Day 1 really started on Wednesday

In my post on Monday, I said that "tomorrow is Day 1." Well, I'm not sure if I really meant that when I said it. Turns out that by the end of the day Tuesday, I was determined to make the next day be Day 1 of starting over on this quest to lose 10 pounds.

Wednesday morning, I woke up with new resolve. I decided that since I still have some free time left on my bodybugg online subscription, I might as well suck it up and try to count calories again. I dread counting calories, though. However, I've realized over the last few weeks that if I don't hold myself accountable to something, I don't feel the pressure to stick within the boundaries that I've set for myself. In other words, just saying, "don't eat sweets," doesn't seem to do it for me as far as getting me on a weight loss plan. It might work for maintaining my weight, but not for trying to lose. But somehow, saying I can only eat 1500 calories in a day, and then tracking it... well, that seems more concrete to me and is a goal I can meet. So as much as I hate to count, I'm trying it again.

Both on Wednesday and Thursday, I was able to stay below 1500 calories consumed. And both days, I was above my goal of burning 2000 calories (which would provide me with at least a 500 calorie deficit), so my average deficit over the two days so far as been higher. In fact, yesterday I burned 1000 more calories than I took in. Go me!

Back in the spring when I was tracking my calories using the bodybugg program, I was very lenient with what I was eating. My goal back then was to maintain a 500 calorie deficit, and not worry about how many calories I took in, as long as I burned 500 more than that. But that plan didn't really work. I barely lost the weight I was supposed to have lost (what was supposed to be one pound a week turned into maybe three pounds lost over the course of several months). So this time around, my goal is to stick to the 1500 calories a day, regardless of my burn. Then hopefully on those days when my burn is high, it will make up for the day or two that I don't work out, or that I end up eating a little more than the 1500.

According to my program at bodybugg.com, if I plan to lose one pound a week, I will have lost these 10 pounds by July 13. That's 10 weeks, or 70 days. I'm taking this one day at a time, so I'm happy to report that I've successfully made it through 2 out of 70 days. Only 68 days left. I can do this. The other good thing this time around is that I've changed my weigh-in day. I used to weigh in on Mondays, which any dieter will tell you is a hard day to weigh in. We tend to splurge a bit more on the weekends, and when you weigh in on Mondays, you don't give yourself any time to make up for the indulgences of the weekend. So hopefully this will help me to be more successful this time as well.

Lastly, I do worry about the weekends. Things at home are not structured or routine, and we tend to socialize around meals often. In fact, tonight we're going to dinner with friends, and tomorrow we're going to lunch with my in-laws. I've already planned what I'm going to order, but sometimes the situation turns me into an idiot and I make the wrong choices. I hope I don't do that this time around. I really want to lose this weight, gosh darn it.

So for anyone interested, here are my stats from the last two days:

Wednesday

Calories burned: 2373

Calories consumed: 1539

Calorie deficit: 834

Thursday

Calories burned: 2493

Calories consumed: 1447

Calorie deficit: 1046