When I started taking note of my regular weight, I loved seeing the numbers go down, and hated when the numbers went up. Sounds obvious, right? What I didn’t realize at the time is that body weight fluctuates based on a ton of variables. Many things, you have absolutely no control over, and don’t need to feel bad about. This is a really important lesson that I needed to learn.

For me however, especially as I was just beginning to figure things out, I couldn’t get past the feeling of sadness when my weight was higher than the day before, and so I knew I needed to change how I weighed myself. So I made the decision to weigh myself every single day, and track losses based on an arc.

I figured if I could see my average weekly weight, that would allow for some ups and downs without being too concerned about a higher weight on a certain day. I decided to just mentally ignore my daily weight. Whether it was higher or lower, I just entered it into a spreadsheet. Every Saturday, I would focus on my weekly average, and I consider that my actual weight.

Week after week, my average weight continued to be lower than the week before, and that’s really all I needed to see. It solved my problem of worrying when one day was higher than others. Looking back after filling up my spreadsheet for an entire year, I am extremely proud of myself. I love seeing all of this data and knowing that I did this. I lost all that weight and I know exactly how I did it.

When you look at my data, you’ll see how much I ate on any given day, along with my weight for that day as well, resulting in an average weekly weight and average weekly calorie count per day. At the end, where it shows the amount I lost, it also includes the number of calories I burned per day to equal that loss.

In the entire year, there are only 3 weeks where I gained weight. Once was following a long road trip with obviously very little exercise and eating out, and the other 2 were very small and completely insignificant, probably just because my body needed time to adjust from a big loss the week before.

I am very excited and proud to show off an entire year of weight loss data. I have learned how my body loses, and what is required to maintain those losses. I know that a higher day is not the end of the world, and I know that if I keep doing what I am doing, I will reach my goals.

Most importantly, this has helped me learn that one day of indulging in awesome food or snacks does not break the entire week. It’s okay to live a little. Weight loss is not judged by the day. It’s judged by the lifetime.