Round up of Week 1...

You know, it wasn't altogether bad! I'm down 2.8 pounds, and frankly it's better than I expected. I've decided that cumulative strategies may be what works best. My most important strategy for Week 1 was to cut down on work eating. I'm not talking lunch, I'm talking about snagging a mini-Twix or bite-size Milky Way Dark when I happen by the room that houses a candy basket the size of Detroit!

Cutting out that kind of mindless eating takes a good deal of awareness. I wasn't perfect by any means, but I kept working at it. This coming week, while keeping the first strategy in place, I will be eating a large, healthy breakfast every morning and cutting my Diet Pepsi consumption in half. My Pepsi strategy will be to go ahead and drink that first bottle of Pepsi, but then to drink a bottle of water before having another Pepsi. This will keep the feeling of fullness going while cutting the amount of sodium and carbonation I'm ingesting. I hope to be off the "sauce" in a few weeks.

My fourth strategy is head-to-head combat. I publicly challenged a weight-loss nemesis at work to a weigh-in every four weeks until the end of May. We'll each step on the scale in the presence of a neutral third party who will declare the winner every 4 weeks. The loser pays the winner 10 bucks. So there is a $50 winning potential over the course of the wager.

To summarize strategies:
1 - Conscious effort to avoid mindless snacking
2 - Breakfast - large and healthy (egg whites, oatmeal or whole grain toast, fruit)
3 - Cut ingestion of diet soda
4 - Challenge someone! Not only will it give you motivation; it may also make it fun.

Let me know how you're progressing! M.E.