How My Daily Diaries Work
If you wondering how I structure my daily diaries, well here is a brief rundown:
Starting off the day I post any anecdotes of anything pertaining to how I feel physically or mentally and the stuff in between. Think of it like a mini diary before my actual weight loss diary.
My monthly body measurement template
My weigh in's are on a weekly basis according every 7th day of the month regardless of # of days so that means I will weigh in on the 1st, 7th, 14th, 21st and the 28th then back to the 1st the following month. I plan to do full body measurements on the 1st of each month and see how that compares to the previous month. Simple stuff. Maybe more nerdy calculations in between because I love stuff like that.
Next is the best part:
Followed by that is my list of exercises where I link YouTube videos I have completed and often my notes about it for me to look back later because there's been plenty I have wanted to circle back to before but I totally forgot which one I was looking for! Tracking my exact exercises helps me immensely which is something I haven't done before on this blog.
Gua Sha is included in my exercises but is not exactly a calorie burning exercise. You just massage your face with a specific stone (you can buy Amazon or anywhere else) that has depuffing and lymphatic draining qualities. I just include it anyway because it's easier to track for accountability. If you don't see it listed, it's located in my side bar links.
Every Monday evening, I get a Fitbit Weekly Report which gives me cute stats how I faired to the week before. So as long as I keep getting those emails, I will continue posting them.
Food logs is what comes next and that is usually randomly updated throughout the day. Sometimes it's during, others at night and even next day! I try not too stall too much on it. I use the Carb Manager app but I pay for the premium subscription however don't be deterred if that's not up your alley. There's a plethora of free apps out there for you to utilize. You macros will be different than mine so please calculate yours accordingly. See my Helpful Links page for more information. Think what you want for counting calories as that is not everyone's cup of tea. This is just a good baseline for me as I have had a history of binge eating.
I currently do the keto diet and have trial and error days so please don't take everything I say and do seriously as I am learning along the way. I don't plan to do keto forever. It is more of a way for me to be more mindful of foods I eat. It's crazy when you really see how much sugar, starches and carbs are in almost everything. When I get at a comfortable place in my weigh loss journey I'll reevaluate my food habits.
Next is step tracking. Step tracking is super important and had my handy dandy Fitbit Sense to help track that. However, shortly before I started my daily diaries the battery died and 5+ chargers I have tried on it had no success in reviving it. Never that that problem before so that sucks. Luckily, the Fitbit app can still track your steps if you enable the setting on your phone. So that's the step amounts you see updated.
In late March is when I upgraded to a Google Pixel Watch 2 so starting in April I will post more in depth readings.
Another important thing is one of my goals is to move every hour. I unfortunately am such a lazy person so I struggle to do anything productive as a stay at home mother. I love stats and shit so I hope to make sure I get at least 250 steps each active hour I am awake. I might show that FitBit stat. Or maybe not but that's still one of my fitness goals.
Lastly is my water intake.
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I currently use my Hidrate Pro bluetooth water bottle to help me track. This is entirely optional but it is super helpful to me personally. They are about $65 on Amazon but you can easily track your own water intake without a bluetooth water bottle on usually the same food logging apps of your choice. Rule of thumb is to drink half your weight in oz of water. I was 187 pounds at my heaviest so my goal is 90 oz of water daily at balanced amounts during the day. Yours will be different.
As an update, I have since decided to implement drinking warm tea in the mornings. My process is as follows: boil water in the tea kettle, upon the tea whistle going off I pour 1 cup of boiling water in a cup and steep tea bag according to directions (each tea steeps at different times so anywhere from 3-5+ minutes). After removing tea bag, I don't want to scald my throat so I set a timer for 20 minutes to cool down before consuming.
Since I cannot pour hot liquids in my bluetooth bottle, I simply use a glass cup and separately record it in the HiDrate Pro app.
ALSO!
If you can't afford a fitness watch or a bluetooth bottle, why not earn some money for your steps to save up for one? I highly suggest the apps CashWalk, Evidation and StepBet. The CashWalk is most convenient in my opinion and cashed out multiple times. Stepbet has some strings attached to it but I have had success in all apps. Evidation is passive and extremely slow earning but it is legit as fuck. WinWalk works simular to CashWalk but I have not used it enough to be able to cash out so I cannot recommend WinWalk in confidence. That being said: use these apps at your own discretion. Only talking about Stepbet because if not used correctly, you can lose a lot of money real fast. I have cashed out few times already. Making an incoming post as we speak to explain more about it.