But it's NOT WORKING, now what?

 

Or are you getting discouraged because it's not working?

I recently wrote about it working for me. I often feel I'm too old now, or my thyroid is still a little low (which it is), or that something else is wrong with me. But that isn't true. I proved it right there and all I have to do is remember that.

The thing is, when it's not working it is usually because you are consuming more calories than you think you are.

You could be logging your food, and think that you are being super accurate, but there are mistakes being made. It's hard to accurately account for some foods, especially higher fat foods. Yes, those fats are healthy, but they must be measured out accurately. Fats are 9 calories per gram, where carbs and fats are 4 calories per gram. It's easy to consume a few extra grams of fat and not realize it. It's actually easy to consume more protein and carbs than you think you are. Super easy! That is the biggest reason people don't make progress with weight loss. You have to find your mistakes! No one can find those mistakes for you.

That is why most nutrition plans to lose weight are like this simple one:

This type of meal plan makes it easy to accurately track your meals. They are also quite simple and easy to prepare. My soup is like that, and it follows the same principle, and I like the soup because I can make the soup in minutes with ingredients on hand, pre-measured, and keep it hot in a thermos. When I'm ready to eat, it's ready. I don't have to go find a way to make it warm. It's a lifesaver for me on busy days. Randy and my boss love the soup too, as I always make it for all three of us on our Sheriff Training days. 

If you use recipes, it is important to accurately measure everything out, make a recipe like I did with the Turkey Meatloaf example, and to measure out the portions exactly as you made the recipe for servings.

Other tools for meal planning

Learn how to do some simple meal prepping. For those in the 1st Phorm App with me there are many livestreams on meal prepping and there is a new one there right now. If you do an internet search you will find plenty of good information on meal prepping.

If you don't have time to prep food, find a meal prep company near you. There are many now. I just now did a Google Search for "fit meals" and got many hits.

If prepped meals are too expensive, find time to learn to prep. See, we can go around in circles on this. Food is expensive right now either way.  We don't have the time; we don't have the money. We have to eat. You are eating either way. What are you eating? How much are you eating. How much do you want to be healthy? Enough to find a way to make the resources work?

Bad health is expensive too.

Being unhappy with yourself is hard.

Doing the work to be healthy and fit is hard. 

Pick your hard. Right?

If you like recipes some of my favorite healthier recipes are on SkinnyMs and SkinnyTaste. 

If you are out on the internet searching for recipes you might find many have a lot of ads, stories you might not be interested in, and you just want the freakin' recipe and instructions! Just copy and paste the URL to this JustTheRecipe website and it will clean out all the junk and give you just the recipe and the instructions. Very cool! I actually love that site and it's in my bookmarks.

Oh and I tried one more thing, an AI recipe generator. List out what you have in your refrigerator and enter them in the recipe by AI.  Here's the results. 

PS I put my soup and favorite Turkey Meatloaf recipe up in the right-side bar menu. I'll add more recipes if you let me know what you want there.

Stay in the game!

It's easy to get discouraged and want to give up. Don't give up. Stay in the game. If I look back at last year I could so easily say well it's not working. I guess this is what happens when we get older. Blah, blah, blah. I refuse to go down that black hole, but it tries to tug at me just like it tugs at you.

I did great the first couple of weeks but then I got some calorie peaks. It's hard. I was baking too many things and consuming foods that were higher in calories, but also harder to track accurately enough.

It doesn't SEEM so bad when the scale in that chart looks like that. It kind of looks like I'm doing well, but I can tell by how I feel that my weight has been the same since that initial 10 pound or so loss.

I've GOT TO GET RID OF THOSE PEAKS. The red line makes me feel good because it's exercise burn. But it's deceptive for fat loss. Yes, it helps. But I still have to get rid of those blue calorie peaks. I am doing well because I had way more of those last year. I'm doing better now. But I need to do EVEN BETTER.

I extended my chart out to the end of May. Look at those peaks now, they don't look so good. Those peaks take away the hard work of the deficit valleys. 

You might have peaks like that and not even realize it, because you are not eating foods that allow you to know accurately what your intake is. It's so easy to make mistakes when you are logging your food and making estimates.

Treat your food intake, logging, and measurements like it really matters! Treat it like the most important lab experiment you have ever done. Isn't it important? Your health, physically and mentally. Heck yeah, it's important!

That's why I'm changing up my diet just a bit and making it simpler. It's why I'm logging and choosing not to bake cookies and treats. It's why I'm tracking my food in the 1st Phorm App as well as my calories against my TDEE in my spreadsheet. That graph right there tells me how I'm progressing. Only IF my calorie logging is accurate. The picture is only as good as the real data.

If my calories are not more consistently under that TDEE line, then I won't make progress.

That picture of me up at Mono Crater at the top of this page is a from a road trip Randy and I took right after I lost 85 pounds. I want to look like that again. I can! I can even do it by summer. IF I get those blue peaks under the green line!

I put the picture in the background of my Brave Browser. Every morning when I bring up the browser, I see it and it reminds me.  When I go down to the kitchen, I see my monthly grease board where I write the calories down. All day long I think about my calories and where I want to be.

You have to be obsessive like that if you want to win a goal that is so hard to win. There are far too many people and situations that will pull you from that goal. It feels like the whole world is against you in this goal. That's why you have to be obsessive about it. 

Make it the most important lab experiment you have ever done. It is.

I've proved I can do it; therefore, I will keep doing it.

Yes, I make mistakes, but I own them, and I will fix them.

Roberta

Never Settle.

Never Give Up.

Live Your Dream.