One of the things that helped keep me motivated while I was running and dieting was setting up a tracking system. To track my progress with running, I was lucky enough to have the Garmin software (included with the watch) so that all I had to do was plug the watch into my USB port and it would upload into it's software. I could view daily or weekly rollups of my total mileage and pace, or lap mileage and pace. I also built an Excel spreadsheet in which I kept track of my total weekly mileage, long run mileage and total weekly pace. This allowed me to watch the increase and see when I set new records for myself. My spreadsheets are on my other computer, but I will post these when I have transferred them over.
In parallel with the running improvements, I was losing weight at the rate of about two pounds a week. I would weigh in each morning (sometimes every other morning), and record the weight in my spreadsheet. I even graphed a trendline so that I could see the slope of the weightloss...it was about 0.24 pounds per day, or just a little under 2 lbs a week. The great thing about this spreadsheet was that I could see when I was falling behind my trend, and that would motivate me to be more disciplined about what I ate. Now it's two years later and there are at least a couple "facebook apps" which will keep track of your weight if you enter it, along with exercise history. I am using one of these today to track my weight loss. It's called Weight Graph and is integrated with a site called Fridge Graph. You can put in a target weight and end date, and it will graph your actuals versus the projected burn rate.
In parallel with the running improvements, I was losing weight at the rate of about two pounds a week. I would weigh in each morning (sometimes every other morning), and record the weight in my spreadsheet. I even graphed a trendline so that I could see the slope of the weightloss...it was about 0.24 pounds per day, or just a little under 2 lbs a week. The great thing about this spreadsheet was that I could see when I was falling behind my trend, and that would motivate me to be more disciplined about what I ate. Now it's two years later and there are at least a couple "facebook apps" which will keep track of your weight if you enter it, along with exercise history. I am using one of these today to track my weight loss. It's called Weight Graph and is integrated with a site called Fridge Graph. You can put in a target weight and end date, and it will graph your actuals versus the projected burn rate.
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