I figured I'd post an update on my Weight Watcher's progress. From my original blog post, I joined on May 12. Since that time, I've taken a couple of trips, been through Memorial Day, spent a couple of weekends at my in-laws' to save gas on the 14 mile drive back and forth, and have been through some other situations that led me to slip up. So, how am I doing?

Honestly, I'm doing better than I thought. I went on the Flex plan, which allows points for everything you eat. I haven't been very good at bothering to calculate my points, but I have been trying to pay more attention to portion sizes and avoid snacks. Since my wife is on Weight Watcher's Core plan, she does the cooking. For the most part, she's been making some pretty interesting foods and I normally take my lunch from our leftovers, although she did buy a few frozen Weight Watcher's dinners for those days when I have no leftover, which is the easiest time for me to slip.

I've lost about 8.5 pounds over the last month. That's not bad considering that I haven't been trying all that hard. I've slipped several times. I still enjoy treats like ice cream and cold beer occasionally. I've had burgers, pizza, and cheesesteaks. However, since I've started to see results, I've starting taking things much more seriously. There is nothing like a result to encourage you to work harder.

I technically started Weight Watchers yesterday afternoon, but even by a 24 hour standard, I'm on my second day. I'm hungry. I know that I'll be heading home soon, and my wife usually has dinner waiting when I get home. Since she recently started Weight Watchers, she's not likely to want to eat out.

This is always the hard part for me, being hungry. I also get sluggish sometimes, and tired. I'm a little fidgety. I was playing around with some of the tools on the Weight Watchers Online for Men site, and found that my ideal weight is somewhere between 135 and 162. I'm like 238 right now. That's scary. The least I've been since I was about 15 is 175, and that was about the time I got out of the Navy when I was running 3-4 miles a day.

I'll keep posting. I'm just trying not to think about the vending machine. This isn't quite as hard as quitting smoking, but it's not far off the mark.

My wife started going to Weight Watchers meetings a couple of weeks ago. I gave it some thought, and my doctor has even recommended it a few times. I was poking around on the website today, and found that they have a new program: Weight Watchers Online for Men. It didn't take much more to get me to sign up. I've been challenged by weight most of my adult life, and I have tried many different plans from deprivation to excessive working out to Atkins to restricted calories to inpatient treatment (Navy provided) with Overeaters Anonymous. I probably had my best short term gains under Atkins, but I could only stick with it for three weeks the first time. I tried many times to get back on. Weight Watchers Flex plan promises me that I can eat what I want (although obviously not the portions I want), so I figure I'll give it a shot. The men's site talks about beer and pizza and "man stuff", which I could get to enjoy. As I said in a previous entry, men and women are different and especially in areas of physiology, we are far from similar. I guess in the interest of accountability, I might post a few things here on my blog about past weight loss attempts. I'm going to shoot for a 10% loss, which will put my weight under what it was when we conceived Joshua, our first born.