Successes for Weight Loss

Having been on a number of diets over the past 16 years I've come to the conclusions that when dieting, certain things will lead to success. No matter the diet, I have had success when I follow these things:

• Weigh in Often (whether it be daily or weekly) as it keeps me accountable 
• In some way, track calories - it doesn't matter whether you are low carb, high carb, low fat, tracking points etc, it still matters how many calories I stuff into my face daily 
• Write down my thoughts and feelings - whether it be here in this blog that is generally just for me or in a diary somewhere. It's good to write out feelings and thoughts as they add to the accountability aspect
• Plan  - I don't plan my entire day but I will try to plan out what I will eat as best as possible. Breakfast and lunch are usually pretty easy but dinner can be a struggle. If I know I'm going out I try to peruse the menu before I get there to understand what I should order. 

They seem like common sense but I have been in the habit of when the weight starts to come off and I feel happy about how I'm doing on the weight loss journey, I tend to slack off on the list above. I might stop weighing in every day or weekly and suddenly it's a month since my feet have touched the scale and low and behold there are 5 new lbs on it. 

When I get comfortable, the tracking stops. I am actually getting to that point already and I need to be better at it. When the tracking stops, the calories usually increase too! I stop planning my meals and wing it when getting to the restaurant and tend to make not so great choices. 

It's a way of life and I want it to be easy but I also need to be a strict with myself as possible. Who knows what will happen when/if I get to my goal weight and I have to switch to maintenance. Hopefully by then eating and making great choices will be a way of life for me and I won't need to track as much. I still have a long way to go before I start thinking about that. 

Found a great little low carb bakery this weekend and bought a stash of breads, and cookies etc. Everything is made with a flax flour so a slice of bread weighs a lot but it's good for curbing the craving. Had a slice yesterday with an egg on top and it was very filling. The cookies will be good for when I feel like I need a sweet (like around the TOM) which is coming up real soon! 

I changed my weigh in day to mondays. I don't like sundays as I usually indulge on friday/saturdays so my weight seems to be highest on sundays with all the salt retention etc. Also, monday is the official start of my week so it makes more sense to be on a monday. I used to like thursdays as well but we will go with monday for now.  Yesterday's weigh in was 189 (magic number y'all)!!! Actually it came back pretty quickly after last sunday but I didn't want to officially count it until this week. And I DID decide to change my weigh in day last night (not this morning) and this morning's weight and official weigh in WAS...........

187.5 !!

say what?!!!! Holy Shit batman!!!