Okay. So I let myself go a bit over the holidays. You know, just a bit. The way the Powerball jackpot was a bit large. Or the way Donald Trump is a bit orange. I can’t really explain it other than The Switch wasn’t only just off, it wasn’t even hooked up to any circuits.
I never left Onederland, but I did come close. In fact, closer than I have since I finally got back into Onederland nearly four years ago. I swore, I swore, I swore I wouldn’t squander that opportunity. I haven’t yet but I don’t ever want to come this close again.
The appetite suppressant I discovered worked for a short while but quickly wore off. This time, however, it would be different.
I made a trial run at Diet #117 just before New Year’s Eve. I officially kicked it off on the Number One Diet Day Ever: January First.
Ahhh, the new year. So magical. So wonderful. So imaginary.
So what am I doing different this time that I didn’t do the previous 116 times? Nothing. Better call Simba because this is just the Circle of Life playing itself out all over again. I’m simply trying to not eat everything that falls within a three foot radius of my body. And I’m trying to get up and move around as much as possible. In other words, the basics.
Although now that I think about it, I lied. I am doing one thing different. I’m logging my foods. This in and of itself is nothing new. I’ve been doing that quite regularly since 2008. No, what’s different this time is how I’m keeping track. I have been using LiveStrong’s MyPlate that entire time, but over the last couple years a certain dissatisfaction with the service has been growing. I’ll save the details for a future blog post, but suffice it to say I finally started looking elsewhere for help.
I looked at a number of popular services, but in the end the thought struck me: it’s just a list. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I can keep a list of data using almost any medium. That’s when I switched over to my old Etch-a-Sketch. Sure, those knobs can be a bit tricky. But once you get the hang of it, it’s not that bad.
Okay, you got me. I’m actually using Excel. I have one worksheet for my food log. Another for my food database. Other tabs for tracking exercise, weigh-ins, and other helpful reference data. I was worried at first, thinking that maintaining my own food database would be a horrid undertaking. As it turns out, it didn’t take any time at all to create seventeen entries for “Peanut Butter.”
Is it going to work long term? I’ll let you know when I write up my “Diet #118” blog post later this year.
on January 15, 2016 at 10:18 am
I had to laugh because I was thinking to myself “Charlie eats the same things over and over!” It would be impossible for me to use your chart because I eat so much different food.
Happy to report -3.8 for the first two weeks – it was a bit of a stumble at the beginning thinking “I am not having wine, well I can have this stack of Oreos.” Gah.
And I am happy you are getting some exercise in 😀 Love you!
on January 15, 2016 at 12:25 pm
I’m going to write in more detail later about food logging. Until, then, though: here are some stats: there are now 154 items in my food database. I’ve logged 241 entries (there are multiple entries per meal, obviously). Of those 241, 99 are unique. However, the number of truly “unique” items is even less. Like, two of those 99 are “Almond Milk” and three are different flavors of La Croix.
But yes, in the long run, my food database will be a lot smaller than most because I simply don’t eat a wide variety of things.
I’m down six pounds so far. I have yet to swap Oreos for wine. I haven’t hit my goal every single day but I’m WAY down from that October to December thing. By far.
on January 15, 2016 at 1:27 pm
Hey, whatever works Charlie!
Having lunch and a movie with Mom and Hannah tomorrow 😀