Sunday, February 9, 2014

Updating is not my strong point...

...as evidenced by my lack of posting here.  But I do think that this is the best place to chronicle my experiments.

So has been 2 years since I started this whole thing and in that time I have lost a little weight and gained a valuable exercise habit.  I have tried several things and because I haven't really been documenting the journey I have no real clue what works and what doesn't work.

I did discover that I am pretty good at maintaining my weight.  From July 2013 to December 2013 I was between 180-182 lbs without counting calories or being consistent with my exercise.  I was only exercising 2 times/week on average.  I got a Fitbit for Christmas and based on the FitBit and MFP I tend to eat at my maintenance calories almost intuitively.  However...I have gained 4-5 lbs since Christmas.  There are a few things that could be the cause - I kind of went crazy with the cookies, cookie dough, and pound cake around Christmas.  I have been very consistent with heavy weightlifting since January 8th  and with that comes a bit of water weight as evidenced by my previous freak out..  I stopped taking the iodine/selenium/vitamin C combination a couple of weeks ago for fear that it was causing me to hold onto weight...I am up 2 lbs since then.  My Fit Bit may not be accurate and using those numbers as the basis of my caloric intake is causing weight gain or no weight loss.

Ultimately I would love to not be concerned about the number on the scale, but I definitely don't want to see it go up.  It took me 1.5 years to get to the 180 lb point.  I think it is best for me to let the scale go completely because I know that when I see the 170's I tend to lose my mind and eat everything in sight then end up back in the 180s just maintaining.  I know that I really need to experiment with what works. and I need to document those experiments!!! For the next 6 months I will work on changing 1-2 things at a time and see how they affect my weight, my measurements and my photos. I will document here at least every 2 weeks.

Not taking the iodine does not appear to help (gained since I stopped) so for the next 2 weeks I will resume taking it everyday.  I will also work on  having one low carb meal per day.  I need to figure out if I am going to track in MFP...I know that tracking is not something I want to do long term and I know that I can maintain without tracking so I think I will try not tracking for a while but keep up with the consistent exercising (4-5 times/week).

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