Just a little bit...

This week has been a bit frustrating with respect to diet and exercise. The scale gave me some kinda disappointing news and I felt like it had been a good week overall.

I came in pretty well under my daily goals for calories everyday. I even got on the bike for 45 - 60 minutes four times this week. And in the end, I saw very little movement on the scale:

243.0

Not even a pound. Ugh.

So I started looking for a reason. Well, actually, an excuse. I started thinking about how much sleep I've been getting (not much). I was thinking about how much I was on the bike (not enough). And even started down the path of thinking about how much fluid I must be retaining.

But when I pulled the data for the week from LiveStrong, I was faced with the real reason. And it's just like most times... the simplest thing is usually the answer.

Sprinkled throughout the data for each day are little servings of M&Ms, Mike & Ikes, and peanut M&Ms. But they don't contribute much to the daily totals and I still came in under the line, so what gives?

What gives is that I put in the 1/2 of a serving of candy when i first reached my hand in the bag and pulled out 10 pieces. But I didn't record the next 3 pieces.. or the 5 pieces I got fifteen minutes later... or the other 8 pieces right after dinner...

The point is, I justified not putting all those in because they were so small. But in the end, I didn't have 100 calories of Mike & Ike's that day. I had more like 300 or more by eating 30 calories at a time....

Again, ugh.

I know better than this. I've fought it before. Many times before. And it's time to get serious about it again if I really want to make progress.

What sorts of little things creep in and derail your progress?

Photo credit to Jenn and Tony Bot. (Definitely check out their photos over on flickr... Awesome stuff)