I weighed in last night and had gained nearly 3 lbs. -- back up to 153. Sigh. That's OK; I didn't binge or anything this past week, but I definitely didn't limit myself or watch my eating very closely. I knew I was going to try and be very disciplined very soon, so I was getting my kicks while I could.

Regular exercise and very healthy eating are something I always struggle with. Especially the exercise. I'm trying to go into this new chapter with confidence, but I also have a fair amount of skepticism since I always tend to fall off the wagon sooner or later. I now have 14 lbs. to lose before I get to my desired weight, so if I stuck to the diet really well and lost 2 lbs. per week, that would be 7 weeks. I think I can do this for that long, at least. And maybe some of the healthy habits will stick around longer than that.

Since Google Docs is such a good way to control my spending and organize other aspects of my life, I'm turning to it for this new challenge as well. I set up a spreadsheet with two tabs: one for workouts and one for food. I don't know if this will turn out, but here are screen shots:


Basically, on the workout log I'll create goals for each day and then on the next line I'll say what I actually did that day. The food log doesn't have goals because my goals are always the same: to not eat wheat, white rice, white potatoes, chips, beer, or sugar/high-calorie sweeteners. So for the food log I'll just write what I ate at each meal. Not going to try for calorie counts, but I may go into more detail if it seems to call for it.

Today I only have to do a moderate workout, so I'm going to count walking home. The next few days I'll have to do something more athletic. I may bring jogging clothes to work and try to jog through the park on the way home? Or go for bike rides after work, or go use the treadmill in the other condo building's exercise room. We'll see.

I gave myself Friday, Saturday and Sunday off because I'm going to Ohio for a family reunion. Most weeks I hope to not take three days off in a row.