I'm having a really good day so far. I feel good, my eating has been good. It's all good!

I was up early early this morning but made the mistake of getting up to pee and then falling asleep again. 4 a.m. would have been way too early to get up but by doing this, I over slept a bit. Not enough that I didn't get my workout in though. I had intentions of doing a longer workout this morning but it didn't happen. Some days, I'm disappointed in myself for not doing more exercise, some days I'm really happy with my efforts and others, I have to remind myself that I am actually exercising, 6 out of 7 days most weeks.

A year ago, I could never imagine doing that. This morning, while I was exercising I thought about last summer...we had bought our recumbent bike in May 2002. When we first got it, I rode it every other day pretty much. Once the weather got hot though, I used that as an excuse not do do it anymore. I put it on hold until the fall. This summer, I just crank up the fan and do it. Mind you, I do it really early in the morning, before the sun's had a chance to get too hot. The key is that I do it. I take the odd day off but I don't let excuses get the better of me very often anymore.

Now, I know that Progress Prompts are for Mondays but they weren't up when I posted yesterday so here it is, better late than never, right?

Are you logging in all your food in a diary?

Yes. Although I don't have a diary per se, I use Fitday to keep track of what I'm eating and what I'm burning, everyday.

Do you enjoy jotting down every bite you eat or are you having trouble being consistent?

I like that when I input everything on Fitday, at the end of the day I see a breakdown of where my calories came from. The reports are very cool too. I try to be as accurate as possible for tracking purposes. I've now been doing this just over 6 months and it's interesting to see patterns of both eating and exercise, emerge from the data.

Do you think keeping a food diary is the key to successful weight loss? Why or why not?

For me, it's key. This is really the first time I have seriously committed to recording everything and I know that it helps to keep me on track. I promised myself to be brutally honest with it and I have been. I feel good when I'm having a low-fat, low calorie day and I rethink things when I see that my fat intake was higher than it should have been. It's one of the reasons I've been able to lose weight this time.