Lately I have sucked at many things, the main ones are writing on this blog consistently, writing on this blog about something other than my vacation, following any sort of eating/fitness plan and budgeting. Yeah ok, budgeting doesn’t seem to really fit in there but hey, it’s something I suck at so why not add it to the list? lol 😛
I’ve decided to stop being an unorganized annoying person who wants to see change but isn’t working towards it, and instead be someone who is actively working to achieve the change they want to see.
Man oh man will this suck! lol Well, at the beginning anyways, but hopefully soon (very soon, pleeeeease very soon!) it will all become second nature and it’ll not seem like so much work.
Officially I am starting tomorrow, I like starting things at the beginning of a month, that way when I look back at what I am tracking I can see a whole month’s worth of information instead of one week, or half a month or however long it has been. The chunk of time not working towards my goal, and therefore not tracked, looks like some gaping black hole to me when I am glancing at my accumulated information and it bugs me. Yeah yeah, I know, I’m weird, let’s move on shall we? 😉
Here is what I am starting, as of tomorrow, but technically did today to see how it went:
– I am tracking what I am eating. Every. Single. Bite.
– I am tracking my exercise
– I am tracking my spending. Every. Single. Penny. (even though we don’t have pennies anymore…am I the only one that misses pennies? sigh)
To this end I bought myself a cute three subject notebook…
hoooo! hoooo!
One section is for my food, one is for my exercise and one is for money spent. I know a lot of people use smaller notebooks to track things, ones that will be easier to carry around but I tend to lose them in my purse, or forget about them, and I thought why not use a larger book, one that can hold everything, is cute (so I like looking at it), and has pages that are large enough the stuff I write down won’t be cramped or written in super small print so it fits?
Today, with the food tracking, all I did was write down what I ate, I didn’t include calories or convert it in to Weight Watchers points, I just wanted to start the habit of writing down what I eat.
I’m not actually sure what kind of meal plan I am going to follow, which is probably pretty stupid considering I am starting tomorrow but there are so many different ways to go about this and I’m not sure anymore which is the best way to go, sigh.
I could follow Weight Watchers again, but I plan on working on building muscle and that means tracking by following numbers on a scale won’t work out too well. I could follow the version of Paleo I was on before, it worked really well, but it is very strict, there is no wiggle room and I honestly don’t know if I can follow that again. I could follow a basic calorie counting plan, figure out how many calories I should be having a day and make sure that is how many I eat.
Without thinking I’ve already come up with three different ways I could go with this, and that is without research, this is just from what I know already…think how much more confusing it could get if I start doing more research? There are meal plans that take in to account your blood type, your body shape, plans that take away all sugar, all carbs, all meat…too many options!! Arg!
I am leaning towards counting my calories, I haven’t done that before, well, not successfully lol but maybe this time I’ll be better at it…couldn’t be much worse I suppose. 😉
The last couple times I have tried to get back on track I find a new app for my phone and try that route but this time I am going old school. I did well when on Weight Watchers and I tracked by writing everything in a notebook, not using the app. While normally I am all about utilizing technology, sometimes I think it doesn’t work as well as the low tech ways. With all the different apps I have used I have had issues, either they are American based so the foods and restaurants etc that are loaded in to them don’t match the foods and restaurants I have access too, they only track you by weight, they are rigid in their definition of meal names, they think that just because it is past midnight it’s a new day even though I didn’t get up till noon and am not going to bed until 3am, they don’t have the exercises in their database that I do…things like that…In the end I find the limitations of the apps so annoying I stop using them.
When using a notebook sure there is a bit more work, I have to look online to find the information (calories, WW points etc) or *gasp* read the nutritional information on the food package but that’s ok, am I so important I can’t find time for that? Pfft, no. Well ok, some days it might be harder than others but I’m sure I can manage it, right?
As for exercising, I will still use apps for tracking if only so I can get accurate distances, calories burned and time of day I exercised. I don’t track all my exercises, when I lift weights for example, but I think it’s more important to be tracking the cardio. Hmm, that sounds wrong, I track weights in the sense I keep a record of how much weight I lifted and how many reps, I just don’t use an app for that.
For keeping track of my success (note the optimism? 😉 ) I will be measuring myself in oh-so-many places lol I will also take pictures of myself (front view, side view, back view), I will repeat this on the first of every month. I’m toying with also weighing myself but I find that the number on the scale can have really negative effects on me and I just don’t know if I want to go there…I’ll see how brave I am tomorrow and if I think it’ll be a wise choice to step on to the scale.
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 
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