I’m pretty excited, because I weighed in this morning, and I am at 189.8 — under 190 for the first time in many years.
I don’t know how many years. You may think that because I run a fitness blog I am obsessed with weighing and charting and tracking. I’m not. Except when I am. And I am right now.
I am pretty sure this will be short-lived. Tomorrow I’ll be heavier. That’s how my body works, always 2-3 days behind.
Take the current situation, for example. The two days prior to yesterday, which would be Monday and Tuesday, I was at or under my daily calorie budget. Yesterday, however, I ate a whole pizza and a large portion of gelato. That pushed me way over my target calorie count, even with the extra calories from a walking workout.
Side Note: With Noom on I get one extra calorie for every two I burn during a workout that same day. Yes, my caloric budget increases with exercise. How cool is that? Very cool. That is very cool.
Side Note 2: I say “walking workout” because Noom tracks all my steps, but if I go for a prolonged brisk walk, I’ll set my Letsfit fitness tracker to track it. Then I can enter that walking workout into Noom to get credit for it, plus, bonus, some extra calories in my budget for the day!
One great feature of Noom, and it’s a thing that I think makes this program sustainable, is that there are no banned foods. If I want to have pizza and gelato, well, by all the gods, I can do that!
Don’t get me wrong. Noom will let me know that those are Yellow and Red foods, and, therefore, too densely populated with calories to accommodate my fitness goals on a long-term basis, but those foods are not banned.
Side Note 3: The pizza I ate was Archer Farms (Target’s house brand) Spinach and Goat Cheese. It was delicious, and actually only a Yellow food in Noom. Pizza will usually be Red, though, I think. I’ll find out pretty soon, because I do love me some pizza.
Side Note 4: I should emphasize here that Noom is emphatic about not saying that Green foods are “good” and Red foods are “bad”. I love that. There are no bad foods. But there are Red ones that have a lot of calories by volume, so they should be flagged in our minds as we consume them, which may prevent our consuming them in mass quantities.
So, yeah, I had a whole spinach and goat cheese pizza (Yellow) and gelato (Red). I also had a bit of salad (Green) and a kombucha (Green). And some pumpkin seeds (Red). That’s what I had to eat yesterday. It was satisfying, but I could have made better choices.
Otoh, now that I think of it, I did get in 16k steps yesterday. Yup! I did that! Maybe that exercise balanced out my over-consumption a bit?
Surely it did, but only a bit. I won’t get caught in that trap. I cannot eat, for example, 3 Cinnabons and “walk them off”.
Well, that’s a silly example. I couldn’t eat 3 Cinnabons. Try as I might, I never did make it all the way through the 3rd one.
Anyway, 2.5 Cinnabons contain 2200 calories. At 100 calories per mile, that’s 22 miles of walking. Even at 15 minutes per mile, a brisk pace, that’s a solid 5.5 hours of walking. Not happening, even if I had time for that.
Get the picture? Walking off calories is a myth that I have abandoned, unless I keep my expectations very low. Like, I could walk a mile to compensate for a couple Oreos. Mmmm… Oreos.
Anyway, I weighed in today at below 190 pounds, and my mind is saying, “Let’s stay there. Keep the caloric intake low today.”
I may do that, because under-190 is a pretty huge milestone for me, and it would be a shame to go back above it. But I’m not going to obsess over it.
I’m not, because if I wake up tomorrow and I weigh more than 190, I’m okay. Slow and steady will win this fitness game, and if that involves some fluctuation, that’s fine. After all, 190 is really just a number, right? No different than 191 or 189.
Do you hear that, Mind? Only a number. Treat it as such.