Dedicated to Heidi, for being awesome!

I wanted to share with all of you what I was surprised with this morning on my way out the door to the Weight Watchers meeting.  Kristi, my fiancee, and I live with our friend Heidi in her house. Heidi is also one of my bridesmaids. As I said in a previous post, Heidi is also doing Weight Watchers, and is very supportive and a great inspiration for me, especially with her fancy cooking ideas sometimes! This morning she surprised me by leaving a great big inspirational message on a wall of her kitchen that she made into a chalk board.  This psyched me up for the meeting and certainly started my day off well.  She knew my goal today was to hit 10 pounds and while I didn't do it, seeing this really made my day! I wanted to share with everyone, and to say THANK YOU HEIDI for your friendship and your support! I should mention that she also put a piece of Press n' Seal on the glass slider door to the porch that said "Good Luck Sarah". So awesome. :) Below is a picture of the chalkboard surprise from this morning, sorry for the "inside jokes" but you get the idea! Pretty awesome huh?

I couldn't help but share it with you all! :) So as you saw in my last post, I had sort of a rough morning, which could easily start my downward spiral for the week. Instead of allowing that, I took a little nap to reset myself, and spent some nice quiet time with Kristi.  Once we were hungry, I went and made us a delicious healthy lunch.  Very simple: A sandwich (turkey deli meat, cheese, light mayo and lettuce), fresh fruit (apple and pear) and veggies (cucumber and carrots), light ranch dip, and a sweet ending with a 2pt chocolate cupcake (made with club soda) that had sugar free banana pudding in the center, made by Heidi.  See below for a picture of our yummy lunch!

Not sure what the rest of the day will hold, but I'm feel much better than I was earlier. A loss is a loss and 1.6lbs is nothing to be ashamed of!

Not Quite...

Well, my goal of at least 2lbs didn't quite work out this week. I lost 1.6 pounds, which I know is still a pretty good loss after 2 weeks of big numbers, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little upset.  I know I can do this and I know that I'll likely reach my first 10lb mark next week, but I really wanted to hit it today.  Oh well, the manicure I was going to treat myself to will have to wait a week. That's something else exciting - I've gone since 2/20/12 without biting my nails - something else I've struggled with my whole life! On my BFF's birthday we went to get manicures (2/20) and it's sort of embarrassing paying someone to manicure nails that are bitten so far down they cannot even file them. So, I decided to stop biting them. And I did. Yay me! Next week they'll get pampered as long as I lose at least 0.4lbs which I cannot imagine not doing.

So, after the meeting, my MOH (Maid of Honor) and I went to grab something to eat at Denny's because it's right down the street from our meeting location.  I wasn't really in the mood for breakfast, and since it was after 11am, I thought it was late enough to have lunch.  I decided on the Hickory Grilled Chicken Sandwich.  I thought this was a decent choice as it was grilled chicken, tomato, lettuce, a slice of american cheese, and a sweet hickory spread. Boy was I wrong. I got home and went to update my tracker...I looked up Denny's nutrition information and was shocked to see this sandwich is 24 points!!!!!! I thought it was going to be about 15 or so.  It's only 2 less points than a bacon cheeseburger! Ugh. Sometimes I guess you just don't know.  Oh well. Fortunately I'd only used 3 points on a granola bar for breakfast, and I can do a big salad with dinner to make up some calories and points.  I have 55 daily points so 24 isn't too bad, but I just didn't expect it. Ouch. Fortunately for me, and my love of bad Denny's food, our meeting location is changing next week to South Nashua, and there are different options to eat there...

Now I'm home relaxing for the day with Kristi, and trying to convince myself that a 1.6 pound loss is still a solid step in the right direction. I know it is, but I think setting myself up for hitting 10lbs was a bad idea because now I feel like I failed.  Oh well, this next week will be a good one. Less eating out, more meal planning, more fresh veggies, less salty snacks, and more weight loss. :)

A Wonderful "Date Day"

Today was an excellent day. My fiancee, Kristi, and I decided to go to Nashua, NH to pick up a comic book she really wanted (yes, really wanted...she's a "bit" of a geek, but I love her anyway).  Since we were going out, we decided to make it into a full afternoon and evening. We went to the comic book store, we returned a broken impulse buy at Old Navy, and got some great clothes on sale for Kristi (Military style winter jackets for $4.19, and other amazing deals!!), we went to the Used Bookstore that was having a sale and got a bunch of CDs and books for super cheap (6 books and 3 CDs for $11!!).

We then went to see 21 Jump Street with AMC passes that I got on Groupon for super cheap.  I was a little snacky when we went to the movie, which can be dangerous. We got a diet coke (0 WW pts) to share and also tried out the "healthy snack box" they're selling which is a granola bar, a small 4 point bag of Popcorners (popcorn chips), a bottle of water (which we traded for the diet coke as we were both craving soda), and dried 100% fruit.  We thought this was a great choice. They ended up being out of the granola bars so we got 2 little bags of fruit instead.  We didn't eat the Popcorners, but both tried the fruit crisps (not great) and shared the diet coke.  This was much better than popcorn and candy that we used to get!  Plus, for the diet coke and food it was only $7, which is much cheaper than soda, popcorn, and candy.  21 Jump Street was pretty darn hilarious!! If you haven't seen it, you should.  I won't spoil anything but there were many laugh out loud parts! Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are fantastic together, and the other actors/actresses that ended up being in it that we didn't know about were all awesome surprises!

After the movie we decided to use one of our other Groupons that was a $10 for $25 certificate at Feng Shui in Tyngsboro, MA.  This is a new venue for them, but knowing how good the Chelmsford, MA locations was, I bought it.  We were not let down tonight.  It was very tough looking at all of the options and staying away from anything fried, like delicious chicken fingers, tempura, crab rangoon, fried rice etc.  I think we did okay, and hopefully my choices show that on the scale in the morning.  We got chicken lettuce wraps to start, then I got a cup of Wonton soup, then I ordered beef with broccoli (the broccoli was steamed).  Kristi got a "Imperial Couple" dish that had steamed broccoli, shrimp and scallops with a light pepper sauce and a bunch of different cut up onions. She also got a small spicy tuna roll.  We both took over 1/2 of our entrees home too, so we didn't over do the eating at all.  I know it's still not "healthy" but I think we made some great choices, especially when you compare it do what we used to order when we ate at, or ordered from an Asian restaurant.

Now we're home relaxing and watching The Hangover II before bedtime. Thanks to Groupon for great deals that combined a great date day with my fiancee! :)

Tomorrow at 10am is my weigh-in, and I'm hoping, like I said before, for at least 2lbs so I can hit the 10lbs lost mark! Goodnight blogger world!

Just for fun, here's a pretty amazing picture of me proposing to my then, and now, fiancee at our Engagement Party. She had proposed to me about 3 months earlier and I shocked her with a return proposal at our party. Our friend snapped this picture perfect moment...

Weight Watchers Meetings and Blog Success!

Good morning everyone! It's a sunny day here in Central Massachusetts, but sadly the sun doesn't mean it is warm. Oh well, it's a new day which always means a chance to continue on track, or get back on track if yesterday you fell off track a bit.  Fortunately, this whole week has been good for me, and with my weigh-in tomorrow, I'm feeling pretty good.  As I said in my first post last night, I've lost 8 pounds as of week 2, and I wanted to track my weight loss on my blog.  Check out the top of my blog - there's a new "weight loss tracker".  I have set it up to track my progress towards my first hundred pounds. I realize this is a big goal, but I'm going to celebrate all the milestones in between too, I promise! I'll be updating my "ticker" every week after I weigh in at Weight Watchers, and hopefully every week we'll see me get another step closer to my first hundred pounds.

Thank you so much to everyone that has read my blog since I posted it last night. I didn't expect to see the stats I saw this morning! Check this out...





Pageviews by Browsers

Mobile Safari 63 (44%) Firefox 29 (20%) Chrome 22 (15%) Internet Explorer 14 (9%) Safari 10 (7%) Mobile 3 (2%)

Pageviews by Operating Systems

Android 63 (44%) Windows 60 (42%) Macintosh 10 (7%) iPad 5 (3%) iPhone 3 (2%)

Pageviews by Countries

United States 132 Australia 4 Canada 3 Germany 1 Japan 1

Pretty cool right? To have people in 5 countries looking at this, and to have that many views is pretty awesome. Obviously I know some of these are the same people viewing it a few times, but either way, I'm still so thankful for your support and especially to those of you that commented on my first post, or on Facebook, you all are amazing. No, I won't bore you with these stats moving forward, but I was just really excited to see how many people looked at this over one night!

So, a little about Saturday morning meetings. Our meeting is at 10am in Nashua, NH with a pretty awesome group of people and a very inspiring Leader.  The meetings start with you getting on the scale to find out the results of your week.  The ladies that help with this process are great and they quietly let you know what your results are.  Sometime's they're a little louder if you've had a great week, which I don't mind at all! After you weigh in, they give you any updates on Weight Watchers (WW), hand-outs, any contest details etc.  You also get a name tag and if you want, a weekly tracker.  I don't take the weekly trackers because I use the Weight Watchers mobile site on my Blackberry and it works perfectly to track my food when I'm not at my computer.  I love the updated WW eTools site by the way, and I'm sure I'll talk about that sometime too!  After you're done with the weigh-in process, you grab a seat somewhere in the meeting area and wait for the meeting to start. I usually get there about 15 minutes before the meeting so I have time to weigh-in, and it's nice to hear some of the conversation that happens around the meeting room too. Everyone is so supportive and welcoming.  I've only been to three meetings but I'm already starting to feel part of the group.  It helps that there is a Facebook group for anyone that goes to meeting with our Leader, and there are over 370 members on that site. It's like an amazing 24/7 support group, which some days you really need!

Once the meeting starts, our Leader goes around the room to ask about anything that happened during the week. She's mostly looking for NSVs (Non-Scale Victories) or set backs. I don't know how many people are in my meetings- I'll have to take a better look tomorrow, but usually 5-6 people speak up about either successes or set backs.  Our Leader then moves onto the topic of the week.  Last week was all about "What Works For You", which is also what each "Weight Watchers Weekly" pamphlet is about.  This topic is good because it shows the flexibility of the WW program and how you can alter it to fit your lifestyle.  After our Leader gets through talking about the week's topic, she asks to hear about weight loss successes over the week. Anyone that has hit any milestones is asked to speak up.  Every time you hit a five pound goal you get recognized with a silver star sticker, so people always announce those goal milestones.  Every 5%, 10%, 25lbs, 50lbs, 75lbs, and 100lbs (and so on) there are other little awards that you get too, so they want you to announce those achievements too. The last 2 weeks I have raised my hand to share my success. The first week I lost 3.4lbs, which is a solid first week. The second week I lost 4.6lbs, which got me my first 5lb sticker! I hope to reach 10lbs this week, with at least a 2lb loss...we'll see what happens tomorrow!  After someone has shared their victories, everyone claps and cheers, and sometimes you get a standing ovation! It's very motivating! Then, once everyone has shared that wants to share, the meeting is over.  After the meeting there is another little meeting for new members during their first three weeks to review different aspects of the plan. As last week was my third meeting, I am now done with these.  So, that's the meeting in a nutshell!

I'm not sure what today will hold for me, but I'm hoping my nerves don't get the best of me tonight. Last time I did WW, I was weighing myself almost daily at home to make sure I was staying on track.  This time around, I am not using a scale at all at home, so I have no idea how the weight is going. I have to trust the system, my determination, and just see what happens on Saturday mornings! It's actually nice to be surprised at the meetings when I lose a good amount of weight, but I'm not sure how I'll feel if I have a low week, or even a gain, which can happen for various factors, not necessarily because you fell off track.  So, tomorrow is the weigh-in, and I'm hoping for at least a 2lb loss, so I can hit 10lbs lost in 3 weeks. :)  Cross your fingers for me!

Hope everyone has a fantastic day, and to any of you who go to WW meetings this week, I hope your results are what you wanted to see!

A new beginning...

I'm 29 years old and do not want to be over 300 pounds when I turn 30 on January 3, 2013.  I discovered I was 306 pounds in January of 2006 when I was admitted to the hospital with a blood clot. I was shocked. I hadn’t been on a scale in a while. I had just turned 23, and I’ve gained weight every year since, sometimes losing some of it, but mostly gaining more.  I wish now that I was only 306. I'm not sure I'll admit on here what I weigh, at least until I'm under that initial goal of being under 300 by 30.  About three weeks ago I rejoined Weight Watchers to take an honest look at my life and make informed changes to better my health and lifestyle. My first week I lost 3.4 pounds and the second week I lost 4.6, for a total of 8 pounds in two weeks. I'm off to a great start! I've always struggled with my weight, since I was a kid.  I've tried many times to lose weight, but typically end up gaining it all back, and then gaining more.  I cannot keep living like this. I have an amazing support system between my fiancée, friends, and family so there is no reason that I cannot succeed.  I will succeed. There is a lot I want to do in my life, and my weight should never stop me from accomplishing my goals.

Welcome to my blog.  The first hundred pounds are only the beginning, and I will be taking this one day, and pound, at a time and not letting a huge number scare me off track.  Every five pounds I lose while on Weight Watchers, I get a cute little star sticker, and some rowdy applause, at the meeting which makes me feel great about my progress. Every 10 pounds I lose, I'm going to give myself a mini reward, such as a mani/pedi, or something else special, but staying away from food rewards, at least for now.  When I reach 25/50/75 I will do something a little bigger and when I reach 100 pounds, I may even throw myself a party! Want an invite? Then please follow and support me on this journey. If you are someone that knows me, even if only through this blog, then I ask you to hold me accountable and check in with me to see how I'm doing.  It's time to say goodbye to this weight forever.

I’m very lucky to say that I am engaged to an amazing woman who is supporting me through this, along with my entire bridal party.  All four of my girls in my bridal party, along with my fiancée, are all doing Weight Watchers.  I go to a meeting every Saturday morning with my Maid of Honor and one of my Bridesmaids. I don’t think I could ask for more support. It’s pretty amazing. My fiancée and I live with another one of my Bridesmaids, in her house, so our whole house is Weight Watchers friendly too, which makes a big difference.

The Biggest Loser this year is all about “excuses” and while I don’t think that the show has actually proven many excuses wrong, I am going to attempt to do so.  There are so many excuses out there for why someone cannot lose weight.  They don’t have time. They don’t like to cook. They don’t have the money. They don’t have support. They don’t have the willpower. They don’t have the motivation. It’s hard. It takes too much effort. They had a bad day so why bother. They have too much to lose so why start.  The list could go on.  I have an answer to each of those because I’ve dealt with all of them.  I’m here to stand up and face every one of my excuses head on, with the support I have surrounding me, and prove that excuses are meant to be proven wrong.  I hope you’ll join me on my journey.  Through reading this blog you may learn new things about me (depending on how well you know me), you may get some fun recipe ideas and you will likely see me at my best, and at my worst sometimes too. Through it all, I just ask that you support me and do your best to keep me on track. I couldn’t do it without any of you that are reading this, for various reasons.  So, in advance, thank you.