April Goals

I think it's time for me to set some short term goals for the month of April. I am seriously struggling here and am trying to figure out something that will help me to regain my focus. I simply can not stop eating for no reason!

I got on the scale this morning for my end of March weigh in (since I do my monthly weigh in's the 1st to the 1st). If I'm being completely honest (which I always am here), I was not happy with my scale this morning. A little backstory.....Saturday I ate a LOT; but I was totally fine with it. I was actually even pretty proud of myself because of how I dealt with dinner out. I had already decided that calories didn't necessarily matter to me on Saturday since I knew I was going to be way over. We found ourselves without kids so we went on a date to Cheesecake Factory. We did split an appetizer and split a piece of cheesecake, but a) we split a piece of cheesecake. In the past we would have probably gotten our own pieces. And b) when determining what to get for dinner I ended up getting something off their "skinnylicious" menu that was less than 500 calories for the entire meal. My dinner was still over 1800 calories (!!!); but, it could have actually been worse. We could have gotten a higher calorie appetizer; I could have gotten a much higher calorie meal; and I could have eaten an entire slice of cheesecake. So, I may have eaten a ton of calories on Saturday but I was still totally OK with it.

Last year I lost 14.5 lbs between Jan and March.
This year I lost 14.8 lbs and started at a lower weight
so I should be perfectly happy with these numbers...

I expected the scale to go way up on Sunday from the bloat, etc from eating so much Saturday. When I got on the scale Sunday morning I was surprised that it wasn't nearly as high as I thought it would be. I had every intention of keeping things totally in check yesterday to get right back on track but I just couldn't stop eating! Argh!!!!

Even with eating a ton again yesterday I still had a calorie deficit at the end of the day (about 560 calories). The only reason I even had a calorie deficit yesterday was because I ran 5 miles on the treadmill to start my day so I had a nice high calorie burn. I thought when I got on the scale this morning it might stay the same as yesterday. I didn't really think it would go down necessarily, but I absolutely didn't think it would go up another 1.2 pounds from yesterday 😠But it did. Ok, so my monthly weigh in wasn't as good as I hoped it would be, but I am still 4 pounds less today than I was on March 1st. And honestly I didn't gain 2.4 pounds of fat over the weekend so my body will bounce back.......but only if I can get back to it!

When I set the goal to track for 50 days in a row I said I wanted to average a 700 calorie deficit per day for the entire 50 days. I didn't get any more specific than that because I really thought that I could allow myself one (or even 2) high calorie days and 5 or 6 lower calorie days to average that deficit. In the 14 days that I have tracked thus far my average calorie deficit has only been 505 calories per day. However, if I simply take the last 2 Saturdays out of the equation I have averaged a calorie deficit of 707 calories per day. That tells me that I am not doing what I need to do to get that 700 calorie deficit when I allow myself to eat so much on Saturdays (especially since that's the one day a week I don't workout).

Enter April Goals or rather April Goal.........

My main goal for these next 30 days is to stay in my calorie range every day. This is honestly not that hard. My calorie range on my fitness pal is 1370 net calories. If I want to have that 700 calorie deficit on average I will need to eat less than 1370 net calories on at least a few days. If I stayed at 1370 net calories for the entire week my average deficit would be closer to 500. If you're wondering why I don't set it lower it's because on the 1 day a week I don't workout (usually Saturdays) I would have a very hard time keeping my calories that low so I don't want to set myself up for failure (again with those mental games I must play with myself). There is frankly no reason I should even eat all 1370 net calories on days that I burn a ton of calories. There was no reason I needed to eat the 2100+ calories I ate yesterday just because I burned almost 2700 calories that day. And even today; I didn't need to eat over 1700 calories just because I could. That continues to be a work in progress. But, if I shift my focus to just staying in the green on my fitness pal every day for the next 30 perhaps these guilty feelings will go away and I will stop eating for no reason. I swear the harder I am on myself about this stuff the worse it gets!

This post suddenly got much longer than I had anticipated (go figure). Today is day 1 of 30 and day 15 of 50. I am done eating for the day and have ended my day in the green on my fitness pal so day one is a success. Here's to 29 more days of success!