Thursday February 2

Thanks Ann!

Morning all

Dave and Joey Jo hang on in there.  Wow!

so in spite of walking for two hours and eating well had severe leg cramps.  BUT after they settled down the sleep came.   Not much, five hours, but it feels good.   

Have a great day!   Safe travels.  

5 hours is great when you've not been sleeping!

Thin Thursday Greetings!

123's today

I should start tracking macros again just so I can get a fresh maintenance calorie count.  Plus, it seems like all the cool kids are doing it.

Someone from my childhood friended me on Facebook recently.  I was particularly happy about it today because her birthday is on Ground Hog day and I think of her Every Single Year.   So nice to be able to tell her Happy Birthday. 

May your day be filled with skinny, 

Shel

I dunno about "cool kids," but I just love tracking my food.  Been doing it for 2 years and nearly 8 months now.  MFP is such an easy tool for meal planning and for knowing (not guessing or hoping) how much I'm really eating. 

I realize that most WLS patients don't track their food for the rest of their lives.  ;)  Perhaps my obsessive tracking reveals that I now have a control issue about food.  Weird, because pre-WLS I didn't have that degree of need to know or control what I ate.  

On the other hand, I'm a trained scientist, so records/information/analysis have been my metier for 50 years.  And when I determined several years ago that WLS was my last chance to get and stay healthy and normal-sized I threw every resource I could find at being successful long-term. 

Maybe one day I'll gain enough confidence in my mindfulness skilz to regulate my food / drink intake without recording everything.  And maybe one day pigs will fly.  ;) 

I don't track anymore but I did it consistently into my second year of maintenance.  I found it very useful until I truly sorted out my maintenance calorie level and solidified my accompanying habits. Now I track whenever I move back into weight loss mode. 

I probably should have said "successful weight loss maintainers" instead of cook kids.  With your science background,  you know that tracking makes sense for lots of great reasons.  After all, why not have statistics on your side?

I am pretty statistics oriented and I frequently wonder why I am sabotaging myself by not tracking on MFP.  I was relentless during WL and for a while post maintenance. 

I do track when I am on vacation and can't weigh daily.  My eating patterns are pretty structured and there are few surprises in my diet.  Overall, my weight has been pretty stable since hitting maintenance.  The big exception was post PS because of all the fluids/swelling. 

I do have in mind that if I ever am up to 129 (or higher) then I must religiously track. Otherwise, if I want to drop a few pounds for some reason, I have 2-3 strategies that will allow that to happen over a few weeks. 

I did start weighing and tracking this morning and plan to do it for the week so I can confirm my average maintenance calories.  Portions change over time, for one thing.  Also, I routine LOOK for cheese samples at grocery stores.  I don't buy but I sample and I use their cracker, too.   This will be interesting to see how these small changes add up.

So many words....clearly I am not comfortable with my non-tracking behavior. 

I'm with you Ann - I see tracking as one of my retirement jobs.  I use MFP, but I also keep track of my calories and weight in Excel and chart them.  I've always done a lot of data analysis in my job (insurance). 

LOL!  I also put my daily food data and morning weights into Excel!  I produce graphs and calculate metrics.  I'm interested in relationships among the variables.  

But I didn't want to let semi-strangers in on that fact this early in our relationship.  ;)

I've gotten some guff from other patients for tracking -- even when I was losing.  I even made a deal with my psychologist NOT to track my intake when I'm on vacation or traveling and away from my scales, to ramp up my mindful eating skilz.  Happily, everything seems to go OK under those cir****tances.  

Trust me, I'm not OCD.  Not that there's anything wrong with being OCD.  ;)  I just enjoy all the data.  It's *my way*.  

P.S.  When I show up with my metrics and graphs, my surgeon and his team say I'm "not normal" (meaning that their other patients don't do anything like this).  They also say that when patients come in for regular check-ups or for counseling after having regained weight, they seem to have little knowledge of what or how much they are eating beyond day before yesterday.  

It's normal for people like us!