Six weeks

Six weeks ago, I started tracking my energy input and output, which I followed up two and three weeks in. I’m now six weeks into the habit, and although I have no intention of stopping the practice, I won’t be writing about it anymore because all these check-ins are starting to look alike.

Here are weeks four, five, and six:

Day	Food	Exercise	Net Relative to 1,200 Cal Goal
June 27	2,770	1,753	-183
June 28	2,399	1,736	-537
June 29	2,720	1,756	-236
June 30	3,482	287	+1,995
July 01	2,206	1,086	-80
July 02	2,025	1,009	-184
July 03	2,862	763	+899
Total			+1,674

Day	Food	Exercise	Net Relative to 1,200 Cal Goal
July 04	2,540	218	+1,122
July 05	1,585	1,784	-1,399
July 06	2,147	1,473	-526
July 07	1,819	1,480	-861
July 08	3,078	892	+986
July 09	2,620	431	+989
July 10	2,277	125	+952
Total			+1,263

Day	Food	Exercise	Net Relative to 1,200 Cal Goal
July 11	2,058	289	+569
July 12	2,597	825	+572
July 13	2,156	1,194	-238
July 14	1,424	1,344	-1,120
July 15	2,716	1,238	+278
July 16	3,274	2,029	+45
July 17	1,549	1,995	-1,646
Total			-1,540

Of note: many weeks I don’t make targets. However, there’s no question that the tracking has had a positive effect in that I’ve eliminated pop, juice, energy drinks, and unhealthy snacks (potato chips and the like) from my diet, and am getting some kind of strenuous exercise roughly seven times a week. I’m still drinking alcohol socially, and if I miss a calorie target, it’s that practice which is almost universally responsible. Dialing it back to a hard maximum of two drinks in a 24 hour period ¹ is a reasonable next step.

My last weigh-in this morning was 165 lbs., down from 176 lbs., which means that I was pretty close to my goal of losing 2 lbs. per week (11 lbs. compared to 12 lbs.).

After six weeks, I have no immediate intention of stopping food and exercise tracking, but given that these write-ups are starting to look very alike, I will stop making these periodic (and only very nominally interesting) check-ins.