I haven’t posted here for a while, that is because I am not on track, and I get very tired of writing the same things all the time. I am maintaining my weight quite well, I’m not binging, and I am exercising. I’m just not being very strong about all the little treats and snacks that come my way and because of that, I’m not losing. I haven’t given up, and very soon I will find my resistance muscle, start working it and I will be back

One of the main thing that kept me on track last year when I was losing quite well, was that I always planned my meals, worked out the calories in advance, and then tracked where I went off plan during the week.

I find I’m much less likely to go off track if the calories are all added up already. I KNOW that if I eat those chips I will be X calories over budget. I calculate my calories using Calorieking.com.au - you can use either the online diary or the software, I use the software.

A few people on Calorie king forums have recently been asking for copies of my tracker, which I mentioned on a post recently. I thought it would be easier to put it on here than to email it out each time.

The tracker that I use is an A4 grid I made myself in word. You can see an image of it below, and if you click on the link underneath, you should be able to download a copy for yourself.

tracker-with-calorie-columns

How I plan my meals

While it took about an hour the first time I did it, I now plan my whole week in about 20 minutes. It only takes a few goes at it to get into a routine.  It’s a great idea to keep the old trackers in a file, so you can start to see patterns of what worked and what didn’t.

• To start, I fill in a few meals based on what I know is coming up during the week, and what food is in the house. For example,   
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    • I have the same breakfast every weekday, so I write those in.
    • I won’t have time to make lunch on tuesday night, so I’ll be having a serve of spaghetti bol out of the freezer for lunch on wednesday.
    • I’ll be home alone Monday night so I’ll cook something nice.
    • I’ll be at my boyfriend’s for dinner tuesday, I’ll allow 500cals for that meal.
    • I also try to pick one new recipe from my collection - something I’ve never made before, and put it on the plan. This is important to me, otherwise I’ll eat the same things over and over for the rest of my life!
• Then I get out my laptop and go to my CK software, but you can use the online diary just as well. I go to Monday, and enter the meals (breakfast and dinner) that are already on the plan, and write down the calories on the tracker. 
• For monday I now see that I have 700 calories left for lunches and snacks, so I go to my list of lunches on the CK software and choose one that’s around 400 cals and drag that over to lunch. Then I go to my snacks list and choose a couple of 150cal snacks which will be easy to pack for work. I make sure to write them all on the paper tracker along with the calories. Then I do that for all the other days.

Note: The CK software lets you organised all your custom meals into folders, I use lunch, snacks etc. It makes it super easy to plan, once you get a good list of foods you eat regulary going. If you don’t use the software, you might want to keep paper lists to help you plan

If you have already been tracking your calories you probably have a lot of the foods/meals you eat often saved in your diary, so that will make it heaps quicker to start planning. If you don’t, you might want to just enter as you go every night for a few weeks, until you start building up a list to make it faster to plan?

You will find that once you have done this, writing a shopping list is much easier and you will save heaps at the supermarket because you will be wasting very little food. Also, because you’ve shopped for your plan you will be more likely to follow it because the food is right there and it will be easy!

How I track my calories

• So now my whole week is filled out in Black pen, with the calories already calculated. I stick the tracker on the fridge with a RED pen right next to it. (I made a pretty pen holder with a magnet J )
• Every evening, I grab my red pen and put a tick next to everything I’ve eaten, cross out anything I haven’t, and write in any unplanned eating. (This takes less than a minute)
• The more red writing there is the further off plan I’ve gone.
• I used to go back to the software at the end of the week and re-enter all the red stuff to see how different the cals were, but now I pretty much can do it all in my head and write the new totals.
• I write my exercise in red too.

I should mention that my personal system is pretty flexible, If I come home and I don’t feel like stirfry, I have an omelette instead and have the stirfry the night I was supposed to have the omelette. And if I unexpectedly stay at my boyfriend’s I just go with the flow and make the best choices I can. The plan is a guideline, not a rule!

Anyway, that is a lot of stuff to take in, I hope it was helpful to someone!