Complacency Kills

I was losing 2 to 3 pounds a week pretty steady there for a while, feeling pretty proud of myself. Then I hit a slump; some call it a “plateau”. What ever it is, it sucks. At first I wasn’t worried. I lost .01 pound in a week, but I thought, no worries, I’ll lose next week. But I didn’t. And I didn’t lose the week after that either. I didn’t gain, but I didn’t lose either. I was still exercising, still eating right. So what was the difference? I thought about it for a while and I realized: I stopped blogging and when I stopped blogging I stopped writing down what I ate. I was eating only healthy stuff so I didn’t need to write it down, right? WRONG! A handful of almonds here, a glass of wine there, it adds up! 2 months went by and I hadn’t lost a pound. When I first became determined to loose weight I made this really awesome spreadsheet to keep track of foods I eat with calorie count and it was just sitting there in my computer going to waste.  I had lists of the most common foods I eat with calorie count already there. All I had to do was record which foods I ate and the spreadsheet kept track of calories for me.  When I pulled up the spreadsheet I realized I hadn’t used it since I became a Vegan. Most of the foods listed had meat and/or cheese in them. So I took some time last weekend and updated the whole thing. I wrote all my new favorite vegan recipes with calorie count per serving and I organized the meals by usual breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack. Now all I have to do is call up the sheet (my computer is on most of the time anyway) and keep track as I go. Sometimes I get busy and end up recording it all at night, this is a challenge in that I don’t always remember what I had for breakfast or snack so I try to record as I go. Results: down 2.6 pounds this week! WooHoo. Such a simple solution! Oh I still have a handful of almonds (23 to be exact) and a nice glass of wine now and then, I just make sure I don’t have all my high calorie meals on the days I have those.  I try to keep my daily calorie count to between 1100 and 1400 calories. For me if it’s too rigid I won’t stick to it. So if I have 1400 calories one day I just try and keep it closer to 1100 the next day. So I’m going to try and blog more often again, but even if I don’t blog about it, I’m definitely going to record what I eat. No more complacent crap. NO MORE EXCUSES!