Lose 20 pounds

I forgot to post this, but I’ve been doing pretty good on my weight loss contest (even though my partner gain 2 lbs last week). I’ve lost 10 lbs in four weeks, so far. So, I’m halfway to my 20 lbs goal! Of course, once I hit that mark, I’ll be setting the next 20 lbs mark… but, at least I’m not trying to do it all at once. I mean, it’s a lot easier to say “I want to lose 10 lbs this month” than it is to say “I want to lose 100 lbs”... because then I’ve set a big number goal but no definite date to accomplish it.

Well, I weighed in this morning. I lost one pound. Everyone keeps saying “Well, at least you lost weight instead of gained weight,” but I still feel upset with myself, regardless. I could have done so much better than I did. I can’t blame the vast difference between last week’s results and this week’s on anyone or anything but myself. Yes, I’m glad I lost at least one pound. But, I’m still disappointed in myself. I’ve got to do much better than this if I want to effectively lose weight and keep it off. Besides, I want to win the contest, too.
My weight-loss partner hasn’t weighed, yet, so I don’t know how they did. I hope better than me.

Well, not really… but it seems that the weekend is when I do the most to unravel my weight-loss plan. I didn’t do too bad this weekend, but there was one night that I ate a few things that I shouldn’t have. So, I’m hoping to make up for it between now and weigh-in day (Thursday) by drinking lots of water and watching what I eat. During the week, it’s easy to stay focused on eating the right things. The weekend is different, it seems. There’s too much opportunity for me to stray. Is it because I’m home with nothing to do and that makes me bored? Maybe I need to plan my weekends so that I’m busy doing something instead of just sitting around? I should give that a shot…

Well, a week ago I joined a contest here at work. I weighed in that day and had my weight recorded. Since then, I’ve drank a lot of water and watched what I have eaten. No fast food, no high-fat snacks, just regular food. When I weighed in today I had lost 5.4 pounds! I’m pretty happy about that! I realize that this is a lot of weight to lose in a week (I bet the majority was water weight that I’ve shed) and that I shouldn’t expect to lose this much every week. I’d read that losing an average of 2 pounds per week was the most effective and safest way to lose weight and keep it off. But, I’m still happy that I lost instead of gained!

I joined a weight-loss contest here at work. I’m on a team with another person. The contest lasts about 12 weeks, I believe. It actually doesn’t start until Thursday, which is weigh-in day. Since I’m starting today, I’ll just use my weight today as my starting weight on Thursday. I’m hoping to lose at least five pounds between now and next Thursday. One major thing that I’ll be doing is drinking a lot of water. I love water, and drink it more than anything else. However, I need to drink more than what I’ve been doing lately. I’m also going to be carefully watching what I eat. For the past several weeks I’ve been skipping breakfast and lunch and only eating something when I get home from work. I know this is bad, I just didn’t seem to have time to take a break and eat anything. But, that’s going to change since I’m making more of an effort to manage my time and I will be forcing myself to take my lunch break while at work and use that time to relax and eat something.