The glass is more than half full

Okay, so in a lot of ways I'm a pretty optimistic person. You know- "the glass is half full" and all of that. And that seems like it would be a pretty good thing. Well, for the most part it is. But, sometimes it translates as, "this shouldn't take me very long to do.." or "my house isn't THAT dirty" or "I'm sure we've had family prayer and read scriptures MOST days this week". When it really gets me into trouble, though, is "I eat pretty healthy", or "I didn't eat THAT much today", or "surely this can't have THAT many calories", or "yeah, I worked out pretty hard, on most days of the week". Yea. You can see how a pattern of this could add up to trouble. And it does. This is why I really, really, really have to keep track of things. I have to write down everything I eat. I have to record how much excercise I've done. I have to look carefully at calories. I still have to measure my food sometimes to get the right serving size. I have to. My kids joke that I'm a calorie nazi. But I have to be. I can't just "try to eat healthy" or estimate my calorie intake, because I estimate way way too optimistically. For the past almost 7 weeks now I've been taking part of the Iron County Weight Loss Challenge. It's been interesting, and good motivation for me. More on that later, though. My point is that someone at the challenge mentioned that they track their calories on My Fitness Pal.com. This has been a life saver for me. I enter what I eat and my excercise every day, and it figures out the calories, etc. for me. I love it. Someday I hope to get to the point where I can be realistic about food and eat healthy without tracking every bite I take. But for now, tracking has helped balance out the eternal optimist in me.