Sugar-free Diet – Monitoring Progress

Sugar-free Diet – Monitoring Progress Part 1

When I am training, whether it is cardio work or lifting weights, I like to have a record of what has been done in terms of heart rate, calories burnt, reps and sets. I do this because it allows me to monitor my progress so I can give myself feedback on how well I am doing, or not be doing, as the case may be.  For my training, I look at progress over a period of time. If I fail to lift a certain weight one day then I fail to lift it and try again the next time. I don’t take all the weight off and start over at the beginning.

Whenever I have tried to give up sugar, I have never written anything down, in the same way, it’s all just been kept in my head. Keeping a record works for me from a training point of view, so I am introducing this to my sugar-free diet. Up until now, if I eat well and avoid sugar for 20 days then stop, in my head it’s a failure and I have to start all over again. Going forward I will offset the good days against those that aren’t and get the overall picture. There will no starting over, just progression and moving forward.

I am going to do this in two ways:

My sugar-free diet – Monthly Rating (bear with me on this)

• Every day I stick to the guidelines is + 1
• Every day I do not stick to the guidelines is -1
• At the end of every month, these values get summed up, then divided by the number of days in the month to give a percentage. Therefore:

Anything above 0% means more there were more days when I didn’t eat excess sugar than when I did. 0% exactly means there were an equal number of +1 days as -1 days, i.e. 15 x +1 and 15 x -1

A best-case month would be 100%, eg, 30 x +1= 30 / 30 days in month = 1, x 100 = 100%

A worst-case month would be -100%, eg, 30 x -1= -30 / 30 days in month = -1, x 100 = -100%