I’m not sure if the weight came off my shoulders, but it came off of something. Unfortunately it wasn’t my ass.

It’s been a busy week so I didn’t get to exercise much, but, I did get to the beach one day for a wonderful walk along the strand, and earned 5 Weight Watchers activity points. For those of you unfamiliar with Weight Watchers, it can sound complicated so here’s an easy, quickie lesson. An ice cream sandwich is about 5 points. Because of the walk I earned 5 extra points above what I get to eat each day. That means I could have taken advantage of those extra points and enjoyed the ice cream. Because I’m on bipolar meds that cause weight gain, I chose not to have the ice cream. Choosing not to use them to eat more food can help to lose the weight faster. With my meds messing with my metabolism the way they do, it seemed like the smarter choice.

Since I didn’t earn many activity points overall for the week I had to stay within my daily guidelines and that’s hard for me to do. In the past I would have exercised a ridiculous amount each day, so I didn’t fret much about how much I ate. Now that’s changed. Since I’m not exercising, I have to be more careful and stay within my daily allowance.

The best thing about this week is that not once did I go hungry. I ate three square (normal size) meals each day. If my stomach told me it wanted more I’d let it have some oranges, grapes, blueberries…you name it. So, does being on this plan mean that I’m stuck in a life eating nothing but fruit and vegetables – Oh, hell no! I could never stay on a weight program like that. During this week, Maurice and I went out for a delicious stack of pancakes. Naturally I had some butter and syrup on top. We also went out for some pizza. You see, it’s perfectly okay to have something like pizza with this plan, you just shouldn’t go out and have an entire pizza. Well, technically you can, but you’d have to make some adjustments somewhere in your week…probably a lot more exercise. Well, for a whole pizza it’d be more like A LOT MORE exercise.

That all being said, just how well did I do? Last week I weighed 251.4 pounds. This week I weighed in at 247.6 pounds. Total loss = of 3.8 pounds. Since my goal this year is to average losing 1 pound a week, I’m thrilled with how I’m coming out of the gate. My total loss since starting Weight Watchers is 55.8 pounds.

Now, I must apologize if it sounds like I’m doing Weight Watchers commercials here. No one from the company asked me to post my successes. I do it out of love for a program that works.

Last week I posted before and after pictures, but the “after” picture was kind of distant and made it hard to see the difference. This week I zoomed in and cropped it so that it’s easier to see, so I’m posting them again. Each month I will be updating the pics regardless of a loss or a gain. Given that the last thing I want to do is post pictures of me gaining weight, I expect I’ll have bragging rights each time I post them.