It has now been a month since I made my $3000 weight loss bet at Healthy Wage. I need to lose 30 pounds in six months or I’m out $3000. If I win the bet I’ll get $600 plus my $3000 back. My first month of weight loss has gone great. My starting weight was 226 pounds and I’m now down to 214 pounds for a weight loss of 12 pounds in my first month. I’ve been consistently losing about three pounds a week. I knew I’d lose weight on my hike, but I was worried that I would still be able to lose weight once I returned home. I’m happy to report that I am still steadily losing weight even though I’m now home. The hike made it easy to lose weight since I generally only had access to the food I was carrying with me and I was walking about ten miles a day with thirty pounds on my back. Now I can buy whatever food I want whenever I want and my exercise has been cut back to thirty to sixty minutes a day. Despite the change I’ve still been losing weight.
When I returned home I was planning to go on the Slow Carb diet. My girlfriend is doing Weight Watchers though and persuaded me to give that program a try for a couple of weeks. I haven’t officially joined WW, but I am using their system by using my girlfriend’s WW calculator to determine how many points I’m allowed a day and to track my points. I like this program since I can eat whatever I want as long as I count it. Of course, if I eat certain foods they don’t leave many points for eating the rest of the day and if I crave a certain food later in the day and don’t have the points then I have to wait until the next day to have it. This requires just a little bit of discipline which is about how much discipline I’m capable of. I still need to eat better. Too much of my daily points is going to soda. I had no problem giving soda up during my hike, but started drinking it again when I returned home. I plan to reduce my soda consumption to one a day and once I’m consistently on that consider eliminating it completely. I don’t think one soda a day would be that bad. The problem is one soda usually makes me want a second soda.
I’m hoping with my Katy Trail bike ride and improved eating my second month of weight loss will be even better. If it is just the same or close to the same I’ll be happy with that too. I’ll keep you updated of my weight loss progress at least once a month or possibly more if people are interested.
12 pounds is incredible! Just don’t be discouraged if your 3 pounds a week goes to 1-2 pounds. They remind us of that in Weight Watchers all the time. Being in Vegas the next two weeks is a real challenge, so I’ll be lucky if I just maintain my weight. Keep up the good work Andy!
It did slow down to just one pound lost last week, but I wasn’t surprised. I’m obviously not doing as much exercise as when I was hiking and my eating wasn’t too good either. As much as I cheated on eating I was lucky to lose any weight at all. I plan on doing better this week.