Food Journaling
I have been frustrated by the lack of weight loss over the past three weeks. Ginny Wright, the creator of the Total Wellness Challenge, has suggested multiple times that we use a food journal. I have avoided this because 1) It is an effort I don’t want to make 2) I think I eat healthy and have been limited and sacrificed foods I enjoy to try to lose weight – that should be enough and 3) I am afraid it will show me that I need to eat less or differently.
After losing about 1 pound in three weeks, I finally gave in and downloaded the My Fitness Pal App. I started using it yesterday, and found it to be easy to use and motivating! And, when I got on the scale this morning, I saw some results in just one day, so I am going to try to keep using this beyond the end of the Total Wellness Challenge this weekend. Some cool things about this app:
- You can enter in your current weight and your goal weight and deadline, and the app will tell you how many calories you need to/can eat every day to meet your goal.
- You can scan bar codes of any packaged food and it quickly pulls up all the nutrition information, making it easy to log what you are eating.
- You can keep track of your water intake.
- At the end of the day, you can see how many calories you have left unused or how much you went over. Yesterday, my first day, I did not eat enough calories and a message popped up telling me that, and also told me that if every day was like yesterday, I would weigh 121.9 lbs. in 5 weeks.
The Fail – Stretching and Mindfulness
I wish I could love stretching and meditating enough to savor it and look forward to it every day. I prefer to be “productive” and love my work, so I get caught up in it and don’t take breaks. I KNOW this is not good for me – I have vowed so many times to change my ways. It is a big challenge for me.
With only a few days left, I am glad I did the TWC and it wasn’t that difficult, either because I wasn’t strict enough, or because I have done it so many times before. I am hoping that using the My Fitness Pal app for the next few weeks will better help me accomplish my goal of losing a few pounds so my jeans fit better this fall and winter!
