Time to take the reins again (2011 Week 12)

I have gotten really off track in the last few weeks. My calories have been ever-increasing, my mood has been down, I haven't been getting any real exercise. And the scale has been showing it. I'm up to 338.8 today, not the direction I intended to be moving in.

But I am determined to get back on track now. I managed to stay under my calorie budget today for the first time in at least a week. I'm back using the whey protein supplement again. And I'm drinking lots of water. I'm going to start hitting the gym more regularly again, and aim for variety, not just doing treadmill all the time, maybe even try a few classes.

I geeked it up a little bit yesterday, trying to figure out what was going on with my body; I figure, I have amassed a decent amount of data now, why not take a look. I only looked at the 10 most recent weeks from my loseit data, partly because it was taking a long time to get the data in the right format, and partly because I wanted the graph below to reflect about the same weight (+/- 10 lbs). Here's what I found:

There is no obvious pattern between avg net (after exercise) calories for a given week and my change in weight for that week:

I also looked at number of calories burned exercising, grams of sugar consumed that week, grams of carbs consumed that week, and grams of protein consumed that week. The only variable that had any hint of a relationship with my weekly change in weight was protein consumed:

So I'm going to try to refocus my efforts on protein. And it looks like 800 grams of protein per week is a good goal to aim toward. I realize that I'm only looking at 10 data points, there are lot of other factors I'm not looking at, my data may be inaccurate, etc, etc. But this is all I have to go on right now, so I'm going with it.

Off the Wagon (2011 Week 5 Update)

I'm up to 339.8 again, and that's after weighing myself 3 times in succession and taking the lowest number. That's up 2 pounds from last Sunday. Argh.

Excuses, excuses:
I have been sick this week with a cold. Exhausted sick. So very little physical activity (but my appetite has also been down, so I thought it wouldn't matter).
I'm in pre-cycle week so I could be retaining some water.

Another likely culprit:
My tutoring job started back up last week so I've been spending more hours on campus, and I didn't do a good job of packing a lunch to bring with me, so I was doing cafeteria food. I tracked everything I put in my mouth, and it wasn't above the calorie limit I set for myself, but it still could have set me back compared with eating mostly home cooked for the last couple weeks.

So that's frustrating. I've lost my lead on my 2 pounds per week goal. For the next week I'm going to return my colorie goal to the lose-it default for my weight, around 2300 calories. And as soon as I'm feeling 100% health-wise again I'm going to try to bump up the exercise. Also, on my last grocery trip I brought home more fruits and vegetables and salad makings so maybe that will help. I've been craving oranges so I got a huge bag of them.