It’s actually kind of pretty. The snow hasn’t been all that bad today since the temperature has hovered around freezing all day. Some of the snow is melting, compacting as you go. It’s a little wet to shovel, but luckily all I had to shovel was from the back door to the BBQ (not very far).

skinnywanna - that’s why I don’t set goals for a week, or a month, or whatever. As long as I’m eating well and exercising, it will come off. You can all remind me of this when I hit a plateau!

mizu - it’s not such a bad day. There’s very little wind at the moment. The snow is just drifting down slowly. Regular exercise has always been my downfall. That’s why I decided once I got into it in January that it would have to be a daily thing. I’m always afraid that if I give myself a day off I won’t go back to it. Hey, the time in December and January add up to 83 miles of walking. Now that’s impressive.

theheather - I wasn’t arguing against the point, I think I was agreeing.

justdeb - thanks. I think knowing that people check in occasionally keeps me just a little more committed.

Well, it’s snowing and blowing up a storm outside. The neighbour and his daughter were shoveling the walk when we were going out to Costco. His daughter parks in our driveway (in exchange for shoveling the driveway in the winter). They actually lucked out with our last large snowfall as another neighbour had just bought himself a snowblower and must have done three or four other driveways. Costco was pretty empty, in fact, the most empty I’ve ever really seen it. I got more veggies than I usually do and a couple of lunch meats, so we’ll see what I come up with at lunch. It’s amazing though, the smoked turkey my mother buys is 24.50 a kg (kg=2.2lbs). The smoked turkey at Costco was 13(something) for their house brand, and 15(something) for Cuddy. I ended up buying the Cuddy one just because I remember that the Kirkland Lake one was okay, but not great.

So, I did a January wrap-up using this morning’s weight.

• calories per day: 1950, calorie balance: -1237 per day
• treadmill: 35h 30m, calisthenics: 45 mins, weights: 1h 35m
• avg daily exercise: 73 mins
• weight lost: 9.8 pounds

And December was (counting from the 7th only):

• calories per day: 1766, calorie balance: -1371 per day
• treadmill: 6 hours, calisthenics: 30 mins, weights: 20 mins
• avg daily exercise: 16 mins (yikes)
• weight lost: 12.0 pounds (this is typical for a starting period)

It just goes to show you that FitDay is only a reasonable judge of calories burned. For December I should have lost only 9.8 pounds (although the start of the diet is always faster). It also tells me that I should have 11 pounds instead of 9.8 for January. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy with the weight lost as Dec 31/Jan 4 were completely off plan. I just can’t resist looking at the overall numbers. What I’m most interested in is keeping an eye on the calories in (aiming 1800 - 2000) and the exercise mins (73 per day in January). The calories actually ended up higher than I expected because I caught an error partway through the month. I’d been recording 90% lean ground beef and found out that the Costco one is actually only 85% lean ground beef. When I adjusted the recipes using it that bumped my count up. I think that’s why I always tell people to be very careful about counting calories. Guessing usually ends up guessing low. That small difference took a 252 calorie hamburger to 297. It’s not a huge difference, but they add up.

Anyway, that’s enough of the math lesson for the day. I’m off to get some exercise in before lunchtime.

3pm - still snowing….