Schwoo...

Sorry guys, I'm really trying to be a good blogger, I just have a hard time making myself post on a semi-consistent posting. Y'all need to start poking me or something, seriously.

Anyway, the past week has been pretty good for me as far as my diet goes. I've avoided temptation and stuck to my guns, even when I baked green chocolate chip cookies for St. Patrick's day last weekend and only had two.

On a funny note, when I first tried to type "good" in that previous sentence I accidentally typed "food" instead and made myself LOL.

For the past few months I haven't concentrated so much on losing weight as I have maintaining it, especially over the holidays. I wanted to see what would happen if I relaxed my vigilance just ever-so-slightly. Would I blow up like a puffer fish? Thankfully the answer is no, even with all the delightful treats to be had over Thanksgiving and Christmas, but now it's time for me to jump back on the bandwagon. I've set a goal to lose 40 pounds by the time summer rolls around, and I hope you'll join me (if you feel led to do so) in setting your own goal, no matter how big or small. =)

When I'm trying to lose weight, I focus my attention heavily on my eating habits. For a while I used a FANTASTIC app on my phone called MyFitnessPal that allowed me to track calories in vs. calories out. The app has a huge database of foods, even from restaurants, and I found this enormously helpful when planning my meals because apparently I really had no idea the kind of stuff I was putting in my mouth. I quickly learned to look up what I wanted to order before I ordered because there were times that the calorie count in what I had just purchased was so outrageous that I couldn't stand to eat it. I would log absolutely everything I ate and it really helped me develop a good sense of how many calories are in most of the foods I eat. Nowadays I don't use it as religiously as I did before, but I do refer to it occasionally to look up something new and I highly recommend it to anyone that is just starting out, but take heed!: you will be amazed, shocked, and probably a little repulsed by some of your favorite foods.

I always try to make my calories count. What that means is, if I'm willing to eat something that is horribly fattening and totally off my diet, you can be damn sure that it's going to be something effing delicious and not some crappy piece of whatever. Hostess cupcakes might be good, but a cupcake from Sprinkles is so much better, and if I'm going to eat one I'm going to eat the best one I can get. It's like spending your money: if you had $500 and wanted to buy a new purse you wouldn't spend it on one from Wal-mart, now would you? Heck no, you'd be headed to Coach.

Planning ahead is also something I try to do, whenever possible. If my girlfriends call me up and want to go out to eat one night I'm not going to deprive myself by not going with them, but I am going to be sure that I behave myself as much as possible in the days leading up to our night out and in the days after. Personally, this way of thinking enables me to go out and enjoy myself without feeling guilty. I will still try to make better food choices while I'm out, perhaps swapping a starchy, fatty side for some steamed vegetables, but I won't completely limit myself either. If I want two breadsticks at Olive Garden with my soup instead of one then damnit, I'm going to have two!

It becomes more difficult to plan ahead on the days I work because the hotel I'm employed at feeds us lunch or dinner, depending on our shift, and I never have any warning about what they're going to be serving. Somedays it's actually quite healthy, like grilled fish with veggies and salad, and on some days it's not so healthy, like nacho night (which is quite popular, go figure), so I have to really watch my food choices carefully in case it's something that I would consider to be off-diet. For example, before work today I had Subway for lunch instead of Chic-fil-a, because there's a good chance that what we have for dinner tonight at work would put me over my calorie limit if I had eaten chicken nuggets, and no one wants that.

And at the end of the day, to reward myself for good choices made and temptation avoided, there's a tiny Weight Watchers Ice Cream Sandwich waiting for me in my freezer at home, my treat to myself before bed time.