 times to adjust my music. Stopped another time or 2 to look at text messages. I just didn't want to do it. About 2/3 of the way through I finally settled down and just finished it. Then I felt great.
So here's what's happening now that I'm not tracking what I eat in MFP. I'm estimating, and making switches that don't make sense to reasonable people. Like this one:
And today - my plan was to do a weight workout. But then I remembered that I have a LOT of dirt to move in my yard this weekend. I think I'll use the energy and the muscles this afternoon to move dirt instead of iron weights. This needs to be me not skipping a workout again!!
Because ... I'm thinking about skipping the 5K on Sunday. I love getting up, making a big cup of tea and getting back into bed to read the iPad on weekends. I haven't done that in... weeks. (mostly 'cause I'm not alone on weekend mornings, which I'm definitely not complaining about! But we don't sleep in.) Can't sleep in next weekend because I'm camping (!!). And then Dude is going to be back from Germany and I'll be back to getting up on weekend mornings again. I have zero desire to get up early Sunday morning just to prove something to myself by running/walking a 5K in town. Waah! Can't I just make a promise to do 5K later in the day and sleep in instead?? Whine, whine, whine....
PS - I didn't mean to convey that I dropped everyone who's not maintaining off my blog list! I did drop one or two, but most of y'all are still on my must-read list! I love the can-do attitude that means you'll be successful - eventually.
I've stopped using MFP for the most part, too - sometimes weighing everything is exasperating! I weigh meat and nuts so I know about how many calories I'm taking in, but for the most part, fruits and veggies I just estimate for my own knowledge.
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