Fitbug or rather Fatbug!!

Well I'm not quite back to normal but I'm getting there: My knees only started aching after walking 4km of the 8km I covered this morning so that's a great sign.  I'm hoping I'll be back doing some much needed sweaty cardio this weekend, pretty please. I promise not to go too crazy on my beloved knees.

But since I don't have training to keep me occupied in the evenings, I have found that my old friend the Snack Monster has returned, every night without fail.  Not great. Not great at all. To prevent any more snacking, for tonight at least, I decided to complete my FitBug profile for today and quantify the exact damage of all this mindless eating.

For those that haven't heard about FitBug - FitBug is essentially a very precise pedometer designed to track your kcals expended, but the extra bells and whistles, such as the FitBug website that is also part of the package, track your calorie and nutritional intake alongside. FitBug set you weekly goals to achieve, monitor your progress and also run regular competitions and leagues to motivate you to increase your fitness and daily exercise. The current virtual FitBug challenge is "Walking the Great Wall of China" - 237 miles in 8 weeks - Bring. It. On. As you know, I LOVE a challenge, ergo, I'm so far loving the FitBug.

Basically you wear your FitBug device all day long - plug it in to your laptop etc to download the data onto your internet FitBug profile and input what you ate for the day by selecting your food from the database or by building your own recipe from ingredients. FitBug works out all the kcals and nutritional info for you, it won't, however, actually doing the cooking - for that I apparently need a house husband!!

Plus any foods you eat frequently - eg porridge, sushi, chocolate, salmon, pasta, porridge, sushi etc can be stored as favourites, to save having to keep searching the database. In total the whole process literally takes about 2 mins and it's completely PAINLESS, unlike squat jumps!

My FitBug still needs to run a few more days before it can accurately determine exactly how much of a pig I REALLY am! it can set my first goals for number of kcals in and daily number of steps to achieve. Plus you don't have to walk/run all the time, you can substitute steps for swimming, circuits, anything really - just input the details and the FitBug adds this to your daily tally.

Well this was me today:

My kcals in and kcals out are not quite the right way round for the magic weight loss equation I think.

As you can see for dinner, I basically consumed a hippo, it's baby, the entire contents of the fridge, and then some.  Actually I didn't eat quite that much but I did eat 90% junk today. BAD, BAD, BAD - I really, really must go food shopping tomorrow, so please let my bank card cooperate.

{My second discovery of the day was that being made redundant means that your Bank card stops working 10 days before the end of the month rather than 3 days - or is that just me?! Regardless I'm a Waitrose/ M&S girl no longer - instead I'm off to the Pound Shop/Asda for some more affordable and most importantly LESS calorific fare.}

If you're interested, here's the gruesome details of what I did actually eat today - the sweet tooth is back with avengeance:

I've never really been into counting calories as it's just been too much hassle before tools like this emerged. But since I have a FitBug for a free trail period (one good thing has come out of my job recently!!), I'm determined to make the most of it. 

BUT most of all, I'm D.E.T.E.R.M.I.N.E.D. to cut the junk food and the CHOCOLATE out my diet - really THE STORY OF MY LIFE ;-)) xx