Mission Statement

I will in general eat healthy, eat "normal" food, without gimmicks, pills, surgery, or trademarked diets. I will log all calories consumed and estimate calories burned on a daily basis. I will then be able to track my progress and estimate arrival time to my goals through My Food Log. I will also develop non-food rewards for reaching my goals knowing that reaching each goal is a reward in-and-of itself. I will not give up. I know that I will not be perfect but that I am making a permanent lifestyle change. The good days will out-number the bad days. I will not give up!

8.28.2007

When Green Suddenly Turns Red

do0rdiet.blogspot.com
When a good run of green days suddenly turns red... what do you do?*** Last week I was determined to get back on track with my diet after having had a few weeks of events and vacation. I incorporated the use of mini-goals. Instead of just striving for the large progress markers, I focused on the next few days. This was a tremendous success as I ended up with 5 days in a row with green results. But then...

I got busy again, had company come to stay for the weekend, a festival to attend, and an outdoor catering venue to work at. All of these events are out of the ordinary for me. I was completely off schedule. As a result I logged 3 red days in a row! It's like I take 2 steps forward and 2 steps back because on at least 2 of the red days I also consumed more than I burned... this equals weight gain. Actually overall, I have not seen a weight gain, even though I was over eating. I attribute this to the increase my level of activity. I normally have a sedentary day. I work at a computer/phone and I love watching TV. Over the weekend I did lots of walking, standing, lifting, and in general saw a huge increase in my activity level. But none of this explanation answers my question... what do you do when green suddenly turns red? I could try the mini-goal of 3 green days again. I could also concede slightly and strive for 5 days of yellow. I'm wondering if green day goals are putting too much pressure on me and therefore at the first change in schedule or activity I am more likely to fail. This weekend will also be filled with out of the ordinary events. I will be traveling to the Charleston area on Friday. Back home on Saturday. Then I have another outdoor catering event to work Sunday and Monday. Knowing that I may be setting myself up for failure, I am going to strive to have green days for the rest of the work week. Then I'm going to try hard to have yellow days (and I may push all the way up to 1800) all weekend. This is an obvious concession to my overall goal, but even at 1800 calories, I am still having some, albeit slower, forward progress. Should this idea not work out, I will be better prepared for next time, and I will have a better understanding of how to set those short term goals for stressful periods.

***If you're not familiar with my system, visit My Food Log for a better understanding. I color code my dieting success on a log of my daily calories. That way, when it's time to get on the scale, if the results that I'm expecting are not there, I can quickly scan back to my eating history and see why I was disappointed. Green days are days where I met my goal, currently 1200 calories per day (I still call it a green day if I was over the goal but by less than 50 calories). Yellow days are to represent days where I did not meet my goal, but I still was able to burn a significant amount of calories. Yellow days are from 1250 calories up to 1800. Anything over 1800 is a red day. Red days also cover days when I consumed more calories than I burned.

I am pleased to announce that I have had 3 official takers for my offer to develop free, personalized, diet plans. I am looking forward to hearing back from these folks. I am more anxious to see if I've actually helped. I still have 22 slots left for free plans. One aspect of creating these plans that I wasn't quite prepared to deal with is the time it takes away from my blog. My post rate has been low as of late because I have a limited amount of time each day to devote to internet/computer/blog work. So, I apologize for not having fun fresh material every day. I am working on ways to resolve this issue. I am currently "pre-writing" this article. I am hoping that this method will make it so I can get a good archive of articles that are relevant and ready to print while at the same time make my evening work hours more productive.


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