Things about weight loss.

Things I know about weight loss:

1.  I will lose weight more quickly, more steadily, and less painfully if I record my numbers. I have tried for the last 6 months to lose weight, but I do well for 1-2 weeks (sometimes 1-2 days), and then I lose one or two pounds, and decide I can back off. Or, it gets hard or I get very hungry and I just eat. If I record things, results will happen, and less drawn-out and painfully. It really is crap to try hard for 1-2 weeks and go through all the pain of starting to try to change habits/eat less, and then kill it with 2-3 overeating days.

2. My weight gain/loss is 95% correlated to how much I bake, and even more so, how much of the baked goods (especially the batter/dough) I eat. If I allow myself "just a little taste" or "oh but that would taste so so good," it will be minimum 2 cookies/mini-muffins later, and maximum 8 or 9. Best to just tell myself DON'T EVEN HAVE A TASTE, NOT EVEN TO LICK THE BATTER OR MY FINGER. I do bake several times a week for the kids right now, but I don't let myself taste it, and, I try to do it when I'm not very hungry (i.e., DON'T bake from 2-6 pm).

3. Lunch is never enough. Period. 

4. Try eating something shortly before dinner (that isn't crackers or crap food...maybe an apple or a banana). It helps me not come to the table famished.

5. After-dinner hours can be very tough. Chewing gum is helpful, having someone to check in with is helpful (for me it's Ryan), and sometimes, sometimes just going to bed is helpful, sometimes just giving in a little to that temptation to eat some crap food is helpful. 

6. It's OK to say to myself, "This doesn't fit into my food plans for today, even though it looks great." I am in charge, not my cravings or "wow that looks sooo good" or "I love cake batter and cookie dough so very much, I'll just have some" cravings.

7. Record every day.
- Calories taken in.
- Calories/servings per meal.
- What the meal/parts were.
- Can even do fat/protein/carb breakdown (should be 25/15/60% of total calories, with less than 10% of all fat coming from saturated fat)
- Record weight every day that I weigh myself (which is on workout days, after I have showered, and as long as I haven't eaten before I weigh myself).

8. Find BMR. Mine currently is 1367. If I don't eat over 1300 each day, and I work out 4x/week and burn about 300 calories (1200 calories total), it will take me apps. 3 weeks to lose 1 pound)

And so, here begins my recording. I think I'll try doing this a week at a time.