Weekly weigh in and goals - stepping it up

This week I weighed in at 208 pounds even, for a weekly loss of 0.2 pounds and a total loss of 35.8. For the record, when the weight change is less then a half pound any direction, I consider that to be the same as maintaining, which for the record, it's not time for yet.

So, what's the deal?

If you're not losing weight when you should, there's two areas you should look at: food and activity. Generally food is the real culprit as weight loss is about 80% nutrition, 10% activity, and 10% good genes. In my case, I'd say it's a bit of a combination, but mainly food.

I did get back to tracking this week, which is really important. However, I'm going to suggest that some of my portion sizes have grown. I tend to be pretty good at eyeballing portion sizes for months after a phase when I've measured and weighed. The problem is, it's been months since I've done a phase of measuring and weighing my portion sizes.

The other thing that I'm going to suggest is it's time to adjust my calorie range. Currently the calorie range I try to stick to is 1600 - 2000 calories, generally falling around the 1800 mark. The idea with the wide range is it gives me leeway to eat more on days when I'm particularly active and hungry. For quite a while, this range worked for me. I was losing around 2 pounds a week on it, and "if it's not broke don't fix it".

Now, it's broke. I'm not losing weight while eating in that calorie range. There's two reasons for this: first of all, I'm at the same calorie range I was 20 pounds ago. The amount of calories my body needs to maintain my weight has gone down, so there's less of a deficit.

The other reason is my level of activity. While I'm still getting planned work out sessions in, I'm less active in my regular day. With the weather getting frigid, we haven't been walking to the park or river as much. Instead we're driving to an indoor play centre, or lazing around at the pool. I don't actually think this is a major contributor, but it is a small piece of the puzzle.

It's time to adjust that calorie range. I'm going to drop it to 1200 - 1600 for the time being. I like having the wide range as it allows me to listen to my body more and be realistic about when I really do need more food. I'll play it week by week and adjust it again if I decide it's necessary. Hopefully it will make a difference and make the pounds start coming off again.

So, weekly goals...

Last week my goal was to stick to my planned activity for the week. Looking back at it, I had an aggressive plan of 11 work outs over a 6 day period. I did not stick to every workout. I did 8 over the 6 day period. Lesson learned. The week was busier then I expected and I had set my goals high following a week where I'd only got 4 work outs in.

This week's goal will be to weigh and measure my food. Tracking my food and counting calories doesn't do much good if the portions have grown over time.