Time to Get Serious

January is over and although my activity was on point and I FELT like my eating was pretty darn good; it wasn't where it needed to be. I went into January with the idea that I would track my food and exercise on MyFitnessPal and as long as my calories stayed in my range I was good to go. The problem with this was that I was burning so many calories it was EASY to fit unhealthy food into those calorie ranges. I mean, there was at least one day where I ate over 3,000 calories and still had several hundred I "could" have eaten.

Breakfast 

Most days I would say I ate between 1900 and 2500 calories. But, I don't necessarily think it was the calories so much as where they were coming from. I was eating a LOT of fast food during the month of January. I was steadily losing weight between January 4th (when I started) and January 13th when I hit my lowest weight on the month. By Jan 13th I was down 6.6 pounds. Starting on Jan 14th my weight started going in the other direction. Looking at my food diary I am still a little frustrated because there were plenty of days when I had over 1,000 calories "remaining" according to MFP. But, I don't think I ever ate less than 1900 calories on any given day; so it wasn't like I wasn't eating enough. I often like to try to convince myself I'm not eating enough, but I think that would only be true if I were eating less than 1200 calories.

I was quite upset last Friday when the scale was up over 2lbs from the previous Friday. I was literally in tears to my friend and decided at that point something had to change. I made the decision to challenge myself with 2 very important things for February.

Lunch. I just LOVE the avocado, bacon, turkey roll-ups

GOAL #1 = NO WINE

GOAL #2 = NO MCDONALD'S

I am not yet making the decision to go completely fast food-free, because it really is McDonald's that is the trigger for me. I significantly cut my wine intake in January so that shouldn't be as big of a deal. But, in a month of trying to lose weight I still ended up eating McDonald's TEN TIMES!!!! Not OK.

After doing that soul searching and making that decision I started thinking more about what I can change. For February my two main focuses will be on the above goals. However, I also decided that I am going to try to keep my calories between 1500 and 2000 every day; regardless of how many calories I burn. Well, not regardless. Basically on days I burn lots of calories I can eat up to 2000 if I feel the need and on days that I don't burn as many calories I want to try to stay closer to the 1500 mark.

Dinner - Beef Stew

I was also re-reading a lot of my posts from when I did the Whole30 back in 2014. There were plenty of things I ate during those 30 days that I really enjoyed. I KNOW that if I focus more on whole foods to fill up those 1500 calories I'll have an easier time staying in that range.

Today was a pretty good day. I ended my calories right around 1600 and ate all whole food today. I was definitely hungry today so that kind of sucked; but I dealt.

YUMMY snack!

I do enjoy healthy food. I like eating turkey with bacon and avocado with veggies as a side. I enjoy the raspberries with walnuts as a snack. My breakfast wasn't anything that made me feel deprived. I mean, I had a sausage patty, over-hard egg and a slice of cheese! So why don't I eat like this all the time? WHY do I want to be able to eat crap on a daily basis? It really doesn't make much sense.

For now the journey continues. We'll see how February goes with these new goals put into play. Oh, and in case you're wondering; after being down 6.6 lbs at the start of the month I ended up weighing in this morning UP from Jan 1st! ARGH! But, to be fair, I ate and drank last night knowing that I was going to be more strict with myself this month. I'm guessing that water weight will come off pretty quickly. Hopefully February is a better month for my weight loss!