Tuesday, April 17, 2012

The beauty of a food log

I actually did get on the scale this morning, and my one-pound gain (when I thought it was going to be four or five!) was a relief. I then went back and looked at my previous history, most of which is from FatSecret, and it's certainly normal (whatever that is) for me to have a slight gain after a losing week. It's also normal for me to average losing less than a pound a week, which is discouraging, but IT'S STILL LOSING.

I created a calorie deficit five days out of seven last week, and the deficit days more than made up for the two days I went slightly over my calorie budget. I exercised every day. I logged every bite of food every day.

I did not find it tedious or horrible or boring or frustrating or a Real Drag to do so, either.

The one issue I have with all the electronic food logs I've used is that they're based so very much on name-brand or restaurant-prepared foods. FatSecret frequently had an option for "homemade" – for stews and soups, mostly. LoseIt! doesn't offer that and so I end up best-guessing because I don't want to enter all the ingredients and divide by the number of servings to come up with truly accurate nutrient figures.

Therefore, my calories may have been underestimated slightly.

(One very cool thing about the LoseIt! phone app is it can scan a bar code. If your multi-grain crackers aren't included in its database, you can easily add it with a swipe of your phone. I do love me some technology. Heh.)

But still, I'm okay seeing today's number. Thanks for your thoughts about the subject of the scale yesterday. I wish for ALL of us that we attain some kind of sanity regarding food and weight sometime before our time is up. WELL before you die, preferably, so that your golden years won't be as anxiety-ridden about body image as mine have been.

1 comment:

Diandra said...

Right now I am concentrating more on living healthy and not so much on losing weight, and I think it is a relief. Of course I have reached part of my goal - a healthy BMI and body fat percentage, now I only want to lose some more for my vanity.

However, I suspect that people who lost any significant amount of weight will always slightly worry about gaining back. I know that my mother, who had a lap band placed fifteen years ago, lost seventy kilos and stuck with that weight for ages has gained 5kg over the last three months.

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