Seeing as how I just started Sparking on Friday and all, it would be disingenuous for me to say that using the nutrition tracker has helped me to lose weight. (It may well have, but shoot me in the head if I become one of those people who weighs herself daily and tries to parse the meaning of each miniscule gain or loss. Once a week is plenty for me, thankyouverymuch).

That's not the end of the story, though. I AM already seeing and feeling two benefits from SP that make me believe that I'm really ready to do this weight loss thing: affirmation and accountability. I probably should list them in the reverse order, but it sounds better that way, and I'm a sucker for word flow. ;)

Accountability

I've done the food tracker thing before. I followed Weight Watchers for the first time when I was 9 (which probably deserves a whole damn chapter of its own, but we'll leave that for another day); I've done it every few years since then, and now I'm 32. You do the math. By this I don't mean to malign WW. I have nothing but respect for them, even if profiting off of our desperation about flab is slightly squirm-tastic. But Weight Watchers is a sensible program and I've lost weight reliably every time I've stuck with it. I've also tried FitDay and Figwee and several other online food trackers before. I lost about 30 lbs. with TOPS a few years ago. And so on and so on. Just about any weight loss program worth its salt has one requirement at its core, which can be pithily summarized as, "if you bite it, write it."

Right.

See, here's the thing. In my ongoing need to seek perfection (again, we'll tackle that one later), I've never been willing to document my less-than-stellar eating choices. At best this meant that I would have weird gaps in my food journals: the summer I was doing TOPS, I would reward every weigh-in loss with an Indian dinner. To read my journal, you'd think I just subsisted on 500 calories on Mondays, when the truth was I usually spent the evening with my whole head in a plate of medium-spicy saag paneer. And of course I had to finish the whole thing that night, because I couldn't justify pigging out on two meals and I damn well wasn't throwing any away. It made sense in my head.

But at worst, the documentation trap would be the Scylla (or Charybdis? my Greek mythology is rusty) of my lard-busting. I'd have too many meals or treats that were too "bad" to go in the diary, and the next thing you knew my weight loss program was a distant, chubby memory.

There's a difference this time. I don't know if it's because of SP or if I've suddenly, finally matured or what (I DO suspect that law school has shown me the futility of grasping toward anything like perfection), but this time I have vowed to write down every damn morsel. And there is no good or bad. (Why do I hear Yoda's voice in my head? Or Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters: "There is no Dana, only Zuul.") If I decide to get ice cream? In the tracker. The inevitable Indian food? In the tracker. I AM trying to stick pretty close to the food program for the first week or so, but not to be naziish about my diet, just to help me get jump started while I'm suffused with all of that newfound resolve. And I've already had to put my money where my mouth is: I've eaten the last 2 dinners out, thanks to being mere days away from graduation. After each meal I dutifully came home and did my faithful best to record what I'd eaten.

Affirmation

So that's accountability. The other big reward of using the tracker is that I've been reminded of how healthy my diet is already. My problem has never been forcing myself to abandon the food I love or to choke down that which I despise; apart from cheese (glorious cheese!) and the aforementioned Indian food, the food I love to eat and the food I should be eating have always overlapped fairly well. Don't believe me? I've never met a fruit or vegetable that I didn't like, and I can't be in the same room as salad dressing, sour cream or mayonnaise. I may be the only person under the age of 75 who actually LIKES All-Bran and regular oatmeal. I always always always drink about a gallon of water a day. And so on.

I'm not trying to be smug or self-satisfied here. I'm just trying to remind myself to take some pride in the healthy living stuff that comes naturally to me, since I spend so much time self-flagellating for the stuff that doesn't. This has become more evident as I go through my daily report at the end of each day and see how closely I've hewed to my goals without really killing myself to try. Sufficient fiber and calcium? Check. Proper balance of carbs and fats and proteins? Check (and I'm not one of those carb-denying fascists! Who asked Dr. Atkins anyway?). Reasonable calorie consumption? Erm, more often than not.

Anyway, I guess that the moral of this overlong story is that I dig the tracker, and I'll be coming back for more. But now it's time to make dinner.