SKUtah

I've been biting heads off since I got home. In my defense, the 6 year old is being snotty and is procrastinating on everything tonight but that's not the best excuse. I retreated to go workout. I just need to be alone for a bit. It may be the food talking but seriously, can't blame it all on that. Time to get my crap together!

I'm on day 8. I should be on day 22 but started over 8 days ago. I know what went wrong. I had a really hard time giving up tracking and calorie counting. You see, I lost 80 pounds over 2 years with a slow, methodical approach to weight-loss until I hit my goal. It was done in a healthy way, no starvation. I managed to maintain for months but still tracking and making adjustments as needed. Not tracking was just too radical for my brain to wrap around 8 days ago. I wanted to track "just to see" what my calories were and I found I was making decisions based on what I was seeing in my macros and caloric intake. It's really hard to do this program while thinking about calories or macros. I know the books say that. I know this forum says it all over the place. Sometimes I need to find out for myself why a rule is put into place. I crashed and burned on the evening of the ninth day. This time, I deleted the tracking app from my phone and pushed my scale far under my bed so it's not in the bathroom where I can see it every morning. I also started my written journal over. As I compare each day to my first 8 days, I notice a little attitude difference, too. That's why I decided to post. I'll just put it here so I can come back to see my progress when I'm getting discouraged. This time, follow the instructions.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.-Aristotle

My grand kids stay at my house nearly every Saturday night. This week was no exception. I resolved to not participate in the snacks that would make available while they were here. I made a few changes to the snacks available so they were more self-serve (buying individually wrapped, single serve ice cream bars instead of a 1/2 gallon of ice cream, for example) and they cleared and rinsed their own dishes. They will also take any snack leftovers with them today when they go home. I found the kids' snacks to not be the biggest problem because I had a plan for that, instead it was my own habits. It's true nothing good happens in the kitchen after 9:00 and I realized that after I stayed up to watch a movie later. I was really thinking about food during the movie, I mean really thinking hard about food!! Movie time is usually snack time, too, so I knew it was just a habit and I could work through it but it was tough. I can't ever remember scenes of people eating doughnuts in a movie making me want to walk to the kitchen and find something to snack on, but that was happening last night! A "bad guy" was eating a raspberry jelly doughnut and I think I missed everything he said during that scene. I was seriously focused on the powder sugar confection he was eating while planning all the things bad guys do. In the end, I managed to drink tea and water and went to bed right after it was over. I even left the tea cup out on the side table so I didn't have to walk in the kitchen, but I fought through it and made through! All small victories but victories none-the-less. Woke up, remembered all that, and feel incredibly strong today. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.-Aristotle

Day 7 and feeling good. I've not had the same symptoms described on the timeline yet other than I'm super duper tired. That challenge in the Whole30 Day to Day Guide to go to bed "toddler early" is the best advice. I worked out before this so I have stopped but I did cut back a little on the cardio. I'm going into my second weekend and will take it one meal at a time.

Thank you so much! This is exactly what I needed! I appreciate the quick response.

I'm looking for a little assistance. I have the book It Starts With Food. The Whole30 Day by Day guide refers me to page 244 of It Starts with Food to determine the correct number of carbs to eat post workout. I bought the ISWF book on Kindle and the graph on page 244 is so tiny I can't read it. I've tried a few tricks to make it bigger, including reading it on my computer, at no avail. Does someone here have the basic calculations needed that are supplied on that chart?

I don't think I have anything to say that hasn't already been said. Here we go!