New Year, More Joy Beginning of Week 4

It is Monday, and it is the beginning of Week 4 on Nutrisystem. 

Weight: 173

**Disclaimer. I don't reread this posts before I publish them. I figure write it and hit the button before I have time to regret being candid. So yes, there might be typos and run-on sentences. That's Keepin' it real, right?!

Now, I should be SUPER happy about this, because that is a total of 7 pounds lost since January 14th. That is good! However, because I tend to weigh myself every day, I get to see my weight fluctuate down, and then back up again. Also, last week at this time I was 174.6, so that is at least some improvement. The problem comes from that first magical week where every day I stepped on the scale I was down at least half a pound-ish. 
To combat this, I finally made myself take some before pictures. I have some photos from New Years Eve with friends, but these I took today are the horrible, tell-all photos of front, side and rear view. I was wearing jeans and took off my sweater to reveal just a tank top, so it is close enough to the sports bra/biker shorts photos some other braver women decide to post. I might cut my head off (the photo, I mean) and stick the photos in this post later. I know I will be glad I did so in a few weeks. I also need to find my measuring tape and take a waist measurement, at least.

So, the main thing here is to focus on what has been accomplished overall, and a 7 pound loss in three weeks is nothing to fuss about! If I lost 7 pounds every three weeks, I would be at 140 pounds in about 15 weeks, or about 4 months. Even though I want to go lower than 140, I remember feeling pretty fantastic at 145, so that is exciting me! 

It was too time consuming to type up a summary of my every day eating, so I decided to try to keep it up weekly. The past two weekends have been challenging because of different events (birthday parties, company, sickness, etc) but I stuck to the diet pretty well! I even got H.K. to start looking closely at what she is eating so that she can shed a few pounds and try to feel better. At eight-years-old, she is focusing mainly on healthy eating, not losing weight. I don't even talk about it as losing weight. I mention it as a byproduct of eating healthy--a bonus. This is what we have learned together:

Big "Ah-ha!" moment for us both is: just because the food is something we consider to be a healthy food, it doesn't mean we can eat it in unlimited amounts. For instance, if I wanted an apple with peanut butter, light yogurt, whole grain cereal, low fat lunchmeat, etc., I would just go grab it--all day long. Sure, I was making healthy choices, but my portion sizes were twice what they should have been, and my caloric intake was probably twice what I am doing now. H.K. is learning the same thing. I tell her we have to make a plan to eat everything! If we know we want apples and peanut butter, we plan for it during the day. 

I told her to treat calories like an allowance. She gets $1200 per day. Some foods are super expensive (like that $400 bag of buttery popcorn she ate the first day that left her with 12 calories, or $12 for dinner). Of course I didn't starve her that night, but she had to eat a healthier dinner, only get water the rest of the night, and skip dessert. Looking at calories this way has really hit home with her. And even though Nutrisystem doesn't require you to count calories, it has really made me aware of what even one little stray item on my Daily Tracker can do to my plan. Hardly ever worth it. 

Also, only a couple of people know that I am doing Nutrisystem. For some reason I still want to guard it as my secret until I can't hide it anymore--because of the huge transformation, of course! My mom did find out, because they stayed the weekend with us, and she decided to order also! She started today.

I am thankful that I pushed myself to write this today. I get discouraged by the scale because I want everything to happen overnight, but now that I see how much I have lost, what I am learning about eating, and how healthy habits can affect other people in your life, I am so excited to continue this journey!