Tracking vs Not Tracking food- the 1-2 pound difference

60 day outlook. Tracking vs Not Tracking

Okay, here's what my last 60 days of weighing daily looks like on a graph. Each white line on the Y axis (up and down) is 5 pounds.

Tracking my food on My Fitness Pal is from 3/21 to 4/14 or so. There is variation and what looks to me to be cat ears!!!

From about 4/15/ to 5/17 or so I did not track my food. I had enough experience with eating Primal/Paleo-ish, day -to-day cooking and eating, life stress, and blind trust,  confidence to give not tracking my food to take a month long break.

Only a 1-2 pound gain, that was sustained over the month. Once I started tracking again on 5/17,  I've gone back to the lower side of my maintenance range.

This whole month long experiment was to give myself a test of the robustness of my new normal and I must say, I passed!!  Awesomeness. My clothes don't fit any difference and as long as I stick to my new, normal way of eating, I can safely not track, if I choose.

What it also may mean to me, is that if I need to loose weight, I will likely need to track my intake again. Really nice to know that I've got that range of control and choice right now.

Weigh Daily = Weight Maintenance Sucess

3 months and one week into maintenance.  Staying steady at a 73 pound loss. About and pound an half down from my goal weight.  "Within normal tolerance and meeting my own acceptability criteria, no shifts or trends noted" says the scientist within me. LOL.

I have to say that daily weighing has been hands down one of the best tools I could use in maintenance. Some of my maintainer friends weigh in daily, and at first, I thought it was too number focused. After reading Refuse to Regain (Barbara Berkeley, MD) and reading more maintenance blogs, I did find a sub group of maintainers that weigh daily.

Right now, I like to look at the points on My Fitness Pal graph as "data" and take a step back from it. Is the spike cause by eating too many macadamia nuts, almond butter, or a salty meal? Normal hormone variation? Stress eating?  No real good reason at all? Catch up from last week? Some of it correlates, some is a mystery. Always will be.

Anyhoo,  I have been able to take a few steps back, look at it as data on a graph, assess what's going on and most importantly move on from it no matter what. Because too much analysis = paralysis. Life goes on and is not about the number on the scale.

I do want to nip any corkscrew, slow shifts, or (heaven forbid) rapid ascents in the bud. I really liked this article on the Refuse to Regain site Pivot, Corkscrew, Ascent: When to Panic   I've done both the corkscrew and rapid ascents. Neither are fun or good. So I'll stick to my daily weighing habit.

How often do you weigh in? What do you do if you've shifted or trended up?