Like the Leaves of September

My body is changing shape and so is my attitude. My stomach shrinking is great and so is my positive outlook.

I'm sure that this is just me being moody, stressed, and tired but I'm getting bored with dieting. That being said, I am determined not to give up! I should write that ten times just to reiterate it to myself. I do fine with lunch. I am usually skipping breakfast and then I am tending to eat waaaayyy too much for dinner. I'm going to go re-read My Diet Plan (see archives... too tired to put in the link) and hopefully I will revive. My title has to do with the fact that in August I was rapidly racking up red days. Many days were green, some days were yellow, and more often than I would like, red days appeared. My Food Log (see LINX) looks like the leaves of a tree, changing in September. I need to hold on to the green of July and if I have to stumble, my log should then look like a tree in March or April... mostly green but with hints of immature yellowish green.
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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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Blew It So Bad Today

I've been on a roll with green days this week. See My Food Log for details. But tonight was the office party. I work in a small office and we recently won a runner-up prize in a sales competition. The prize was a gift card with which to throw an office party. Since there are only 3 of us, we decided to go to dinner and take our husbands. I would have done OK were it not for the... and I'm NOT kidding... DEEP FRIED CHEESECAKE. It's a really good thing that I have done so well this week. Otherwise I'd would have gained this week instead of lost. And then there's the upcoming weekend. This will be a challenge. Weekends tend to be my worst times. I'm off to a great start.... here goes. Read more!