On Saturday, we spent a beautiful, non-humid, unbuggy, 75 degree day at a lake with the Kerchner Clan.  One of my husband’s cousins had organized a family reunion, and he couldn’t have picked a better day or spot.  It was perfect!  Of course though, as with all get-togethers, there was food.  Lots of yummy food.  And I did what I tend to do when there’s lots of food:  I ate… a lot!

Knowing that we were going to be hanging out for several hours with lots of food, I had made the decision that I was more or less giving myself a free day.  So I didn’t count how many barbecue chips I ate, and I allowed myself servings of potato and pasta salad, and I didn’t stop at just one brownie.  In preparation for the picnic, I didn’t eat any breakfast, and even though we left at 5, I didn’t eat anything after we left.

Later that night, curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to go to MyFitnessPal.com where I’ve been tracking my food and exercise.  I then tried to enter what I ate that day.  It was a lot of guessing,  because I wasn’t counting or paying attention to servings as I ate.   I know I didn’t enter it all, because I kept remembering other things, like a half a can of soda, but I got the main gist of the day.  And the damage was….

There really should be some type of drum roll…

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2345 calories 

And that was only between the hours of 12 and 4!!!!  And I’m sure that number is actually on the low side, because I gave up trying to remember everything.  In order to lose 1-2 pounds a week, I’m supposed to only net 12oo calories, after exercise – which I didn’t do any that day!  That’s 1,145 calories more than I was supposed to have.  (I basically ate 2 days worth of food within a 4 hour time frame!)

I didn’t stress too much about it, because like I said, I was giving myself a free day.  But it’s crazy how quickly those calories can add up when you aren’t paying attention.  Here’s how I’m able to have a day like that, record it, and then get right back on track…

After you enter all of your food for the day, My Fitness Pal tells you what you’d weigh in 5 weeks if everyday was like that.  Since I’ve started recording on the site, the pronouncement at the end has always been a weight lower than what I was.  But not on Saturday.  Instead, it said, “If every day were like today…   You’d weigh 181.6 lbs in 5 weeks” which is 4.6 pounds higher than what my weight was on Saturday.

Definitely enough motivation, to not let a “free” day turn into guilt and then turn into another day and another day and then a week and then a month of not paying attention.  Resulting in gaining back weight that I’ve worked so hard to get rid of.  That’s what I used to do.

But that’s not what I did this time!  Thank you God, that you’ve been working on my heart.  Thank you God, that you are enabling me to accept my imperfections, to confess my overeating, but then to move on and not get immobilized by it.  Thank you God, for tools like MyFitnessPal.com and for my friends who use it too, because they help hold me accountable.  But most importantly, thank you God, that you love me no matter what I weigh and no matter what I eat.  (But I’ll admit, that I love myself more, when I’m not eating out of control…)

Pressing on together,

♥Becki