It's really tough to do 21 days in a row ... 21 days straight where you are extremely good and focused, no red flags at all ... and sometimes you can't avoid it as well, when there are holidays, birthdays and stuff.
You still made a lot of progress so it's all good in the long run.
I usually have 3-4-5 days in a month where I get red flags, nobody's perfect. Even in april it has been going really well so far but I still had 2 red days, (Nothing really terrible ! A couple extra slices of pizza, a bagel and some cookies I wasn't supposed to have that sort of thing, I am still doing really well in april, even better than what I was expecting when I set my objectives for the month on april 1st) The exercise helps a lot though to avoid gaining weight back and erasing mistakes in the dining room.
I'll try to only have 3 red flags during the entire month, that would be my lowest number of red days ever in any particular month (I had 5 in feb. and 4 in march) ...
I don't have off days from No S, no weekends, no holidays, no nothing ... a red flag is a red flag, I don't care if it was X-Mas eve, it's still a red flag for me, crazy, right ?
![Wink ;-)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
A few yellows as well, where I may have cheated a lil' bit but nothing excessive, like having an extra bagel with butter on top I wasn't supposed to eat, you see. If I had the weekends off it'd be easier but it would slow down my progress, so I don't want that, even if it's much harder.
I am not doing this to be miserable though and I know if I am good the vast majority of the time and I keep on exercising, there will be improvements ... I have a weigh in tomorrow morning so it's not a good idea to have a red flag today though ... I'll post the result, I expect it to be good since I haven't cheated really.
4 green nutrition days in a row since the last weigh in and I have been cycling and SHOVELGLOVIN' those 4 days as well, except for one day where I only SHOVELGLOVED, no cycling (That counts as a yellow square for the exercise). Intense cycling too, it's not sight seeing let me tell you. 30 minutes straight I am doing intervals hard on the bicycle path and then I am done. Best way to lose weight and fat, you go hard and fast for a while (I do that for 15 seconds, basically going as fast as I can, well, 85-90% really, 100% would be dangerous !) and then you slow down a lil' bit (30 seconds, where you work at 35-40% of your top intensity) , rinse and repeat - hard - easy - hard - easy ... My mp3 player let's me know the intervals, when I need to speed up and slow down ... more effective than to slow roll at the same pace for 1 hour or more accroding to all sorts of studies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_training
This is tough. Kicks my butt every time, crazy ! Much harder than to always keep the same 45-50% of your maximum speed the whole way (even if you do it twice longer) ... I'll probably do intervals only 3 times a week top cos' it's so tough and it's not something you should do daily anyway. The other 2-3 times I'll do regular cycling or I'll work out inside when the weather is not appropriate.
I track all this with the HabitCal. 7 green squares and 1 yellow for those 4 days (Exercise + Nutrition) so I am optimistic. I probably need to slow down a lil' bit anyway so I don't lose too fast until the end of april. If I go a lil' nutz in the next 2 weeks I'll lose 9-10 pounds in april when my original objective on april 1st was to lose 6 pounds this month. (Updated to 7 recently)
Marc