Counting, Counting, Counting

I've been evaluating my eating and exercise habits over the past week to figure out what has changed and why my weight loss efforts have stalled. I've noticed two significant changes:

1) I have not been using MyFitness Pal to track my calories.
2) Last week Rogier and I didn't walk at all after dinner.

My next goal is to fix those two things. The walking after dinner has been better. Rogier and I have walked both Monday and Tuesday evenings and I'll be dragging him out for another one tonight, even if it is freezing. Things like this happen, and life changes plans.  We were incredibly busy last week, visiting friends, going to Germany to go grocery shopping and other things in the evening that didn't allow us time to walk. My goal is to walk three evenings a week and we probably could have squeezed them in last week. I need to re-prioritize. Once it starts staying lighter longer I will feel comfortable walking by myself on those nights that Rogier is too busy because he's doing one thing or another around the house, but for now when it's still dark I'm not comfortable walking alone, even if I do live in a very safe neighborhood in a very safe country.

The second thing I need to fix is tracking my calories. I know a lot of people are against tracking because they become obsessed with how much they're eating. It worked for me for the first few weeks and then I got comfortable and have been "guestimating" with my portions and calories and think that might be steering me wrong. So my goal for the rest of March is to track my calories, every single day, no excuses. To keep myself accountable I will be posting my calorie intake here.  My goal is still 1200 net calories. So the more I workout and burn, the more I get to eat.  You won't hear me complain about that.

Things at the gym went better today. My spin class was challenging but not like my treadmill workout yesterday. I also had to increase my weight on my arm exercises because after Monday's workout I didn't have any muscle soreness at all.  My legs aren't sore from leg day yesterday either so I need to increase my squat weight and my reps with lunges.  Even if I'm losing weight I am getting stronger which I'm happy about.

I also need to start bringing my cell phone to the gym so I can take pictures.