My first weekly check in! I plan to post weekly on Thursdays and will always include my weight loss/gain (-/+) for the week along with how many pounds I have left to goal. I’ll also include some sort of insight for what I’m doing on my weight loss journey or what obstacle or struggle I might be facing.

My aim is to be real and vulnerable. I almost didn’t start this blog for fear of NOT hitting my goal. I do know this journey is never linear, so I know there’ll be some obstacle posts I’ll have to write and that’s a good thing. I learn best from obstacles, not perfection and I think that is the same for others. In fact, I have started to look at obstacles as an opportunity, and I think it is that resilient mindset that has kept me going with this weight loss journey which I started towards the end of 2019.

I started my weight loss journey in 2019 when I joined Weight Watchers (“WW”). I used to go with a friend from work and weigh in night was on Wednesdays. As a pizza addict and chronic overeater, the WW plan of you can eat anything in moderation wasn’t hugely successful for me. It felt like low dosing myself with my addictive foods, which kept me in constant craving mode. I did manage to lose 20 lbs which was a great start, but I credit that with starting to develop HABITS.

While I have started with a goal to lose 100 lbs, it has always been important to me HOW I achieve that goal. I do not have it in me to lose 100 lbs, gain it back and lose it again. I wasn’t looking for a diet, which is temporary. Changing my lifestyle was the key.

I wanted to give this my all, my full focus and really take the time to get to know myself and I wasn’t in a rush. I decided I was willing to put in the work to figure out whatever was needed to succeed and create sustainable habits I could maintain now and in the future.

I’ll write up a full habits post in the future, but for now wanted to mention why a weekly weigh in habit has been helpful to me, though I recognize this isn’t a helpful tool for everyone.

For me, these weigh ins have been critical to my success to ensure I am not sticking my head in the sand. Looking back at old pictures I suspect there was a time in my life when I was heavier than 248 lbs, but I will never know because I refused to weigh myself for years. I simply didn’t want to know what I weighed, because I either didn’t have the capacity to do anything about it, didn’t want to and/or felt it was impossible.

These weigh ins are fantastic feedback, though they aren’t the whole story so I don’t worry too much if the scale goes up. In fact, it is critical that you look at this as one check in point, but don’t take it too seriously. The scale being up or down shouldn’t dictate how your day goes. It’s simply a measurement tool and what I’m looking for is to overall get 1% better every day. If I focus on 1% better every day, I can see significant improvement over time as you can see from the below graph.

I’m 2 lbs down this week and have 35.4 lbs to go.

Until next week!

Peace, love & plants,

Michelle 🙂