Your Ideal Form

Helping you on your journey to your best self!

Not Tracking EVERYTHING is a Mistake

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Not Tracking Everything is a Mistake

So you’ve picked out a new eating plan, and have been following this new regimen for awhile, but the scale isn’t moving, and you aren’t seeing any progress. One common mistake is forgetting to track EVERYTHING.

Please, don’t be scared off thinking that all this tracking is hard or will take a lot of time. It really doesn’t. Nutrition tracking apps have huge databases that make inputting your meal easy. Many even have barcode scanner so you can just scan something to log it. And once you have logged a food, it can be stored for future reference, making it even easier to track as you go along. The SparkPeople app even lets you copy entire meals from a previous day to another. Build this into a habit. Make it into a game to see how long of a streak you can keep up. I once managed to go over 100 days straight of logging my meals; see if you can beat that!

If you are on a diet that tracks intake, such as counting calories, macros, Weight Watchers Points or 21-Day Fix containers, you have to track everything*. The key is, that when you track everything, you will have an accurate picture of your heating habits. This can help if you’ve hit a plateau. Tracking can also reveal patterns in your habits, or “weaknesses” you have for certain foods. At one point, I found myself snacking on peanut butter far too much, so I stopped buying it.

The trickiest part about tracking is to not cheat yourself. Don’t fail to track something on purpose just because you think you “shouldn’t” have eaten it. Also, don’t fail to track small bites here or there that you’ve taken of something. A small spoon of peanut butter is 100 calories or more. (And I was having heaping spoons when I would snack.) Small handfuls of nuts are also high in calories and should be tracked. Those little bites can add up quickly!

You also want to get into the habit of tracking even on days you don’t care, such as special occasions or cheat days. It is so important to have all the information. For awhile, I didn’t track on my cheat days, although I was religious about doing so on other days. Then I started tracking my off days and realized that my deficit during the week wasn’t enough to make up for all that I was eating that one day during the weekend. I adjusted my intake, and the pounds came off steadily after that.

Remember, a food log is just data. Data doesn’t judge. And your body will keep an accurate record of what you’ve eaten, whether you write it down or not. So get into the habit of tracking your food; having that data can help you make informed decisions to help you reach your goals!

*If you’d rather be on a diet that doesn’t require tracking, check out my free Ultimate 13-Diet Comparison Guide to find one that might suit you better!

If You Want It, Fight For It

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Sitting on your butt, pissed off and bitter about your life isn't going to change anything. You have to get up, get out, and make change happen. If you want it, you have to fight for it.

Life isn’t fair. And that sucks. But no amount of complaining is going to fix things. There are people who are actively working to change the system for the better, but that could take years. In the meantime, you have to do the best you can with what you have right now. What can you do to get you closer to your goals? What decisions can you make, what small steps can you take? There are a lot of potential roadblocks out there, but for each one, there is a detour that will get you around the obstacle in your path and back on track. Ask yourself what you can do that is within your control that helps you move in the right direction. Drink a glass of water. Take a walk around the block. Go to bed earlier.

Sitting on your butt, pissed off and bitter about your life isn’t going to change anything. You have to get up, get out, and make change happen. If you want it, you have to fight for it.

Relying Solely on the Scale is a Mistake

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Weight Loss Graph
We wish our weight loss progressed like the graph on the left, but more often it looks more like the one on the right!

 

So you’ve calculated your TDEE, picked out a diet plan, did some planning, took some “before” photos, and prepped your meals for the week. You go out for a walk every day and hit the step goal on your fitness tracker. You are feeling pumped about this new journey you have embarked on. And then, at the end of the week, you step on the scale, (making sure to do so correctly) and… ugh. It hasn’t budged. It can be easy to get discouraged, but please, don’t lose hope! Here’s why the scale might not be reflecting progress, and other tactics you try instead to track your progress.

Weight loss is rarely linear

As much as we would like the graph of our weight loss to be a nice, gently sloping curve, more often than not, it has spikes and twists and turns in it. This is normal. You will have periods where you feel like you are doing everything right, but the scale just does not move. And just when you’re about to give up, you’ll have a huge “woosh”, and appear to lose many pounds in a short period of time. The trick to getting to that “woosh”, however, is to not give up!

You may be retaining water

One reason for the scale not moving may be water retention. A big meal, or a salty one, can cause your body to channel fluid to your stomach rather than your bladder. If you are on your period, you may have some bloating. Even a tough workout can send water to your muscles to help with recovery. If this is the case, your only recourse is to be patient, wait it out, and let your body return to normal.

You may be building muscle

If your new fitness regimen includes lifting weights, you could be putting on some muscle (ah, those newbie gainz!). So while you may be burning off some of that stubborn body fat, the muscle you are putting on might make it look like you’ve made no progress on the scale. Be patient, because you are going to look fantastic!

You may be in a plateau

It is a somewhat inevitable occurrence in a weight loss journey: the dreaded plateau. As you lose weight, your body simply needs fewer calories to sustain you. And so, some adjustments need to be made. Shaking up your routine a bit can help get you out of a rut if you are stuck.

So now we know why the scale might be stuck. Let’s look at what you can do instead to keep pumped about your progress. Try one of these tactics:

Try comparing photos

This is when those “before” pictures you took really come in handy. Take some new pictures to compare yourself to. We don’t really register the teeny tiny changes that happen every day, but compare yourself to a picture from even a month ago, and you’ll see some big changes.

Try tape

Taking measurements with measuring tape is also a good way to measure your progress. Sometimes the scale won’t move, but you’ll see that you’ve dropped inches from here or there. I like to measure myself using tape about once a month.

Try on old clothes

If you don’t have measuring tape, you can use an old pair of jeans as your yardstick. Try on some old clothes that you haven’t worn in awhile. How do they fit? This can be especially eye opening when putting on clothes from your summer wardrobe after a long winter!

Try a body scan

If you want the best data available on how you are truly progressing, then getting a body scan is the way to go. Unfortunately, they can be expensive, but you can check to see if your insurance will cover it. Do a Google search for “body scan” + your city, and you can find clinics in your area that offer the service.

How do you feel?

I’m a big fan of tracking progress with cold, hard numbers, but there is much to be said for stepping back from all of that and just reflecting on how you feel. Are you more energetic? Do you feel “lighter”, either physically or mentally? Is your face clearer?

There are so many more ways to measure your progress aside from the scale, so don’t let your least favorite appliance bring you down!

Love Yourself

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Love yourself enough to live a healthy lifestyle.

Do you love yourself? REALLY love yourself? It can be difficult for many people to answer “yes” to that question. Women, especially, are rarely taught to love their bodies. Take too much time with your hair and make-up, and you’re called high maintenance. Don’t, and you’re considered a slob. If your boobs are too big, you need to cover them up; too small, and you need implants. And if someone pays you a compliment, the correct response is always to deny it, because if you respond with a “thank you”, you’re now considered too vain.

But I want you to love yourself. Your body is capable of some AMAZING things. Admire that! If there are things you genuinely don’t like about yourself, ask what steps you can take to make a change. Make sure you are not so busy taking care of others, that you forget to make time to take care of yourself. Those that love you most want to see you around for many years to come!

Love yourself enough to live a healthy lifestyle.

“Going on a Diet” is a Mistake

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Going on a Diet

While changing your eating habits is the best thing you can do if losing weight is your goal, there’s a difference between “diet” as in changing how you eat, and “going on a diet”.

“Going on a diet” tends to foster the mentality of a quick, temporary solution. You’ll go on this diet, and once you hit your goal weight, you can go back to eating “normally” again. But losing weight is a long, slow process. You have to play the long game. And weight loss is definitely a mental game. While you might have a certain event in mind you want to lose weight for, you also want to be as healthy as you can be for the rest of your life. You have to define a new “normal”. If you simply go back to your previous eating habits after hitting your goal, you’ll gain the weight back, and end up where you started.

This “quick fix” mentality tends to also foster impatience. Many diets make claims about how quickly you can lose weight that are nearly impossible to emulate. So you try it, don’t see the results as quickly as you’d like, and so you figure it’s not working, and switch to something else. The process takes time, and you also have to give it time to work.

Not all diets are good for you. You can still end up overeating on some diets. Usually, this is by not sticking to them strictly. But just because a food is “healthy” doesn’t mean you can eat as much of it as you want. For example, if you go on a Paleo diet, you should be eating lots of vegetables. But too often, people cut out some starches, and say “I can have as much bacon as I want!” That’s not good for your cholesterol. Fruit is chock-full of healthy micronutrients, but it also has a lot of sugar and tends to be calorically dense.

The key to making a diet work for you is to only make changes you can stick with for life. Remember, reaching your goal and going back to your previous habits will put you right back where you started. Think of this as a life long process to keep good health. You are not just losing weight, but keeping it off. And if you want those permanent results, you will have to make permanent changes.

All that said, following a traditional “diet” can help you get started with your weight loss journey. It serves as a road map telling you where to go and where not to tread. For help on deciding what sort of diet is right for you, check out my free Ultimate 13-Diet Comparison Guide.

Don’t Become Your Own Obstacle

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There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don't allow yourself to become one of them.

Losing weight is not easy. There are plenty of external forces working against you. Media constantly barraging you with ads saying that you need to consumer more. A well-meaning, but uninformed relative or parent who worries that you’re not eating enough and insists you have seconds. A jealous coworker that makes snide remarks and tries to sabotage your efforts. A significant other that is concerned that if you change your lifestyle you may decide that you no longer want to be with them.

With all that going on, be sure you don’t make things even harder on yourself with the things you can control. If snacks in the house are your weakness, don’t buy them in the first place. If certain situations cause you to get off track, do what you can to avoid them. If you keep staying up too late and then skipping your workout in the morning because you’re so tired, set up a routine to get you to bed on time.

There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.