I dropped 6.4 lbs. this week. Another week like this and I’ll finally drop below 200.
Hot damn! I’ve pretty much dropped all my weight gain from my trip to Texas. I was hoping for a 2 pound loss and ended up dropping 6.4 lbs. Sweet!
My secret? Tracking. Not exciting, I know. But truth is when I track, I lose weight. Funny how that works.
So my total weight loss is now 120 lbs. That’s 24 5-pound gold stars to my Weight Watcher peeps. Read More
I need to eat more protein to keep up with my yoga and walking activities. Image courtesy of amenic181 and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
For the last couple of evenings, I’m feel famished at about 10:00 pm. Rather than eat, I start chugging water. Thirty minutes later I’m hungry again once my bladder bursts. Something is afoot.
This is the beauty of keeping a food journal. I thumbed through my FitBook this morning and I found a potential culprit – protein. I’m averaging 3.5 oz. of protein at lunch and 4.5 oz. at dinner. Since I go low carb, I try not to go over six ounces of protein during breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Clearly I’m not near the 6 oz. limit per meal. But with the yoga and walks, I need to up my amount. Phew! An easy fix. I’ll find out tonight if this does the trick.
To correctly track my food portions in Carb Masters, I need to key in the following data for my foods. Not very helpful at all!
While I’ve tracked my food for the last six days, today seems like a real tracking day. Thanks to the dental work, I was severely limited in the types of food I ate. Today is the first day I can eat normally.
I’m only half way through the day and all I can say is the Carb Master app is annoying as hell.
I love that it provides a net carb count. However, the food library, while large, doesn’t allow me to select my portion size. Example – today I ate 1/2 C of chopped cucumbers for a morning snack. The app provides pre-designated portions and 1/2 C is not an option. The solution, I created a customer food called “Chopped Cucumber” but I had to key in the data (Net Carbs, Calories, Fat, Saturated Fat, Protein, Sugars, Fiber, etc.).
I ended up asking The Google the nutrition info for 1/2 C of cucumbers and keyed those numbers into the app.
Really? The whole point of mobile apps is convenience. It ended up taking about 15 minutes to key in everything (damn you auto correct!).
It took less than 1 minute to record my food in my Weight Watchers app. The food journal in My Fitness Pal got the job done easily enough. Hell, writing it down in my Fit Book took less time…just sayin’.
Adding a favorite recipe into Carb Master? Well you can name the recipe and the ingredient. How much of an ingredient and how it’s prepared? Not so much. Ugh!
The carb count changes if you eat a vegetable raw, steamed, or grilled. Yet, I can’t key in how to prepare those vegetables in a carb counting app. It’s almost as if the folks who created this app don’t know anything about low carb eating.
Carb Master is an epic fail.
Doubling down on food journaling! Today kicks off the start of my 12-Week Tracking Challenge.
Ok, I’ll admit it. I’m horrible at tracking my food. I don’t know why. I seem to go through cycles. Some weeks I am the most awesome tracker in the world. Others, I completely suck at it.
Guess what cycle I’m in now?
I know tracking works. When I track, the pounds fall off. It’s that simple.
Over the last 2 weeks, I went from tracking everything everyday to just a couple of meals a day to no tracking at all.
A part of me just thinks I don’t have to write it down. I can count my points and carbs in my head. Ha! I ended up snacking all last night and lost count sometime between dinner, the jello, the almonds, the wine, and the late night chicken wings.
Tracking Challenge
I decided to create a 12-Week Tracking Challenge using both paper and my iPhone. I want to reinforce a good habit…hence the 12-weeks. I’m tracking:
Paper Journal Vs. Apps
Conventional wisdom says apps make tracking “easier.” But I’m not so sure.
I find with paper, I’m actually thinking about what I’m doing. With the app, it’s more like I log it and think more about improving the app, not myself.
Since I’m tracking both PointsPlus and net carb values, I plan to use Weight Watchers, My Fitness Pal and Carb Master apps during the first phase of the challenge.
Truth is no one app does what I need it to do – calculate PointsPlus and net carbs, and track my activity. My Weight Watchers’ app is my workhorse for tracking, but it doesn’t count carbs (please WW gods add this feature!). Friends recommended My Fitness Pal and Carb Masters. So I’ll also review the apps during this challenge.
Behold! My paper food journal for the next 12 weeks.
I know paper isn’t a walk in the park either. I don’t know the PointsPlus value or net carb count of everything I eat. Paper is so DOS!
But again, if I write it, I tend to think about what I’m doing. Thinking is key to living healthy.
For the paper tracking, I settled on using Fitlosophy’s Fitbook. It’s a 12-week fitness and nutrition journal. It includes long- (3 months) and short-term (weekly) goals. It’s very clean and allows detailed info. It’s small enough to fit in my purse so I can take it with me.
The challenge starts today and ends December 18.