In the last post I told you about my plan to operate on a calorie deficit to lose a few pounds. I'd like to share with you my successes so far. Here is what my Diet Power "dashboard" looks like today:
If you click on the image above it should bring it up bigger so that you can see it better.
What you can see is the trend that my day-to-day weights have been. Every yellow line represents a "new" diet start... what that means is that I may have changed or played around with my goal weight or goal date. I think I modified it from time to time. The original goal may have been about 138, then I changed it to 135. When I was overshooting that goal (projecting a lower weight) the program would allow me to eat more calories each day. I would then change the goal weight lower to keep me on the lower trend. Heck, if I reach my goal sooner, or reach a better goal, then why settle for more calories and a higher goal? So, I've adjusted the goal from time to time to keep the calories at about 1500 per day, give or take some.
My diet actually started on 1/16, at the first yellow line. I have used this program in the past but stopped when something happened, like a surgery or the holidays. It's just so difficult to count calories accurately during the holidays because so much of the food comes from outside of the home. So, the line before the first yellow line is Diet Power's assumption of my weight trend before 1/16.
What I like about this screen today is that my goal weight and my projected weight are exactly the same. What that says is that if I continue to follow the calorie allowance faithfully each day then I'll make my goal weight as planned.
I would also like to point out that I've done this with absolutely no exercise. It's not that I haven't wanted to exercise. OK, maybe I've been a bit lazy. But this does go to prove that what or how much you eat is probably more important for weight control than exercise. Exercise is important for more than just weight control (calorie burning) such as cardio-vascular health or muscle strengthening which is why I plan to start up with it as soon as my foot doctor gives me the green light for high-impact exercise. If I did exercise, my calorie allowance for that day would be increased by the amount of calories that I burned. But if exercise isn't an option, weight control can be accomplished by diet alone. All it takes is some discipline (which I do lack sometimes) and some willpower (ditto). Overall, it all comes down to operating on a calorie deficit, no matter if that's created by eating less food and making better food choices or if it comes from exercising to burn off excess calories.
