All I Have To Do is Track

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This morning, I want to give you the meeting summary from my Weight Watchers meeting on Saturday, February 11, 2012.

Only track on the days that you want to lose weight!

What a powerful statement huh? We all know that tracking is one of the foundations to the Weight Watchers plan. Tracking, holding yourself accountable for what you are eating makes a huge impact on your weight loss journey.

And yet, day after day, week after week we somehow find an excuse to not track. Why is that?

We as humans have a tendency to forget things, especially over time. If I asked you to list every single thing that you put into your mouth 5 days ago... How accurate would you be? Whether we mean to or not, we often forget some of the things that we put into our mouths.

Tracking helps you to stay true to your PointsPlus values.

Now there are many different ways to track. If you are a monthly pass holder, you can track using e-tools on the computer or on your smart phone. You can also use the awesome barcode scanner as well. You can track using one of the weekly paper trackers that you can pick up at the weigh in station, or you can stay for one of the power start sessions and get one of our colored trackers to use each week. We also have available a three month journal which will hold all of your information for 12 weeks. This makes it really easy to refer back to later to look up PointsPlus values of foods, and to notice trends in your weight loss journey. We offer electronic devices to assist with tracking. You can use your PointsPlus calculator to account for the foods that you eat, or we do have the clicker where you just push a button and click down with every PointsPlus value that enters your mouth until you get down to zero.

You don’t have to have anything fancy to track, all you need is some sort of writing utensil and something to write on. Maybe your style is more to make tick marks on a post it note. Or maybe you go to the store and buy yourself your own fun journal to document your foods.

Regardless of your method, what you’ll find is those that track lose 3 times as much weight as those that do not!

Think of how confident you feel when you walk in to weigh and you have tracked faithfully all week. Now...think of how you feel when you haven’t tracked a lick. Which one feels better? To have confidence in yourself and in the program really makes you feel good and that you CAN reach your weight loss goals.

Even if you really fall off the bandwagon, completely binge, and go extremely over your pointsplus values, tracking what you have done can be a big learning experience.

Once you see how many PointsPlus you spent on that one meal, you might really get an eye opener to help your brain realize that the food wasn’t that good and definitely not worth the cost. This might make you leery when you are faced with that same situation again.

Is tracking every single day easy...NO, but it will help you lose weight.

Your best bet is to keep your tracker close to you, make sure it goes everywhere you go so that when you do pop that chocolate into your mouth your tracker will be readily available to help you record it.

Another technique may be to pre-track your foods for the day. Yes it involves planning but for some, it helps them stay in control. What they pre-tracked in the morning, is what they packed for the day, so they are less likely to go astray.

In the meeting room we discussed upside down tracking. For most of us dinner is the biggest meal of the day. Have you ever gotten home from work wanting a nice meal and then not had the PointsPlus values for it?

Your day, and your PointsPlus values do not have to start when you wake up. Your PointsPlus values could start at dinner and end with lunch the following day. (5pm-5pm) That way you can always count on having that nice, large, hit the spot dinner. Then you can just adjust your breakfast and lunch to match the PointsPlus values accordingly. Your 24 hour range to use your PointsPlus values can start whenever you want it to maybe its 7am -7am, 10:30am-10:30am, or 8pm-8pm. As long as your “day” is accounted for and you are keeping track of your PointsPlus values.

Tracking is a huge part of the program. If you are not tracking, and you are not following the Simply Filling Technique, then you are not following Weight Watchers. Tracking is data information without it you are just taking a guess at the program.

So, we’ve established that if you track you’ll feel better. You’ll be more confident and peaceful. You’ll make better choices. It only takes a few minutes each day. It’s worth it to be able to lose more weight. Weight Watchers is proven.

What will it take for you to track (and track accurately) this week? Think of these great sayings: