The State Of My Weight

So I make no point to deny that my weight has exponentially grown since high school. The humorous part (for me) is thinking back to a certain period of my life......e.g. senior year of college, and remembering how upset I would get at the state of my weight. It is comical because I would do anything to be at that starting point NOW. With 30 creeping around the corner and a genetic predisposition to Type II Diabetes and cancer (thank you body type which stores excess flub in the belly) I get angry at myself and want to scream:

"SHUT UP AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT this growing monkey on your back."

(Interjection, did I ever mention that I worry? Carry on.)

Well I am trying. I am involved in a friendly weight-loss competition with some family members and was delighted to jump on the scale this week and be a few pounds lighter than before. But the real purpose of this entry is to talk about some tools that I use to help.

I use this site called myfooddiary.com. It is not free but I can spare the 9 bucks a month. It allows you to track food, exercise, and body measurements. I typically use the food and exercise diary the most because I find it offers the most value. There are over 50K foods with nutrition information and if not, you can add info once and it is stored for future use. Also it gives you tips on how much fiber, fat, etc. etc. you have consumed and monitors how many calories you have left for the day. You can also manually enter exercise or choose from pre-programed selections of exercise and other activities. The site uses your body weight and the time you enter to calculate a estimate of calories burned. The site isn't perfect, it has flaws but they are constantly making improvements. Now a critical factor for success is understanding the volume of food you consume so you can accurately enter it in the diary. Some foods are easy (2 cookies, 1 can of soda, etc.) but some are more challenging (ounces, grams, cups, tbsp, etc.). I thought that I was doing a pretty good job UNTIL...........

The scale.

Let me take a step back. It was not lofty weight loss goals that inspired the purchase of a food scale. IT WAS SAUSAGE! When the hubby decided that he wanted to be a sausage maker he found that many of the recipes called for spices/meat to be weighted opposed to volume measured. So he pleaded his case and bought this fancy, digital food scale. I rolled my eyes and threw it up on some high shelf cause Hubby only makes sausage once a quarter and the scale got in my way on the counter. BUT, out of curiosity I started to weigh my foods that are grams, ounces, etc. and I am not even close to being on target. So little scale you can stay right next to the stove, no more high shelf for you. Maybe accurate measurements will help me further my goals.....

Till next time, I'm off to the gym.