April goal #1 - avoiding McDonald's. It has now been 3 full months since I've eaten McDonald's. I'm still waiting for it to get easy. It's easier; but the fact that McDonald's is so close to my house makes it stay harder than I would like.
April goal #2 - NO wine. CHECK! I did not have one drop of wine this entire month and it honestly wasn't that hard. I was in a MOOD this weekend and really wanted to just chill out with a
April goal #3 - TRACK every day. Again, CHECK! I tracked my food every single day in April. There were certainly days that were more accurately tracked than others; but I tracked at least 90% of my food every day. I did not necessarily stay within my calorie goal, but that wasn't the goal.
April goal #4 - workout 6 days per week. I talked about this one already in one of my April blog posts. I still worked out 22 out of 30 days in April so it's not like I got lazy or something!
April goal #5 - the scale. You already know from this post that I got to get a kind of sneak peek at my weight last week when I had my doctor's appointment. But, the goal was to stay off MY scale and THAT I did! :) And when I got on the scale this morning is was 6.2 pounds LESS than it was on April 1st. Now, to be fair, it was "only" 4.6 lbs less than it was on March 31st because I obviously binged that night so that scale was up April 1st. 4.6 or 6.2 I don't really care. Down is down and I am beyond happy about that. I averaged 2,130 calories/day during the month of April. BUT, I averaged 1,139 NET calories. I guess there is something to these net calories after all. My calorie goal on MyFitnessPal is at 1,310 NET calories per day. That goal is supposed to give me a 1.5lb per week loss (on average). Obviously net calories aren't an exact science. If I actually only ate 1200 calories per day for a month I should have lost probably more than 2lbs per week throughout the month. However, all these devices and tools are obviously not going to be 100% accurate. The fact that I ate well over 2000 calories per day and still lost around 5 lbs in a month tells me that the net calories do mean something. So when I see those calories go over 2000 calories on a day when my Garmin says I've burned a lot, I can maybe trust the process more and not stress about eating too much.
Goal #1: Sigh.......continue to stay away from McDonald's. As my weight continues to drop I will start to feel like I can keep it under control; but I know from my past that isn't true. My hope is that if I keep this a goal long enough I'll get to the point where it doesn't have to be a goal because I just don't WANT it.
Goal #2: TRUST THE PROCESS. A mental goal of sorts. Really work on taking the stress out of losing weight. Do what I am supposed to do and trust that it will work. Stress and weight loss do not mix. If I can do as much as possible to remove the stress of losing weight from my life I may even notice more of a drop in my weight.
Goal #3: Track. I don't want to have this goal this month. I want to have days where I don't track. BUT, I am a numbers freak (which we have learned through the years) and there is something I love about being able to look at what I did over the month to get the outcome that I got. So, the goal is to continue to track so that I can continue to be armed with knowledge.
Goal #4: Eat a little less. Last month the goal was just to track my food and not worry about if my calories were saying in my goal range. This month I'm going to kick it up one little notch. My goal is to keep MFP calories in the green (or at 0 to break even) 5 out of 7 days a week. I'm giving myself 2 days a week to be in the red because there are 2 days a week I have planned rest days. Eating 1,310 calories a day is hard for me so I want to give myself the (mental) freedom to not feel guilty those days I don't earn extra calories, but still eat 1600 or even 1800 calories. In April I had 13 days in the red. So, the goal for May is to have no more than 8 days in the red.
Goal #5: The scale.....hmmmmm....I am so torn on this one. I was thinking that when I stayed off the scale in Feb and April I lost more weight than between March and April; but that's actually not true. However, looking at my weight in March when I was weighing myself sporadically, I see that it was down and then up and down a little but not to the lowest it had it, then up again. Ugh. I made the decision to get off the scale in April because I was feeling like I wasn't losing weight while I was weighing myself. For May I was thinking either STAY OFF THE SCALE again or, weigh myself ONCE A WEEK on MONDAY mornings only and deal with whatever the number is. I think I know what you all would say if I asked your opinion. June 1st won't work as my next weigh in though because I won't be home so no access to my scale. So, I will stay off the scale until May 31st. There. I said it. Ugh....now to torture myself again for another 30 days!
You'll notice that I didn't put anything about wine for the month of May. More importantly though I want to focus on keeping my calories more in check. I can't do that if I'm drinking wine to excess every single weekend. But, it will give me the freedom to enjoy my wine on evenings when I've had a long run. Or, to celebrate finishing my first half marathon after a 5 year hiatus!
Can you even believe we're in half marathon month?!?!? But that's a whole different subject!
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