Greg's Weight Loss Blog

A month ago I wrote about how I quit measuring foods and counting calories. It was an experiment and, as David put it, the “next step to being healthy being a normal thing”. The big question was would I be able to do it? Did I gain the knowledge and experience in 7 months to let go off the safety net and try to maintain my weight on my own? I’m here to report that I think I did!

Eating healthy and making good choices became second nature to me by now. Just because I quit counting the calories it did not mean I quit watching what I’ve been putting in my mouth. I’m still eating the same foods in the same amounts as I have been in the past I just do it without the help of my kitchen scale and without jotting down everything into my food diary. I still keep a mental diary of my daily intake and I’m still counting calories in my head. But it’s a lot more manageable than running to the computer after each meal to make sure the calories are still in order.

I’m also allowing myself small indulgences and I no longer feel utter remorse if I eat a cookie or devour a piece of cake every now and again. They fit into my lifestyle and they fit into my caloric budget as you can tell from my weight chart for the past month.

As you can see my weight has been fluctuating a bit over the past month with two notable spikes. The first one happened on the weekend of my half marathon and I think it had to do with hydration more than anything. I lost a lot of water during the race and I probably drank more than my fair share of water after the race to replenish. I also carb loaded for the race which meant more pasta than I would usually eat. The second surge in weigh was on 4th of July weekend. That weekend involved some festive eating with salty snacks at a friend’s place which also lends itself to excess water intake. But that very same weekend I also ran a total of 20 miles in two runs burning over 2,000 calories so everything went back to normal after that.

If you look at the overall trend of the red line it’s still downward. I’m happy about that even though my wife is not. She thinks I’m about 10 lbs too light at the moment and I should not only quit “dieting” I should start eating more to gain 10 lbs back. Needless to say I have no intentions of quitting my “diet” and I will not gain any weight back. My averaged weight on 6/17/10 was 166.6 lbs (75.6 kg) and today it’s 164.8 lbs (74.7 kg). I have lost 1.8 lbs (0.8 kg) in a month without even trying and without counting calories or measuring food with a scale. I’m officially under my initial target weight that I set when I started my transformation which was 165 lbs (74.8 kg). Having reached this goal now I’m onto the next one which is single digit body fat. I have checked my fat percentage with a 3 point caliper measurement and I’m at 11.8% at the moment. I know I’ll get there and I’m in no real hurry to achieve it.