Weekly Meeting Topic: Tracking

And not just tracking the usual - food and exercise - but at our meeting we brainstormed other things we could track.

Emotions, hunger, energy levels...

Honestly, I have a hard enough time remembering to track my food and exercise every week! I definitely don't want to make a commitment to tracking other things as well! We also talked about using different colored pens or highlighters - yeah, like that's gonna happen!

But I'll tell you what I do track most days:

1 - Food. And I track on two websites.  I track on www.weightwatchers.com and on www.fitbit.com.  I track both places for a couple of reasons. I track on WW because I've been following the program for 11 years now and I am used to thinking about food in terms of points.  That's two points? Great, I'll eat that. That's 6 points? Nah, I'll pass.  I find it an easier concept to process rather than looking at calories.  But I do also track on FitBit because it does track calories.  My FitBit device tells me how many calories I burn in a day from activity. When I log my food there as well, it gives me a breakdown of calories in vs. calories out and lets me see what sort of calorie deficit I'm creating.  While the WW program is designed to create a negative calorie deficit, there's a difference between a 500 calorie deficit and a 1,000 calorie deficit that just doesn't translate into points.  So I find both systems to give me useful feed back about my weight.

2 - Exercise. This too I also track in both places.  I track my Activity Points on WW and I track the calories burned on FitBit as well.  The FitBit will tell you how many calories you burn in a day based on activity but there are some activities that it doesn't measure very well (like weight lifting).  They have a database - but calorie burn is so super individualized depending on weight, height, age, etc. that I often find it never really matches my HRM.  So I enter the data from my HRM whenever I work out onto the FitBit website. I track how long I work out, how many calories I burned and my average heart rate for the workout.

3 - GHG (Good Health Guidelines).  I only just recently started tracking these. I never bothered to before, but WW updated their website with new weekly progress reports.  They give you a smiley when you meet your GHG's and I guess it's the elementary teacher in me, but I like getting my smileys every day :o)

4 - Weight.  Yes, I track this every day.  When you are losing weight this is something you should never do because your weight will fluctuate 2-3 pounds in a week and it's hard to see weight loss trends when you are comparing your weekly low with your weekly high.  However, as a lifetime maintainer I find this data very helpful. I will enter it into Excel and then create weekly and monthly graphs. This helps me to visualize what's normal and what's not and helps me to understand my body a little bit better. Dorky, I know, but I love data.

And that's about it. Am I a perfect tracker? Oh hell no! But my goal is to be one each week.  And if I have a bad day or a bad week, I move on. I will sometimes try to make sure I track the very next meal if I miss a meal. Sometimes I'll miss too many meals to remember and that's when I'll say "OK, tracking begins again on Monday." And sometimes I'll track everything anyway, even though I know I've used 50+ points in one meal.  (And that online tracker gives you a big, red, negative number too!) But I always find it feels good to keep myself accountable. Even when the data is depressing.

Over the years I've learned that tracking is a big part of what keeps me successful. When I do it - my weight management is no problem. When I don't, I usually gain. Maybe not the first week, but by the second my weight is up. Does it get tiresome and tedious? Sometimes. But I know it's good for me, so I try to remember to do it.

Sorry this posting is a day late - I was ridiculously busy at work yesterday and then the heat (It's 95 degrees here) just wiped me out and I fell asleep on the couch at 9 PM.

I'll try to come back tomorrow with Friday Fitness. My knees are still bothering me on and off, and I don't want to hurt myself, so I still haven't gone back to my routine. I'm not sure what I'll talk about tomorrow, but I've got some ideas... So I'll see you tomorrow!