Hi, my name is Neon Runner Girl and I’m addicted to tracking my fitness.

Just a week ago, I was telling you all how much I loved my new Garmin vivosmart. I had high hopes that it would end my days of a glitchy fitness tracker. The fitbit lasted a while, until the clip broke and the battery started draining at an alarming rate. My vivofit gave me fits (har har) every couple of months. I was plagued with battery issues. I thought a chargeable device would be better. Nope. Yesterday before lunch, the vivosmart screen froze. It got stuck on a notification. Then it died completely. I plugged it in when I got home from work and got it to connect via USB to my computer. That unfroze it, but then the swipe feature to move through screens didn’t work. I can double tap it to turn it on, but that’s it. It still appears to track steps and will sync via bluetooth, but the screen is kaput. I sent in a work order through Garmin so we’ll see what they say. Unfortunately I can’t return it because it’s 16 days old today, and Best Buy’s refund policy ends at day 15. Of course.

So here comes a big decision. I’m giving up tracking my fitness. No more counting steps. No more counting calories. I’m done. I’ve got a regular watch on today and it feels weird. Adjustment periods stink. I’ll track my workouts, my runs, my bikes, my swims, my XTing. But that’s it. Instead of focusing on everything, I’m going to focus on my goals of completely the marathon and hitting 1000 miles run in 2015.

To be honest, I’m 5 pounds up from my goal weight. I always tend to hold on to a couple of pounds during a harder training cycle. I usually don’t let it bother me. But my clothes aren’t fitting quite as well as they were a few weeks ago. My energy has dipped a bit. I’m just not at my usual fighting weight and I can feel it. I used to think tracking my calories would help me out, but I think it’s a crutch. I log a workout in My Fitness Pal and I see that as an excuse to eat a bigger portion at my next meal or grab a handful of Chex Mix while I wait for dinner to cook. I conveniently don’t track when I have a small soda with lunch or a glass of wine with dinner. So when something stops working, stop using it.

So here’s the new plan of attack for getting Neon Runner Girl back to fighting weight.

1. Portion control. The food scale is my friend.

2. Smaller meals. Breakfast. Snack. Lunch. Snack. Dinner.

3. Eliminate after meal treats. Bye, bye post-dinner bowl of cereal.

4. Eat when I’m hungry and worry less about sticking to a schedule.

5. Strength train. More about this in a future post.

6. Stretch EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

7. Meditate. Take some quiet time for myself every day. Also…get outside during my lunch break. I was so sluggish yesterday and then after 30 minutes of sitting outside during the boys’ run practice, I perked up. I think my vitamin D is low! Darn treadmill running!

What do you do when you get in a fitness slump? Are you also addicted to fitness tracking?