This morning I weighed in at 72.2. That is unacceptable, and will stop now.

I am goving myself a challenge, a smaller one this time, one that I can acheive. I will not eat any crap this week, and I will track my calories every day.

So today, so far so good :)  I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow!

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,   
  •  
    • 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!

I have had enough! I am now fairly conviced that implanon is blocking my weightloss, so I have made and appointment to have it out on monday. will be very interesting to see if the weight comes off quickly after that!

Another week has gone and I have not lost weight, even though I did plenty of exercise and though i ate well. That’s three in a row!

I have another red mark on my 100 day challenge chart - it was Valentine’s day and K bought chips to take on a picnic in the park.

So - have I really been as good as I think? I must admit, while I’m still writing everything down, I haven’t beed adding calories. So this week, I will plan and work out all my calories for the week, and see what happens.

I feel pretty bad today. Despite having a pretty good week (although a baddish weekend) the scales are not budging. I know I shouldn’t weigh every morning, but with all this water weight on I keep hoping it will magically dissapear overnight. At least - I THINK it’s water weight. I really, really hope it is. Besides, I just FEEL bloaty.

On sunday (yesterday) I went to the pub with K and some of his friends, and couldn’t resist the hot chips on the table. Bummer. But, instead of calling fail on the 100 day challenge, i have marked it in red on the 100 day chart and will carry on. If I can get through the entire 100 days with only a few red marks, I will consider it a success. Red marks on a work day would probably be a big fail though!

I am still bummed about this week’s gain, but I am now fairly convinced I can blame it on PMS.

I gained 0.2kgs. WHY? WHY? It’s so not fair!! I was good, apart from the chinese restaurant friday night nad the popcorn twice this week, but that’s not so bad right? And I exercised HEAPS!! I so deserved a loss, andit just didn’t happen.

I am having my first slightly heavy TOM since I got my implanon in, so that might explain it. I’m still annoyed though.

I am an exercising machine this week! I have finaly realised that it is not enough to substitute riding to work for my regular workouts. The ride just isn’t far enough, and I don’t ride fast enough. So I have to do both and treat the ride as a bonus.

This week I have riden into work twice, done two runs, a weights workout and a step class. I feel good, I had forgotten how good that exercise buzz is!

I lost nothing last week! Nada, nought, zip. I don’t really understand why. I mean yes, I had an over-calories day on Tuesday, but the rest of the week should have made up for it.

I’m starting to feel concerned that my contraceptive implant is blocking my efforts to lose weight. I am doubling my exercise this week, I will see how that goes.

The 100 day challenge is still going fantastically, day 15 and no chips, chocolate, lollies or fast food.

There’s green jelly lollies in the lolly jar today and I WANT one! I want it really bad. But that would break the 100 day challenge and so I will not. Dammit.