Tracking

Oh man. Yesterday I kind of lost it. I went out for dinner with a girlfriend and she wanted to order chips and salsa. So we did. And of course I just totally overdid it. And once I did that I guess I was kind of like, oh well, my day's ruined, why not just make it worse? We did split a salad for our actual dinner, but I also had two beers, and then of course dug into the ice cream and dove squares when I got home. 

Sigh. 

Two steps forward, one step back. It's a roller coaster this thing. I know it's one I will never ever get off of either. Just the other day I was entering my food intake into SparkPeople, and the boy was watching and he asked how many years of tracking my food intake, weight, workouts, I have. Well, I've been tracking my weight on a weekly basis in an Excel spreadsheet since 2004. But I've been using SparkPeople sporadically since 2006, and it is crazy to me that I can go back and pick a random day, say September 5, 2006, and know I had oatmeal for breakfast, a salad for lunch, a luna bar, and some kind of egg and cheese tortilla concoction for dinner. I ate 1348 calories.  That is insane. Don't get me wrong, in a way it's cool to have all of this information, but in a way I'm wondering - where has all of this gotten me?

At that time in my life, I weighed .6 lbs more than I do now. It was about a month before my wedding and I was at one of my lowest adult weights. In the past 2+ years, I've re-gained, and then re-lost, more than 20 lbs. But I know I can go back and look at the big stretches where this is no information, where I wasn't tracking, and see that that is when I was gaining. 

Tracking works for me. It's a pain in the ass and sometimes I think I'm crazy for dealing with all of this information all the time, but I know it works. When I can see that I've already eaten X amount of calories and I need to keep dinner on the smaller side, that is a good thing. I think in a way, I'll probably always track calories. I like seeing the data right there in front of me, and knowing how it correlates to my weight. 

Anyway, today is a new day, and I'm going to do the best I can. Right now that means heading to the gym to burn off some of those tortilla chips. Not sure what's on tap for tonight, but tomorrow will be an early day so we can make it to Breck before the lines get too long. Wish me luck with my apres-ski eating challenges!