One of the things I did when starting Medifast was to agree with myself that I would track every day. Exercise, food, weight. I tell myself these things a lot, but this time, to keep myself honest, I started two things other than just tracking.
The first is this blog. By telling myself I'm going to write every day, I know I'll come to the site. And if I'm at the site, then I'll track. It doesn't hurt that tracking is so easy on Medifast, either.
The second thing I did was make myself a fancy spreadsheet that will track my weight, BMI, daily loss, weekly loss, average losses.
This has helped fairly immensely in my day to day... I had a workout night that I didn't drink anywhere near enough water, and I was up 1.1 lbs. I ate Turkey Jerky (off plan, but low carb and high protein!) and the sodium bloated me and I was up .1 lbs.
I drank a crazy amount of water and peed like a racehorse after one bloated weigh-in and lost 4 lbs the next day (after waking up 2x that night to pee). The next time I worked out I ate lower sodium, drank more water and high a mild loss after workout and then dumped the water the next day, and was down a little more.
In addition, I took initial measurements of Neck, Biceps (relaxed/flexed), Belly, and Thigh. I'll be tracking those numbers every two weeks.
All of this detail is probably overkill for some people, but I'm using it to organize and analyze and these things are keeping me on track much better than I would have expected. I'm also hoping that by holding myself accountable like this, that when I see a plateau or a gain, I'll be able to recognize why it happened and deal with it much more quickly.
Once I'm off Medifast and into transition and beyond, I think I'll continue to weigh and measure, if nothing else just to make sure I'm maintaining status quo and not starting to backslide.
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