Week 10 - Did I Lose 5 Pounds?

With a total loss of 3.1 to start the week I was well on my way to achieving my goal of 5 pounds lost in 10 weeks.  The question is, did I meet the challenge?

The weekend after weighing in I was a bit sloppy with my eating.  Saturday afternoon we went to a local festival and ate fair food. I overdid it a little but not with too much fried food.  I had 3/4 of a pulled pork sandwich, shared some fries and ate 3/4 of an ice cream cone.  When I was younger I could pack away the food but as I've gotten older, even when I was in my 30s, I couldn't stuff myself.  Over time my weight gain resulted from the slow creep of constant snacking as opposed to regularly overeating at one sitting.

Sunday we went out to dinner with friends but I had a plan to not overindulge and to just eat normally the rest of the day.  The food on the menu that I had pre-picked was not available and I ended up with a crab cake sandwich and a ridiculously large mound of fries.  It was delicious, but those things can sometimes throw me off course.  

The plan for the rest of the week was to continue counting POINTS.  If I cut them drastically from the 30 I was eating I knew I'd lose more weight, but I also knew myself better than that.  I knew if I got viciously hungry I'd quit and the whole thing would be out the door.  So I kept to my goal of around 30 POINTS, even if it meant I might not reach my goal.

I started most days counting points but on at least two days, one more than the other, I did somehow get ravenously hungry and just said forget it.  My heart wasn't in it.  

But I'm not throwing it all away.  And I'm not even mad at myself.  I am a little discouraged that I have such a hard time, but as I've said before, messy action is better than no action.

I'm already thinking about my next project/challenge for healthy living and weight loss.  I still want to lose more weight so I think I'll do something focused on that.  But I also want to incorporate some healthy living.  Of all the diet plans FlexPOINTS and WinningPOINTS have worked best.  It's just any sort of counting in general that just gets to me!

I have heard some people complain about Weight Watchers, saying it's not a healthy plan because of all the packaged foods.  They see people go on an off the diet and think it's not worth the effort.  To that I say, Weight Watchers is what you make of it.  You don't have to eat a single chemically laden morsel if that's not your thing.  You can keep it entirely pure and wholesome.  

The whole idea of the plan is, like I have said before, to create a calorie deficit.  You can increase or decrease your POINTS according to how you feel and how you are losing weight.  It's just a tracking system, one way to pay attention to what is going into your mouth.  Calories matter.  They are not the be all end all, but they matter the most when it comes to weight loss.

So back to thinking about the future.  What what sorts of goals would be good for my next challenge?  Macro goals?  Nah, not my thing.  I don't like getting into the super nitty gritty.  Fruit or vegetable goals?  Vitamin or supplement goals?  Exercise goals?  Or maybe I just do another 10 week challenge.  I do like those.

But the real question remains....

Did I do it?  Did I lose 5 pounds in 10 weeks?

Unfortunately, no.  I lost 3.1 pounds.  Not perfect but I'll take it.  That is an average of just under 1/3 of a pound per week.  Heck, it's much better than I had been doing earlier this year.

My sloppy attempts at counting this week did not allow me to meet my overall weight loss challenge.  I have been more cognizant of keeping fruits and vegetables as a regular part of my diet and I've also been conscious of not eating when I'm not actually hungry.  It seems that when I pay attention, even if my attempts are not exactly on target, I move the scale downwards.  That's a good thing. 

So where does that leave me?  What will my next challenge be?  Stay tuned next week and I'll have something new!