Last week was a tough week.  My desktop computer died on Tuesday. J had a minor car accident on Wednesday. Our regional sales reps were in town for meetings, so work was busy.  Needless to say, I cheated on quite a few meals this week and probably consumed way too much candy!  I still managed to hit the gym twice this week, and the weather was in the 70’s on Monday and Tuesday which allowed me to spend half my lunch break both days walking with my pedometer.

I stepped on the scale yesterday and wasn’t surprised when I didn’t see any weight loss. I’ve still been loyal to myfitnesspal.com and logging every meal every day, even the cheats and the bad ones.

Today I looked back at how many net calories I was under my weekly goal for each week so far this year.  As of right now, this week I’m under 4041 calories. Last week was 2874.  The week before was 2805. And 2340 was week one of the new year. 1536 was what I did the first week I started.

Why was this week almost twice as much compared to the rest?  Well, on Monday I hit the gym and walked and my total calories were under one thousand by the end of the day. Wednesday was about the same – except it was just a stressful day and I didn’t eat much because of everything else that was going on. And today’s total was even lower thanks to a great breakfast, healthy dinner, and a nice workout at the gym.

According to the CDC, taking in about 3,500 calories less than you use will burn 1 lb. of fat.  That means that if I want to lose 1 to 2 lbs. per week, I’d need to cut my calorie intake by 500 to 1,000 calories per day. So, I think that if I can get my net calories for the week up to 5,ooo I’ll start seeing a bit more weight loss.

It’s a hard balance, but February is already here and what counts is that I’m still motivated!  Where are you with your weight loss goals so far this year?