Is it going to work this time?

Out of all the diets that I've tried, there's only one that truly worked. It was slow-going, tedious, and a lot of work, but all in all it gave me the best weight loss and I kept the weight off a lot longer than I usually do. What is this magic diet I speak of? Weight watchers!

You need to understand, I'm not a member anymore. I'm not paying for classes or meetings or website privileges. A few years ago I joined WW at work. If I completed the 6 week course, my job would reimburse me half of what I paid. At the time I was up to 212 so I was desperate for anything really. And I'm cheap so that was appealing too. After the meetings were over, I had lost 20lbs. Not a huge number, but more than other time I've tried to lose weight. I've tried it a few times since, but all that calculating and writing things down SUCKED. I'm a lazy dieter. I don't want to put much effort into it. Which is why it probably never works haha.

Luckily for me, I still have my WW calculator. What's funny is the program has changed and the way I come up with my points now isn't even correct anymore. But it worked before, so I'll take a chance that it can work again. My husband and I both need to lose weight. WW is the only thing I can think of that might give us a passing chance. Here's the thing with the program, in case you know nothing about it - you can actually eat bad food once in awhile! Not a lot of it, but you are allowed extra points, and if you want to use it for a few slices of pizza, or, in my case, a 6 pack of Hornsby Beer, go right ahead. Can you see it's appeal? Of course you can!

Don't make the mistake of thinking it's easy though. It's still a diet. We started on Sunday, exactly 7 days ago, and my stomach is still rumbling. The damn thing doesn't understand that the food I'm giving it is the correct portion size. It yells at me constantly! My husband is always complaining that he's hungry. And honestly, we're not starving ourselves. We're eating the portions that normal people eat. Our bodies just don't get it yet.

There's a lot of work involved with losing weight. I need to keep us accountable but motivated. It's silly - you think getting thin would be motivation enough, but it's hard when you have a husband that's still incredibly attracted to you and tells you you're beautiful every day and still wants to get it on ALL THE TIME. haha. I don't always feel like I need to change! It's only when I see the photos that I realize how bad I've gotten. Plus, I've gained 75lbs since we met (10 years ago) and I know deep inside he'd love to see that girl again. So anyways, here's what I've done to help us stay on course this time:

-Each of us have a notebook. Every day I write down everything we eat, the point values, and what bonus points we have left, if any.
 -Once a week we weigh ourselves. Sunday actually. Then we fill in the pounds lost on this spiffy thermometer measuring, uh, thing that I made:

And..... it's sideways. Once I get this blogging thing down, I'll get better at that.

- When we've reached 20lbs lost (which is our first goal), we get rewarded! We'll draw a prize from a bowl. It's stuff like $20 at Hobby Lobby, or Full Body Massage. Just a little something. We'll increase the prizes for the next goal of 40!
-We're taking measurements of our bodies monthly to see if we're losing any inches. That's just for fun. Oh, and don't forget the monthly before and after pictures. I hope those will steadily improve.

This isn't all either. It takes me twice as long to grocery shop since I'm having to calculate points and compare products. And then, when I get home, it takes me twice as long to put all the food away because I have to calculate the points and write them on the packages. It makes it much easier for later on. Any time I prepare a meal, I have to consult both of our food journals to see exactly how much we both can have. And you always need a few points left over for dessert! So as you can see, this is WORK. But I'm giving this diet a lot of attention and details because we need it to work. If by this time next year, I'm down to 150, then all this time and effort I'm putting into this will be worth it. That's what I keep telling myself anyways.

And if you can tell from my horrible sideways picture, we've lost weight our first week! I've lost 3lbs and David has lost 4. We're doing excellent with eating right but not so much with the exercising. In our defense, it's 108 degrees outside. Just walking out to the car can give us heat stroke. We live in an apartment so we've gone swimming a few times. We have an exercise bike too. I always thought that using one of those would be easy, but no one ever tells you how much they make your ass hurt.

I'm making a healthy lasagna for dinner tonight. I'll post the recipe and try to link it later.

I'm so hungry!!!!