Game (back) ON!

Remember that scene in Wayne's World where they were playing hockey in the street and every time a car came by they would yell game off and then when it was clear, GAME ON?!?! Yea, I know I just dated myself but you all know how old I am anyway. Regardless, when I was thinking about this blog post I kept thinking of this scene in this movie. I keep saying to myself "GAME ON" in the same way Wayne and Garth say it when they go back to playing hockey. 

After an entire summer of me saying "Game Off"; I am saying GAME ON starting today! I have allowed myself a summer of pretty much complete freedom and I am absolutely happy with how that turned out. I already touched on that in my last post; but I am really proud of how I have changed from my all or nothing thinking.

Since my last blog post I have continued to workout 4-6 days per week (6 most weeks). I have worked out pretty much just as hard at LL as I did before I broke my wrist; I just have had to make some modifications. And sometimes those modifications made it even harder (i.e. one handed planks!), but I did it. The support I have gotten from everyone at LL is amazing. People were surprised that I was still showing up with a cast on my wrist. Just like I said in my last post though, my food choices have been less than stellar this summer. However, I have succeeded in my goal of keeping my weight under 200 while I'm trying to get my mojo back. This has everything to do with the fact that I had not been thinking all or nothing. I still worked out hard 6 days per week even though I wasn't eating well. I never once thought that I should skip a workout because I'm just "wasting it" anyway (something I used to often think). I'm realizing it's never a waste because it allows me to get away with eating/drinking the way I did without as much of a negative consequence.

 I'm not sure if my mojo is officially back, but I'm going to force the issue and find it. I am happy with how I handled my summer in that I didn't gain back more than about 5-7 pounds from my lowest weight this year. But, it's now time to get back to business. I still have a long way to go to get to where I want to be and as much as I'm clearly in no rush to get there, I don't want to be going backwards anymore. There are plenty of things I see that I want to continue to improve upon and it's time to start moving in the right direction again.

Not at my original "goal weight" 185lbs,
but in a size large dress - I'll take it! 

How do I plan to get myself back into the game? Well, I did cancel my WW subscription back in July after I broke my wrist. I wasn't really tracking anymore anyway and I never intended to continue WW indefinitely. The plan all along with WW was to do it for a short period of time and to double track so that I could see in terms of calories what I was eating in order to lose weight. I had that absolutely amazing month of April when I was on track all but 1 day and I double tracked that entire month so I can now look back in MFP to see what I ate when I lost around 15 pounds in one month.

So the plan this month is to get back to tracking everything I eat. I actually am trying yet another way of tracking on MFP. Rather than setting a certain calorie goal I actually just set my tracker to maintain my weight. I feel like this is a great way to stay positive and always feel like I'm being successful. Playing mind games with myself during this journey is very important! I still have my Garmin synced to MFP so I will automatically get more calories I can eat if/when I workout.

In addition to tracking everything I eat again, the goal is to have at least 500 calories remaining every day. This will ensure that I have at least a 500 calorie deficit every day. Part of what I like about the way I'm going to track this time is that the number of calories I'm eating each day could vary greatly and that's OK. I'm not going to fret about having eaten 2000 calories. If I burned 2500 or more (which I usually do) throughout the day, than eating 2000 still fits within my goals for this month. If I have 500 (or more) calories remaining each day this month I should see a nice loss at the end of the month - not 15 pounds, but that's OK! If I can consistently lose 5 pounds for the next 3 months I will be pretty darn close to my lowest weight since before I got pregnant with Robbie (in 2005).

Between Sept 2015 and mid-Dec 2015 I lost 16.6 pounds by losing just around 5lbs each month. During that time I was tracking my food 4-5 days per week and not tracking 2-3 days per week. On the days I tracked I tried to keep my calorie deficit close to 1000 calories so that it could make up for where I might be when I wasn't tracking. This resulted in about 5 pounds each month. I have to think that if I focus on having "only" a 500 calorie deficit every day it'll figure out to be the same. It also won't be perfect. There will likely be days when I have a more than 1000 calorie deficit and days when I have almost no deficit. For example, my deficit right now today is at 1088 and I'm probably just going to have an 80 calorie enlightened ice cream bar tonight and be done eating on the day.

Right now I'm just looking at September. I didn't start this until today so it is already the 4th, but I think if I focus on the 500 calorie deficit every day for the rest of this month I'll see a good loss. I just have to think that if the scale has yo-yo'd the same 5-7 pounds for the past 3 months that it'll definitely start going down with a little consistency in my eating. We shall see......

Starting weight on September 1st = 196.2.
GOAL weight for September 29th = 191.2

Next official weigh in will be September 8th. I ate/drank a LOT on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd (LOL) so I'm not sure if I'll see much of a loss in this first week but that's OK. I think it'll be fun to have official weigh-in's each Saturday of this month.