20 Pounds Gone!

Last Friday I achieved my goal! 20 pounds gone since March 1st!!!!!!! It was weigh in day…and yes, I have been a closet Weight Watchers member. The only person that really knew I was on this journey was my dear husband. It wasnt necessarily a secret, I just felt I would be more successful if I just did it and not talked about it. I was very skeptical when joining this program. After all, I have young kids in the house, I really do not like to focus on my weight or a number on the scale. I really think “diet” is a four-letter bad word. Mostly, I love to eat, and thought how could this possibly work?  But, I had decided it was time to drop some pounds, something I had wanted to do for a long time.  Having 4 babies in 7 years was a bit tough on the body.  I had also suffered from plantar fasciitis in both of my feet for almost a year.  I went through months of physical therapy, icing, electronic stimulations, massage, and with the help my wonderful physical therapist, I am now pain-free. Those months with limited exercise certainly didn’t help my situation and for some reason last March, I decided it was time. I actually lost the first 10 pounds by myself , by literally working my tail off and tracking my intake religiously. I upped the ante on the workouts, became best friends with the elliptical, walked miles and miles and regularly did weight lifting. I used an app on my iPhone to track calories. This tracking became very eye-opening. I thought I knew what I was eating, but until I actually recorded EVERYTHING, I really had no idea.

Summer arrived and I felt I hit a plateau, I joined Weight Watchers to help me finish off my goal. The plan basically gives you a set amount of “PointsPlus” to consume based on your weight and height. What I like best about the program is the ETools program you can use online and on the smart phone. I mainly use it on my phone, but it’s basically a  tracking program. I also like the plan because it’s not a restrictive “diet” or something where I had to purchase or only eat certain foods. I’m a foodie after all, I wouldn’t like being told I couldn’t eat something. I still eat everything I want to, just in limited quantities. It’s really just held me accountable. This summer Weight Watchers came out with an activity monitor called ActiveLink. It monitors all of your activity in a day and gives you a goal for each day.  You can actually see how much your moving and I could get a better idea of the physical activity I was getting. Being the digital girl I’ve become, I surprisingly loved all  this tracking and monitoring!

I’ve met my Weight Watchers goal and have maintained it for 6 weeks. Yahoo!  I’m pretty proud of my accomplishment!  That makes me a “lifetime” member at Weight Watchers, which means, the program is now free  for me, even the Etools! I think that’s pretty awesome too. I am not an official “spokeswoman” for Weight Watchers, but I’m here to say it works and it’s a pretty great program. My journey has really just confirmed things that most of us know already, I just needed some reminding. Moderation and movement, it’s really just a lifestyle, about making healthy choices.  I will feature recipes on my blog from time to time that I have made PointsPlus calculations on and I will continue to look for tasty and healthy recipes to share with you and your family.