Changing Course (Again)

I hate tracking calories.

I hate searching for foods, logging every single thing I eat, and annoying my husband when we go out to eat by spending twenty minutes trying to make sure I've included everything from my meal in my tracker. And I especially hate that the entire process, even though it seems to work in the short term, never seems to be a long-term solution for me, because I get tired of it so easily.

But, my sister-in-law has been using the My Fitness Pal app for months, now, and she looks fantastic. And my mother-in-law has started to use it, too. So has my father-in-law. And so has Steve.

(And here's where I admit that I am a competitive and vain individual. All of the family has jumped on the weight loss wagon because my brother-in-law is getting married in June. And I'll be damned if I'M going to be the family member that ruins the pictures, ok?)

So, in the last two months, I've tried logging calories and activity through my Fitbit, only to be derailed by my typical calorie counting complaints. I've tried restarting the C25K running program, but I've been knocked off course by a nagging ankle injury I got falling down the stairs on Christmas Eve. I tried to go with the strict no carb diet that helped me with my first pregnancy weight-loss, but I'm just not seeing the changes I feel like I should be seeing (Mostly, I think, because I'm eating waaaaay too many almonds for my own good. They're a healthy snack, when you're not eating a thousand calories worth of them a day. Go figure.)

So, I'm back to tracking calories. The key benefit on this app, though, is the food scanning feature, where scanning the barcode with my phone automatically uploads the calorie content/nutritional information, and that doesn't seem nearly as tiresome as manually looking up every little thing I want to eat. I'm hoping that this will provide even MY lazy dieting self with enough convenience to make the process stick this time.

Only time will tell, I guess...
Week nine weigh-in Weight, as of 1/7/13 (initial BBL weigh-in): 175lbs Weight as of 3/11/13: 162lbs Weight lost: 2.5lbs over the past 2 weeks, 13lbs overall  

And just so it doesn't seem like I'm ALL doom and gloom on this weight loss process, today was the first day I've actually started to feel a little more like myself again, like I CAN see a change in things from where I've started. I know I've eaten well for the last week. I know I've been able to squeeze in some physical activity for at least a few minutes every day for the last few days. I know that what I'm doing, it's working.

 

It's working slowly, but it's working.