It’s Monday, so that means it’s time for another weight loss check in for me. I went into my Weight Watchers meeting yesterday a bit leery about how I would actually do given I’d lost over 6 pounds total in my two previous weigh ins. In the past, whenever I had two really good weeks like that, I would usually either maintain or even have a small gain sometimes. I’m thrilled to report that wasn’t the case this time! I was down another 0.8 pounds this week which is practically a full pound. 
As I mentioned in last week’s Metal Monster Monday post, I was kind of hoping to hit a total of 8 pounds gone for the month of April with my weigh in this week. I fell a bit shy of that goal, but I still managed to drop a total of 7.4 pounds this month and I’m very pleased with that fact! 
I certainly didn’t gain all this weight over night, so I’m not expecting to lose it overnight either.
Honestly, I’ll be thrilled as long as I can lose an average of a pound per week, as will my doctor. He’s told me repeatedly that he would like me to shoot for about 1 – 2 pounds per week which is right on track with what Weight Watchers recommends as well (1/2 – 2 pounds per week). The orthopedic surgeon who did my knee surgery a couple of weeks ago would be thrilled with that as well. He told me during one of my visits that for every 10 extra pounds of weight one carries, it puts THIRTY extra pounds of pressure on the knees. Wow! Yeah, that’s some motivation.
At my meeting yesterday, the leader was encouraging all of the members to really take advantage of the free eTools membership we get as monthly pass holders. Up to this point, I’ve mostly used my eTools membership only for tracking purposes and for using the Recipe Builder to calculate PointsPlus™ values for recipes that don’t include nutritional information. One of the areas she specifically talked about were the various challenges that are available in the Community section of eTools. I thought that sounded pretty cool, so I decided to check it out when I got home from the meeting and grocery shopping.
After putting away my groceries and making a bite of lunch, I settled in to cruise around eTools. Jacki (my leader) was right. There are TONS of challenges out there! After searching around for a bit, I decided to join in on three different challenge that I think all sound pretty cool and very attainable (Note: must be an eTools subscriber for these links to work):
I think they all seem pretty straight forward as to what each challenge entails. Just to be safe, I’ll give a bit of detail anyway as well as my plan for each challenge.
Cook Up Something New – In this challenge, participants are encouraged to make at least one new recipe per week. I’m going to expand that a bit and make it be either cook a new recipe or try a new food. By participating in this challenge, I hope to break out of my typical rut of eating the same foods all the time. I’ll try to remember to update each week with the new food/recipe I tried.
Since this is now a challenge goal for me, I spent part of the afternoon looking through a new cookbook I purchased recently. It’s called Eat More of What You Love by registered dietitian, Marlene Koch. I flagged a LOT of recipes I want to try because they sound soooooo good! One of the things I love best about this cookbook is that each recipe includes not only the basic nutritional information, but it also includes diabetic exchanges and PointsPlus™ values. How good is this cookbook? Well, it just hit the New York Times Bestsellers list yesterday coming in at #13 in the Hardcover Advice & Misc. category! If you want to get an idea of what her recipes are like, check out the free recipes section of her website. If you’re interested, she’s also on Facebook and Twitter.
Lose 10 Pounds by the 4th of July – Initially I thought that seemed like a pretty low weight loss goal since July 4th seems a long time from now, but then I did the math and realized it’s only nine weeks from now! Given that means losing an average of slightly more than a pound per week, it doesn’t seem so low anymore. 
I’ll actually be going on a cruise to Alaska in the latter part of July and would love to be down 15 pounds by the time I go on vacation. I have 11 weeks until then, so if I’m really diligent in my efforts, I can meet this goal as well since that averages out to less than 1.5 pounds per week. It won’t be a “give me” goal, but it’s definitely not out of the realm of possibility either.
OP Every Day in May – I basically decided to join this challenge in an effort to help me reach my goals outlined in the previous challenge. For those unfamiliar with the OP acronym, it stands for “on program” or “on plan” depending upon whom you ask. I’ve always considered it as on program. Here is what OP will mean for me during this challenge:
- Track my food in eTools every day.
- Do not exceed my Daily Target/Weeky Points Allowance limits for the week.
- Check off all of my Healthy Guideline check boxes every day.
That last one will probably be my biggest challenge. I freely admit I’m horrible about getting in my healthy oils. It’s extremely rare that I check off the oil boxes, so I want to work on that.
Well, that’s my check in for this week. Here’s to another great OP week!
Until next time …
I also found one other new thing that I decided to try:
