We should be working in our favorite meals into our daily diet -- using portion control and our food data to learn how to make them lighter (if necessary). For eating right to be a habit that we keep doing forever, it has to include our favorite foods and our personal and family traditions.

Otherwise, it's just another temporary diet that will end in regain once it is over.

Recapping my week -- logged 7/7 days, doing well staying in the low half of my maintenance leeway, summer humidity is here. Keepin' weight off! Keepin' activity up!

Finally stopped ignoring the literal weeds in my literal garden and put in 45 minutes of weeding in lieu of walking -- now 2 days in a row. Fewer steps on the counter but the body still got it (and the garden needed it).

Who's lurking? How was your week? Let's hear it!

I started CICO, once again, mid-May at 160 pounds. Now at the end of June, I'm down to 153 lbs.

We have heard it so many times that it sounds like a weight-loss fact: eat less, move more as if both are equal and required. But that is not a fact, as people who are bedridden and cannot move more could not lose weight. Another problem with this fact is that it is self-reinforcing because our own experience tells us that eat less, move more has resulted in weight-loss for us.

So what is really going on here? Let's flip this on its head.

1. We cannot diet our body strong. Physical activity makes our body strong.
2. We cannot outexercise our food intake (at least, not unless we're extreme about it). Order that dessert in a restaurant. It takes 5 minutes to eat 750 kcal, about 7½ miles worth of running food (and that's 45 minutes if you run like me, probably 30 if you're good). No, losing weight is mostly managed by decreasing our incoming calories rather than exercising them off.

Thinking of those two things in the negative helps us make this clear:

• Physical activity is primarily for managing our fitness. Lift for strength. Walk/run for endurance. (Lot of options in the areas of exercises, sports, physical jobs, hobbies, and lifestyle patterns.)
• Eating right is for managing our body's weight. More for more, less for less.

Breaking them out into these two separate fields, instead of together, helps us see which tools belong to which job.

You might observe that these do have some overlap, but in that overlap there is both the complementary and the confounding. Exercise burns calories but also makes us actually hungrier and psychologically feel needy and deserving of more food. For this overall reason, we can make this statement:

Managing our food is required for weight loss. Exercise, mainly for fitness, and if the food is managed, it can secondarily help in weight loss.

That way we're clear. We prioritize better. Rather than run to lose weight, we run for endurance and conditioning. Running to lose weight is the wrong tool for the job. If we understand that, we won't quickly answer a failure to lose weight (a long plateau) with even more running. We'll still run if we enjoy it or need that training -- it's healthy and good for our fitness. If not running, we must do something else to be fit and healthy. Next to quitting smoking and losing weight, exercise is just about the best thing you can do for your health.

To lose weight, focus on the diet and primarily the diet. And since we don't just want to lose weight but to become and stay a right weight forever, let's not "go on a diet" temporarily but forever fix what's wrong with our eating and make it right. We do this with smaller adjustments to our regular normal food and our normal eating patterns, and not on mostly "weight loss" food or weird schemes.

Then, to that working change to our lifestyle's forever diet, the exercise that we do can also be assistive (but not primary) in weight loss.

Two things make you feel less hungry, longer. And that's fiber and protein. So what's something portable like an apple that I could buy a lot of and eat at work or whatever? Like I could buy a lot of apples and eat them anywhere, and while they have fiber they don't really have protein.

Fell off the wagon for a few weeks. Just eating like shit. Not keeping track of anything in my app. Got back on yesterday. Went over on my calories but my weight has stayed below 200 which I'm grateful for. For my height and build I should be around 170 and I'm recommitting to getting there. As it is I've only really come down from 205 in the few months since I first started using LoseIt.

I know beer is the biggest contributor. I've just got such a taste for it and I'm very bad with moderation when it comes to anything addicting like that. Sugar, soda, just anything that's a "well maybe just one" kind of treat. You know it's never just one but also, the more you consume it regularly the harder it is to say no.

The bright spots though are that I've been exercising more regularly (decided at 35 to try and skateboard again, which is one hell of a workout), and that I've been taking extra steps to make sure I've got healthy food within reach at home or at work. I'm also trying not to overeat. We went to Olive Garden last night for a celebration, and I only had half of my chicken parmigiana because that's how much made me feel full. A less CICO conscious version of me would've eaten all of it because that's what was on my plate. As it is, now I've got tasty leftovers for tonight.

Thanks for your time. I believe I can do better. Root for me, please.