Wow, nice ! I didn't think people would be willing to do a chart like that, I hadn't even mentioned it before.
I have been tweaking my chart and system since early february I think. I finally came up with the right system for me, one that seems to work and that I can follow as well. It's no use aiming for 100% compliance to your habits, it's extremely hard to do and there will always be something that happens, people coming over, going to a party, that sort of thing ...
At first I was trying to have 85% compliance but I thought that was really hard to follow and discouraging when you were struggling to make it all the time. Besides I see I am losing weight on a regular basis just using the 80% rule so it's all good.
How it works, I do this both for the diet and the exercise separately but I try to have 80% for each one every month.
Green is worth 1 'unit' ... yellow, 0.6 unit, Red, 0 unit.
(I used to count 0.5 unit for the yellow days but I changed it to 0.6 later on, 0.5 just seemed too harsh, losing half the unit because I had a bagel for example.)
Exercise, A green day would be one where I exercised for at least 60 minutes, (often it is split in two sessions, morning and early evening. If I am too busy, it's raining or I miss a session I can do 60 minutes straight of course but most times I like to split. A yellow would be a day where I only exercised for 30 minutes. Red, no exercise.
Nutrition, Green day, I've been good all day long, following my diet closely, only eating what is written down on my piece of paper ... A yellow, mostly good but I may have added some things, a bagel for example (Yeah, I like bagels !) ... I wasn't 100% good but I wasn't bad either, there was still some effort during the day.... careful not to cheat too much though, cos' your yellow day will turn into a red one ! (You have to be honest with yourself too using this system, if you cheat too much, it's worth a red.) Red day, those I try to avoid as much as I can, days where I am bad (I only had 2 red days for the nutrition this month, my lowest number so far since I've been tracking this ...) Avoiding red days is the key to success. It is really hard to recover if you have too many red days.
For example you start the month with 4 red days in a row ... this gives you 0 unit and you still have to get 80% for the month ?? This means for a month that lasts 30 days, you have to get 24 out of the next 26 units ... to get your 80% compliance ... REALLY hard to do !! This is why avoiding the red is important, you can even get 2-3 yellows in a row and it won't hurt you as much as a red in the end.
...
A double green counts as a day where I am living a 'Monastic lifestyle' ...
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Green for the exercise and the diet, those are the most productive days, I have them regularly, especially in the 2-3 days following a red day ... or near the end of the month trying to make my monthly objective, it should be no problem this month since I limited the red days a lot, I am confident I'll be under 216 by may 31st, maybe even below 215 the way it's been going. I used to have an objective related to the double green days too, something like 60% of the days had to be double greens, but I stopped doing that after a while.
Anyway, you can count the days by hand or use a chart to track your score, make stats, my program compiles all that in seconds, I just have to indicate the numbers for this month and all the previous months remain in there, so I know what's been going on in the past month, the past 2 months and since I've started tracking this ... about 110 days ago ...
Using the Habitcal it is pretty easy, once in a while I update my chart to make sure I have at least 80% this month. If I am a little below or even above, I adjust, taking an intentional yellow for example if I am at 83%, lowers my percentage a bit ... I am fine this way and losing weight by being 'mostly' good ... at least 80% good, heh ! I never take an intentional 'Red' though, an intentional yellow once in a while is good to avoid getting too tired of following the diet and training regime.
Of course, this program is adjusted for me, if you want to do something similar you can adjust it for you, lowering or raising the %, lowering or raising the number of minutes to exercise, all that ... this is the program that is tailor made for me after a lot of tweaking, 80%, 60 minutes, etc.
Cheers !
Marc
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