Who Said This Was Going to be Easy?

Three weeks ago I started this thing called DietBet. I mentioned this briefly in my last post, but this is an online program where people go on and bet a certain amount of money that they can lose 4% of their body weight in 4 weeks. There is essentially a number of different ways that these DietBet owners verify that your weight is correct and by the end you can either have one winner or multiple winners in which you would split the money between them.

A week before my particular DietBet began, I thought losing 4% (8.2 pounds) in 4 weeks would be a piece of cake. That's 2 pounds a week. On the DietBet website you can post your weight throughout the 4 weeks. Although you can't see other contenders' actual weight, you can see how much they've lost and how much more they have to lose to reach their goal. By the middle of week one, over half of the contenders had lost 1/4 of their goal weight. Me? I gained a pound. Now I am at the beginning of week 3 and people have hit their goal and still losing and I am still sitting at the same weight that I started! How is this possible? The bad news is I have 2 weeks to lose my 4% and the last week is Thanksgiving and we all know how that goes...

Saturday morning I woke up and weighed myself. I have consistently been running/walking and now running more than walking and I thought I was surely going to start losing some weight. The scale told me otherwise. I set out on my run afterward feeling very discouraged thinking this is a perfect example of why people quit trying to lose weight when it is so hard to lose it in the first place.

After spending some time on the porch after my run/walk thinking, I came to this conclusion: I'm putting to much emphasis on the number on a scale. Losing weight is a priority for me, but creating a healthy routine that I'm going to stick to is more important. Weight loss will come eventually. I ran into an old friend from high school that has been running for a little over a year now. She told me that when she first started she couldn't run one block. She just finished her first full marathon two weeks ago. SHE has become my new motivation. Not this DietBet game. Not the money. I don't want to feel bad about myself because I couldn't lose the weight. And that was the direction I was heading each time I stepped on the scale. Feeling like I'm letting myself down time after time. Forgetting about the previous night and what I had accomplished by running 9 blocks instead of 7. Those are the things I should be focusing on and celebrating.
My friend from high school was very kind in her words of encouragement and really made me feel like my goal is attainable. She said to me, "Just wait, eventually this whole exercise thing will become addicting. And not a bad addiction...the kind that when you wake up every day you can't wait to make yourself even better than the day before. It's addicting and it'll rub off on others. Just wait."

Apparently...

Apparently....

...when you post a picture on Facebook that says, "Monday is Whore" only a few of your awesome friends get it and laugh and A LOT of your not so awesome friends don't.

...God made fruit flies for the sole purpose of unleashing fruit fly hell on to your house and it will only take the strong willed to kill them all. Which leads me to my next point...

Apparently...

...I'm losing the war to killing the fruit flies...

Apparently...

...losing 4% of my body weight is harder than I thought. Gaining 4% however, is a piece of cake.

...losing 4% of body weight in a week and a half IS a piece of cake for my 42 contenders in the DietBet challenge that I paid $15 whole dollars to be in. How can a person lose that much weight in a week? I'm baffled...Let me know your secret girl.

...it's not possible to lose that much weight in week...they are just trying to sike me out.

Apparently...

...it's working.

...I need to not worry so much about the numbers on a scale and more about the fact that I can actually run longer than 30 seconds.

..."shuffling" is considered "running" in my book.

Apparently...

...according to Parker it's become opposite day every day at my house.

...I went home for lunch today and realized I'm still losing the battle to the fruit flies. They, along with roaches with survive the apocalypse.

Don't worry folks, next time we'll have a more meaningful blog. These are things I just had to get off my chest!