Trickery

In my last post I discussed my April goals. I put together some pretty good goals for April (I thought). But I also thought that putting together those goals might bleed into other areas as well. Here's exactly what I said:

"I'm not even trying to be "perfect" and stay within my calories every day. I am simply challenging myself with tracking every day. I know that if I'm tracking every day the chances that I will go over my calories is lower than if I'm not tracking. "

That statement still holds true. The goal is NOT to be perfect, but to track what I am eating every day regardless of what that may be. But man, I really thought putting that particular goal out there would trick me into actually staying within my calorie range the entire month. It's stupid, really. If I really wanted to challenge myself to stay within my calorie range all month than that is what I should put out there. 

Also, I didn't talk about the fact that I made a change with my tracker, which would make the challenge of "staying within my calorie range" even more challenging. I used to have my Garmin and my tracker "communicating". I have the Garmin Vivosmart HR+ and I LOVE it. I wear it 24/7 and pretty much only take it off when I have to charge it. It calculates my calorie burn throughout the day regardless of the activity I do. On days when I don't do any exercise (like the Monday I had my infusion) it tells me I burn around 2300. When I fill in the information on MFP or Sparkpeople or any other calculator you can find online I usually get around the same number of calories burned in a day based on my height and weight so I trust that my Garmin is fairly accurate (as accurate as any of these trackers can be). 

On days I workout that calorie burn goes significantly higher. On days I run my end of the day calorie burn is higher than days I do other workouts - even if the calorie burn during the workout was similar. Interesting to me. I believe that I DO continue to burn more calories, even at rest, on the days I run than the other days. I ran on Sunday, only 3 miles, ended up covering over 5 miles that day with my other steps and my calorie burn at the end of the day was 3383. When I had Garmin and MFP communicating those 1378 active calories would be added to my calorie allotment for the day. So, if I had my "net" calories set to 1300 (which I did), it would mean I could eat up to 2678 and still be considered in range. 

Towards the end of March I decided that I needed to be even more strict with my calorie deficit and the way I should do this is to disconnect MFP and Garmin. I would only enter the calories burned during a specific workout (which is nothing compared to what my Garmin says I've burned by the end of any given day). I upped my "net calories" allowed because I knew that I pretty much never ate only 1300 calories. I didn't want to see RED numbers the one day a week I didn't workout; or even the days that I didn't burn many calories in my workout. Anyway, I set my new number to lose 1lb per week (still totally fine with me) and that put me at 1560 calories/day. Of course April not only starts on a Saturday, but the ONE day a week that I rest. I knew keeping my calories even below 2000 on a Saturday would not be easy, but I didn't let it bother me since I knew my goal was to just track everything. Saturday I ended at 1626 calories. My Garmin had my calorie burn at 2165 (yea, I take my rest days seriously! LOL). MFP has my "base" calorie burn at 2350 so it wouldn't have given me any extra calories on Saturday so I would have gone over regardless. 

The picture on the right shows a day with a long run. Not only did I have a 9.5 mile run to start that day, but I had a busy day and did not do a TON of sitting for the rest of the day. I ended the day having taken over 24,000 steps. I ate probably 3,000 calories that day,  but was still 2,000 calories under my max goal. Now; I don't really believe that if I ate 5,000 calories that day that I would still be losing weight. BUT, I do believe and know that I need to consumer more calories when I burn that many in a day. 

This is a long post to basically say that my plan of trying to trick myself into eating less calories has completely back-fired. I have eaten WELL over 2,000 calories for the last 3 days straight. And it doesn't frankly matter if my Garmin and tracker were communicating or not. I don't want to eat more than 2000 calories more than twice a week. And, frankly, that's only if I'm doing a good job at staying around 1500 calories the rest of the days. It's just interesting that when I try to put a little more pressure on myself I go so far in the other direction. This is nothing new. I wrote this post back in 2013 about sabotage. I was basically talking about how as soon as I started stressing about losing weight I started gaining. It is 4 years later and I'm STILL doing this to myself. 

I know partially why this is happening this week, but this is the worst string of high calorie days I have had since January. It needs to stop now. I'm not weighing myself so I can't see what damage I'm doing, but I can feel it today. I feel like my belly is more bloated than it's been. Tomorrow is a new day. It is NOT about perfection; it is about persistence. I will continue to meet my April goals. I will not stress about high calorie days and I will get back to my lower calorie days. And perhaps I will re-link my Garmin and my tracker.......