Recently I have been asked two questions by folks because my weight loss has become more noticeable.

1. Are you losing weight. Yes, I am working at it.

2. What is your secret?

I’ve thought a lot about the last question and how to describe what I am doing to get healthy and in hiking shape. Clearly there is no secret, but describing what I am doing in a short small-talk conversation is not easy. Here is what I have been using:

I eat right and control my portions. And I move.

Short and to the point. It may generate probing questions or clarification, but serves as a good summary. However, there are two other components that I really believe help keep me on the right track.

The first is maintaining a diary of my eating habits. With the exception of the travelling week (week 14) I have done a good job of maintaining an accurate account of what I eat. Over time it has become easier to estimate how much I am eating and yes, tracking restaurant food is always a pain, but I try to keep it as accurate and timely as possible. One quick note, this is a lot easier when mostly eating unprocessed or over flavored foods when dining out.

The second key item is my FitBit. I have described it as a super fancy pedometer, but in reality, it is like a personal trainer whispering in your ear that you need to move more. You need to get your steps in – otherwise it will be a yellow or even worse, a green day. This has a subtle influence to help ensure I take the steps when faced with stair-elevator option. It reminds me to take a little walk around the park when waiting for a sporting event to start rather than sit in the stands for 15 minutes. I know there are other products out there that do similar things, but this is what I have and it works wonderfully. I charge it about once a week and keep it on the rest of the time (sans shower and pool). It’s wireless sync is awesome and I have the home page in my IE startup favorites so I check every few hours to see how I am doing.

So if I update my spiel, it should look more like this:

I eat right, control my portions and journal my meals. And I move, tracking my efforts with my FitBit.

Not too bad and it may generate even more discussion. But there is one more component that is helping and that is this blog. By taking a few minutes to capture my thoughts, ideas, moods and progress, I am providing an outlet for all the work I have been doing. What prompted this post was a quick look at the post count per month. I started strong in July with a bunch of thoughts and energy but as other things kicked up, my post count dropped to just a progress report weekly, then every other week and with the last one every third week. I have found that I enjoy this and need to get back into a rhythm of writing.