Today the scale showed me that I have lost 10% of my body weight since TWLC4 began. I started at 177 and today I weighed 158 (which is only about 2 lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight!) I don’t have any great progress pictures yet, but you can sort of see what’s going on using my DietBet  weigh in/out photos.

Before

The progress

If you’ve fallen off the wagon, come back! Start weighing in regularly on the Google Doc and participate in the Facebook group again. It helps, I promise.

At this rate I might even be able to hit my goal weight by this round of TWLC! Something I never would have believed could be possible. I’ll write up what I’ve been doing when I take some nicer pictures at the halfway point.

One year ago I asked you to join me in TWLC3… and then I got pregnant and dropped out (AND didn’t tell you why I wasn’t participating for months and months so I’m sure I looked like a terrible weight-loss-challenge initiator). This time nothing is going to hold me back from reaching my goals. There will be no pregnancy, and no excuses. My plan is to do TWLC rounds in 6 month increments until I have reached my happy weight. If things go well I’ll be able to quit after TWLC 6, or October 2014. Want to see if you can make it to your goal weight before I do?

If you’re not sure you want to join, check out the results from TWLC1, TWLC2, and TWLC3. I want to be those ladies. Join me. Join us!

Want to see where I’m starting out? Read more →

I’ve moved back into weight-loss mode full-time (it will be a glorious day when I don’t have to devote so much time to this anymore!) and I’m gearing up to start That Weight Loss Challenge 4. Last year I started it around my birthday and so I figured I’d start another one around the 15th of April again. We’ll have the Facebook group (I just removed everyone from the existing one so we can start fresh and try to limit the group to active members), and we’ll use DietBet for the prizes (I’ll explain more later), and I’ll offer up a Jenna Cole session once again. It’s going to be awesome. And I’m not going to get pregnant and drop out halfway through this time .

For the past two weeks I’ve been using an app called The Eatery to track what I eat. It’s like someone took my food blog idea, and gamified/social-networkified it!

Source

The idea is really simple. Take a picture of what you eat, and rate it on a scale of 1-100. 1 is fat, and 100 is fit. Then your food will be shown to other people using the app and they will say where they think it is on the scale of fit to fat. Then the app takes all of your data and creates a variety of charts/graphs to show you how you’re doing over time.

The gamification aspect has been really effective for me, as I constantly find myself thinking “Do I really want to eat this? If I do, I have to take a picture and show Eatery and then my score is going to go down.”

Source

The company, Massive Health, has been acquired by Jawbone and I’m not sure that they’re going to keep the app going indefinitely. That’s fine with me though, as it’s doing what I need to do right now. And if they integrate the app into the Jawbone UP I’d probably consider buying one just so I can keep using it! That’s how much I love this app!

I’m writing this post in part because I hope that Jawbone will see it and think about maintaining the app (fix the ability to connect to Facebook friends please!) but also because I’m wondering if anyone else is using it, or would like to start using it? I think it would be fun to compare our weekly scores and see if we can beat each other.

We don’t need to get into how badly I failed at this round of TWLC3 (honestly though, I didn’t have much choice due to T2). Luckily there are several women out there who did just the opposite, and I’m really excited to show you where they ended up after 6 months. I also know there are some women who participated in the Facebook

I’m sure some of you are curious if there will be a TWLC4. Heck yes! And likely a TWLC5 as well because I doubt I’ll reach my weight goals after just one round. For now I’m going to keep the Facebook group open and people are free to continue using that as a resource. I’ll post details about TWLC4 sometime around March, after T2 is born and I’ve had a chance to recover.

Now, on to the finale photos!

10.98% lost

12.36% lost

(She’s the winner of TWLC2 and reached her goal weight in TWLC3!)
Read more →

So much has happened in the past week! I started Whole30, gave up about 36 hours later, and am now putting my weight loss efforts on hold until I get through school. I thought I had worked everything out with my advisor, outlining exactly what I was going to do in order to graduate and receiving written confirmation via email that if I went ahead and did exactly those things I could walk in August. When I sat down and talked to her in person however, I was informed that my full schedule of 9 credits wouldn’t be enough and that I’d need to add on an elective course to graduate as planned. The only option that feels acceptable to me is adding on another class this term (versus doing another online class after we move to SF), which I can’t do unless I’m granted an exemption to university policy (as I was informed by several people, taking 12 credits in a term is insane and the policy is in place to protect students from failing miserably). I wrote out a heartfelt and heavy-handed petition telling my story, received a strong recommendation from the advisor, and found a professor willing to let me in to his class late. Today at 4:00 pm I’ll walk over to the registrar’s office and hopefully find out that my petition has been granted. With no family in the area, no job, and my advanced age (for an undergrad) I feel pretty good about my chances.

Because of all of this I’m giving myself a break from as many extraneous responsibilities as possible. Of course I want to feel healthy (I’m going to need the energy for all of those late nights I’m going to have writing papers!), but I need to feel like it’s okay to buy a granola bar and container of milk out of the vending machine on days when I’ve been in the library for 12 hours straight and my packed lunch is depleted. I’m still going to train 3x/week with my personal trainer friend, and I’d like to keep running 2x/week after my half-marathon is over. Hopefully my weight will hold steady over the next 6 weeks, although I acknowledge that late night ice cream runs on the nights before exams are likely and will have some negative consequences.

I have my whole life to lose weight. This chance to finish school in person, sitting in classrooms discussing what we’ve read and what it means, isn’t going to come again for me. I want to give as much of myself to the experience as I can mentally handle.

I’m going to put these posts on hold for the summer. I’ll keep participating in the TWLC Facebook group and I plan to keep up with the Google Doc, awarding the monthly participation prizes as originally planned. The money the entrants pledged is sitting safely in my Paypal account, and no matter what happens with me there will be some happy (and slim and strong) winners when this is all over.

Time to dash to class. Thanks so much for the support that’s been sent my way thus far.