The seasons are changing on my trusty old set of stairs. I've been there in the ice and snow, and seen the spring showers. Last year I stopped stair training after the Big Climb, but this year, I've continued. In fact, I'm mixing in a little stair running. And today I was greeted with a rich array of wildflowers (and, truth be told, some colorful weeds).
But the changing of the seasons also serves to mark my slow progress, considering that I started this journey nearly two and a half years ago. My problem came into stark relief two weeks ago, as I got off track with a few days at a conference, and in the course of a week I had given up hard fought gains. Like probably all of you, I've lost hundreds of pounds, but most of that I've gained back as soon as my eye came off the ball.
My latest resolve is simply this: No steps back.
As I noted last week, I've committed to recording every calorie from every food in the My Fitness Pal app on my smartphone. There had been too much "off the record" eating, and these sessions, often consuming food straight out of a container, wrecked my progress. This week, I logged every calorie, as accurately as reasonably possible.
And I made a helpful decision on my target: anything less than maintenance calories. In the past I've had daily calorie consumption targets ranging from 500 to 1000 calories below my maintenance level. In fact, my calorie tracking app is still set to 1000 calories below, which is theoretically a two pound a week loss. But I never seem to be able to stay with those ambitious levels day after day, and that's usually when I stop counting for a while. By making a stand to not go over my maintenance level calories, whatever weight I do lose will stay off.
It's not about how much I lose. It's about the daily discipline of staying within myself.
6 comments:
After a bad week, I'm making a similar commitment. Great post. :)
Sounds like a reasonable approach. I need to track regardless of whether I am under, over or right on.
Hope this approach is what ends up being the pounds off champion.
This whole getting healthy journey is for life. Making the decision now to stay at a maintaining level of calories per day is a step for life. it takes tremendous discipline to do just that. Glad to hear you are still stair climbing.
Stair climbing is a great exercise. And just look at all those flowers! Love them!
My problem with logging calories is that I do not go back to analyze my progress or failures. You seem to be a lot better at that.
I like it. No steps back. It's where I am.
A great tool to use to find out how many calories you need to cut to start losing weight is the BMR Calorie Calculator. It will tell you the number of calories that you need to consume daily based on your body factors to start to losing weight. So this is a great way to get started on a weight loss plan. Cutting out processed carbs is also a great next step in losing weight
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