One week into the diet, 4.2 pounds down. I lurve me some first weeks of a diet, when we big gals lose it fast. Soon it slows down to 1-2 lbs. per week like everyone else, but I’m enjoying the quick results now.

I’m not even going to theeeenk about the many pounds to go. Weight Watchers says I should be in the 120-150 lb. range eventually (and let me pause to wipe away the tears of laughter, since I passed “mumble-mumble” a long time ago on the scales). At least now I’m heading back down in the right direction.

This week’s weight: 261.6. (Note: Somehow — even though it’s written in ink in my WW membership book — I copied my weight wrong last week. It was actually 265.8, darn it.)

My successes this week:

• Eating lots more veggies as well as some fruits. Fresh stuff, not the sweetened and dried fruits I usually love to nosh on. (Okay, I’m still dipping some of the tart fresh fruit in a bit of Splenda, but a gal’s gotta transition.)

• Minimizing the number of Weight Watcher points I spent on carbs (how I love you, my starchy little friends, and your oily companion, “real” butter).

• Weighing and measuring everything. (Jeez, I don’t remember a tablespoon being that small.)

• Actually writing down everything I ate. (I don’t know how guys who use Weight Watchers do it. If I didn’t have my big ol’ purse for carting around my Weight Watchers’ food book, my points calculator, and my weekly journal, I’d so be sitting behind a bag of Cheetos right now.)

• Going to bed with my stomach empty, but not starving. I sleep better without having to flip around to find a way for my stomachful of snack to get comfortable. And no acid reflux to speak of. (TMI? Oh, it’ll get worse before this is all over.)

• Drinking glass after glass of water, on the advice of my kidney doc. A whole gallon of the clear stuff a day, if truth be told. I’m an aquarium with legs.

Things to do better this week:

• Integrate my meals more into what the family is eating.

• Transition to more plain water and less flavored water, and even less of anything else. (Last week I would drink one bottle of the flavored, then refill the bottle with tap water. This week, I’ll refill twice before slurping up the flavory stuff again.) I’m also adjusting to life without as much caffeine — just a cuppa joe in the morning or afternoon, and seldom any diet Coke (now it tastes funny to me, in a “what the heck chemicals are in there” kind of way). It wasn’t deliberate, actually — I just don’t have room for much else after all the veggies and the daily water gallon sloshfest I’ve got going on.

• Start going on actual (dare I say it) bouts of WALKING and other (ick) EXERCISE this week. I’m not going to go crazy with it like I usually do, thinking that if two laps around the park is good, then 10 would be fabulous. Exercise? Great! Crippling aches from trying to undo years of sit-on-my-assitis in one night? Meh. I’ll try to skip that.

• And I’m going to pay attention to what I’m wearing. Today? My khaki pants were just a smidgen looser in the caboose. Happy day!

Photo credit: capn madd matt

Technorati Tags: lose weight, Weight Watchers, diet

There’s NO good time to start a diet, begin a new eating plan, start watching your weight, weld some brakes onto the old food shovel … whatever you want to call it. You just start.

I’m usually guilty of waiting until I have the spare time, have gone shopping for healthful foods, have taken a “before” photo, or am not stressed out by work and kids and finances and other issues. But you know what? I never have much spare time. I’ll buy the foods I need and want as I need and want them. I can always take the fat photo tomorrow because, Lord knows, it won’t all be gone by then. And stress, like the poor, will always be with us.

So I nodded along with my inner critic last night, in total agreement with all her reasons why I should just drive straight home from work, and then I locked her in the car while I went in to my first Weight Watchers meeting in almost two years.

Weighed in at 261.8 pounds (that’s a size 26 in jeans, if I’m honest). [Update on 6-25-08: Just noticed this. How did I get something this fundamental to a diet post wrong? My starting weight was 265.8. Dammit.]

Listened to an extraordinarily peppy woman compare diets to a trip along Route 66, with detours, roadblocks, moments of being lost, and a journey that will get me where I’m going if I’m prepared, resilient, and determined.

And I came home with a plan.

I don’t intend to weigh down this blog (get it … weigh down … oh, never mind!) with oodles of dieting moans, but I will check in once a week to discuss challenges, progress, setbacks, and weigh-ins. My goal weight range is 120-150 lbs. I’m guessing — at best — it will take me a year to enter that range. More likely a year and a half. Or more. But any progress is good.

I started off this morning with that minty-fresh virtuous feeling of the first day of a diet. Let’s see where it takes me.

Photo credit: JumpinJack

Technorati Tags: Weight Watchers, obesity, fat, overweight, diet