So the diet has been going pretty well this month, I’ve been keeping to my calorie counts more and also not having as much of an issue with keeping the weight off. There are less ups and downs and that is a good thing. I still have some days when I weigh mysteriously three pounds more than I did the day before, despite only eating the prescribed amounts. I’m doing pretty good at just letting it go by though.

My daily diet has changed a little since the last time that I wrote. I cut all of the carbs out of my breakfast about halfway through March, partially to lower the caloric content of the meal, and partly because I was planning on trying a low-carb diet starting this month. I’ve started and been on the diet a week or so right now, and it’s been pretty good. Most days I’m trying to figure out how I can get to my calorie limit instead of seeing how I can get under it. Especially on days when I am exercising, I usually have to down an ounce or three of peanuts to make my calorie deficit goal.

Speaking of the exercise, it’s been pretty good to get back to it after taking the month of February off. I’m going five days a week for thirty minutes now, and that seems to be a sweet spot for me in terms of time taken and enjoyent. One of the things that I was really unhappy during exercise in the winter was the hour long sessions really dragged on my psyche. I always would be thinking about what I could be doing instead of exercising. I re-started with thirty minute sessions instead which was a great call - they are much easier to fit into a day because if I only have an hour free I can still fit in a workout, and I don’t have an issue finishing them. I also feel a lot more accomplished when I go a little extra, going 40 minutes or 45 minutes.

I don’t remember the exact cheat days that I took in March, but I’m sure that I was on form. It took a little bit longer to institute the “practice days” that I talked about last month - I had my first one last weekend as I was on a short day trip out of town. I ate like a “normal” day and ordered off the menu as if I wasn’t on a special diet and wasn’t sweating the calories. I think I came in just under the amount of calories I wanted.

I’ve been thinking lately that it’s more important how you feel about how you ate on the practice day instead of how you actually did on the calories. I know that when I was having too much food at lunch and then again having too much food at dinner, I was actually not happy with myself when I was finishing the meal, but I would keep on going because I wanted to finish the food that I had ordered, and I didn’t want to waste something. Alternately I was unhappy an hour later or later in the day when I was eating my dinner but realizing that I wasn’t actually hungry and I was just eating because it was good to eat with my wife for a dinner. It is most important to me on those practice days that I don’t have those feelings at all. Secondary feelings to avoid would be the ones where I feel over-full, like I have had too much to eat. I used to have that feeling all the time, and I barely ever have it now except on cheat days and practice days.

The thirty day graph looks good from here. It’s the best weekly loss number since I’ve started making these posts monthly. I’m dangerously close to the two pounds a week that I’ve been trying to hit since I’ve started logging my weight again. I’m also doing it by hitting my calorie goal now and not shorting it by 200 like I mentioned last month. That’s fine. I only had a day or two above the trend line, although I got closea few times.

The yearly chart looks pretty damn good as well. You can really see the trendline take the dip that I was hoping during the end of March. There is a nice number at the bottom of the y-axis too, I’m hovering around 270 now, making the mini goal that I had made before. I’m hoping to be hovering around 260 when I make the next report. I’m still aiming for 250 by the middle of this year, and then I will be making the big decisions about whether I’m stopping at that number, or if I will keep going. I never really had some solid goals when I started this whole thing, except for being a healthier person in general.