Being Accountable

Boy do I ever hate being accountable. I know it is necessary but I do not like it. It goes against my very fiber and being. Having to document every bit of food that enters my mouth. Lordy have mercy.

It is not my favorite thing to do. Yet lets face facts. It is what works. It is absolutely necessary if you want to control your intake. I love food. I am always cooking something for someone. The kids eat their things, my husband eats his things, I eat my things and I am tasting and cooking it all. This can be very dangerous. Especially if you are at home and wandering from room to room in and out of the kitchen, fridge, etc....

Now I have always eaten well. Lots of vegetables and fruit. Organic when possible. I was raised that way and learned a lot. I don't eat a lot of milk products as I was badly lactose intolerant as a child. Yet I am sure I eat too much at a sitting and I love my chocolate.

I do have a thyroid issues and have been on thyroid medication since I was a young girl. So my metabolism is not kind. Not kind at all. Historically I would start some sort of diet system and it would work for a while. Then my metabolism would just get used to it and adjust and it would stop working well. This would frustrate me and back I would go to my old eating style. Each step down would be followed by a larger step up. I am sure this is a very common problem. Yet I had to figure out how to break it.

To do this I was going to have to track everything in and out. So I used an application on my phone called My Fitness Pal. There is also Spark People. I only decided to use this one because my friend Sarah was using it. I started on December 31st 2012. This was just 12 days after I did my first hot yoga class.

The program is fantastic for several reasons. Firstly I has a scanning option so you can scan the bar code of your food and load it that way. It also nets out your exercise. So If I do a hot yoga that burns 1400 calories and I eat 2000 calories worth of food that nets out to 600 calories for that day. It also summaries information daily, weekly etc. You can see your progress, graphs, charts, etc. I am a very technical person that loves statistics and analytics so this shows me the money so to speak.

So I started tracking. I put in my Curves work outs, my Hot Yoga work outs, and my food intake. I had a goals for calories, carbs, etc. I noticed a pattern of ups and downs with hot yoga days low and curves day on the higher end, yet still below my goals. So I was rocking it out. At first I had one day of hot yoga and four or five of curves, then it increased to about 50/50. This pattern of ups and downs kept my metabolism going. Shocking it up and down without expectations setting in.

Tracking has become not so bad because I am eating decently, not being crazy about it, and working out every day Curves, Hot Yoga, Curves, Hot Yoga. I am seeing progress. My clothing is getting bigger, I know that if I stop tracking accountability goes out the window. Yes it goes against my very fiber, I hate doing it. But I do it. I will keep doing it. I must.