8 Week Challenge - Week 2 Results

Start: 225.8

Week 1: 224.6 < 1.2 lbs >

Week 2: 223.2 < 1.4 lbs >

Week 3: 0 < 0 lbs >

Week 4: 0 < 0 lbs >

Week 5: 0 < 0 lbs >

Week 6: 0 < 0 lbs >

Week 7: 0 < 0 lbs >

Week 8: 0 < 0 lbs >

Total Challenge Loss: < 2.6 lbs >

Looky there! My turkey grew another "feather." It was for recognizing the areas I could change within my daily tracker to improve my eating habits.

So yesterday we discussed what activities we can do with friends that don't involve food. If any of you know anything about me or my family or church family, you understand that I grew up in the mindset that "Anytime we get together is a good time to feast." Church functions always involve food. There's always a carry-in dinner for something. My immediate family? We always get together for dinner when we socialize. And my neighbors? When we get together it's over a fire pit or for smoking some meat, can you say beer & s'mores? Yes... we are social folk that LOVE food.

So we broke into groups and wrote down different things we could do with our friends that didn't have to involve food. Our group had a lot of great suggestions. Walking, shopping, playing card/board games, crafting, going to the pool. There were quite a few things. Sure, some of those things could involve food, but they don't HAVE to.

I'm not sure what my mini goal for this week is going to be. I mean, I generally don't have many opportunities for socializing during the day with the hubs schedule and weekends are off the table since he's working. Being it's getting colder out we can't hang as much outside with the kiddos... Man this seems a lot harder of a challenge when children are involved.

You know, I just might check with my good friend and see if she wants to wander around downtown and do our own little photography walk.

8 Week Challenge - Week 1 Results

This past week had it's ups and downs. I started out on a rough note, but ended on a high.

We focused on our meal trackers this past week and here's the pretty & ugly side of my nutrition habits. :)

So, here's the skinny on what I learned from my tracker this week.

• I CANNOT handle eating those extra 49 weekly points in one day. My body literally cannot handle it. I felt sick as a dog for two days after I did that to myself and I will NEVER do that again.
• I really enjoy eating a good hearty salad.
• I'm getting better at throwing in a variety of food so that it's not "the same old thing" all the time.
• I'm addicted to peanuts.
• I need some help still. 

So at today's meeting we shared our trackers. The leader handed them out at random to other people and we discussed what we were seeing. As for me, I fessed up in the beginning what I had done and oye. After the meeting the lady who had my tracker brought it back to me. She knew it was mine from the pizzadent. Anywho, she asked about the protein bars and commented that maybe I should try drinking more milk. I politely segued into something else because I didn't want to discuss it with her.

I could go into here, but let's just say I will NEVER drink skim milk AGAIN. EVER. My husband & myself have vowed to drink whole, local produced milk after doing some research on just what skim milk is made of. And for the sake of points, I do track the milk I use in my smoothies, but I log it as skim even though it isn't. I don't drink smoothies every day either. Nor do I enjoy drinking my points away...

After I finished that conversation I took my tracker to my leader and left it with her. She is going to look it over and make some notes for me on ways I can improve my eating and where I should & shouldn't spend my points. I'm excited and nervous to see what kind of feedback I get. While I truly love Weight Watchers I will never be able to endorse every aspect of some of the items they deem "healthy" based on a lot of research. Sorry, I will end my rant now.

So, what's up with the paper turkey you ask? As you can see, he now has one feather! I earned that feather by tracking all week long. Isn't he cute. I can't wait to see him get all of his feathers. So how am I going to get next weeks feather?

This week we are supposed to move forward and work with our tracker some more. Last week as a base point, if you will. This week we need to sit down and be more goal specific. What do I want to get out of my tracker? What changes can I make now that I've observed it?

My goals:

• Never EVER eat Freddy's & Pizza (or gorge on pizza) in the same day. EVER!
• While I love my protein bars when I'm in a hurry and can't fix breakfast, I really need to lay off relying on them. There are quick breakfast meals out there, I just need to put forth the effort and fix my breakfast.
• I rely heavily on the snacks in between meals and need to remedy that. Most of my points are going to snack foods with no real merit.
• I have to stop staying up so late and eating a late snack. Have to.

It's funny what you can learn, if you just take the time to sit down and look.

8 Weeks Till Thanksgiving Challenge

At my meeting Tuesday we were introduced to a fun new challenge. Eight weeks to get to Thanksgiving, eight weeks to see what we can do. We have been given a new challenge for each week and our leader is sticking it to us. LOL.

So, she showed us this FABULOUS visual of butter sticks, but before I get to that... Our leader made us pee our pants as she described how she actually attempted to "string sticks of SOFTENED butter" and was going to attempt to wear it around her waist to show us what 4 extra pounds would look like. Bwahahaha.

So the visual chart showed a ton of butter sticks stacked. And the gist is that it equaled four pounds of weight. And if you only lose a half pound a week, in the next eight weeks that would be four pounds gone from your body. That's pretty darn cool.

So, I haven't read through the entire challenge article...yet. But rather am going to take it one step at a time. And I feel moved to blog about it, so you get to read about it. LOL.

So I have now committed to this eight week challenge. Our leader has asked us to track for 7 days (I generally do anyway) and print off our trackers for the meeting Tuesday... Sweet, easy enough; no problem.

Oh crap... Uhhh, well you see I have a confession. I committed to this challenge and then being so pissed about my lack of loss yesterday I sort of bombed my meal plan...HORRIBLY. As I have NEVER done before since starting this program. It wasn't just "sorta" bad, it was awful. But I have to own up to my own stupid mistake.

For those who don't know, as part of WW you are allotted a certain amount of points per day, as well as an extra 49 points that you can use as you see fit for the entire WEEK. I generally do not touch those extra 49 points. As of this post I am at a daily 35 points and some times I struggle to get all of those points eaten daily. But I digress...

Yesterday:

Sigh, I have committed to NOT letting this happen again. Yes, I am human and allowed to splurge, but that was a little bit beyond splurging. :( As if lunch weren't enough I said screw it to dinner as well. I had NO vegetables, NO fruit yesterday and I'm pretty certain I only drank one third of my water allotment. I have however turned over another leaf, and I am committed.

I certainly could have swept this under the rug. But who am I kidding? We are all human and we are allowed to make mistakes. I'm certain I'm not the only one out there, but I want you to know that just because you may slip up one day, doesn't mean it has to undo everything you've worked for. And yes, I will be printing this off for my leader... *shudder in fear*

I worked my ass off for those 50+ pounds I've dropped and just because I said F-it yesterday doesn't mean I'm going to stop. I will progress, I will move forward and this challenge will help me do that. {For the record, this mornings 50 pound post was scheduled ahead of time, so it was totally coincidental that I screwed up and had to post about my boo boo the same day.}

I'm sure you're wondering what's up with paper turkey? So are we. LOL. Our leader handed one out to every one and told us to be sure to bring it back next week. She followed that up with "I'll get you some plastics so you don't get your turkey wet." ????? A small group of us had to question that. What are the turkey's for and what would we be doing with them that they could potentially get wet? LOL. She quietly whispered that there are EIGHT FEATHERS on that turkey...hint hint and perhaps that turkey might end up with some feather stickers on it. Wink Wink.

Ooooohhhhhhh. Okay.

So next Sunday I'll post that weeks challenge from the book and take it from there. I have no real layout for this challenge since I haven't read through it, but I'm kind of excited about it!

So what can you achieve in 8 weeks? I'm pretty certain I will pound out those pesky 4 pounds of weight!