Not So Shrinking Dad This Week…

Today wrapped up my third week on the Nutrisystem program as I seek to reduce my weight before the summer rolls around. Last week, as you might recall, I was on holiday in Southern California with my kids and we had a great time, lots of adventures and while I took a lot of diet food with me intending to do great, I ended up doing okay. The result? I didn’t gain or lose a single pound during the entire week. All in all, probably not a bad outcome, actually.

This week, however, I jumped back into the program but it also turned out to be a stressful week with both some serious personal stuff going down and ongoing family issues to contend with, along with a lot of teaching and being out of the house from early morning until late into the night. End result: I really didn’t move down the scale much either.

Here’s the three week running picture from my Withings WS30 scale:

(The black slash is where I just squished the graph down to skip the week I was on holiday)

I guess that first week was the typical jump start that all diets produce, but I kinda like losing 4-5 pounds/week rather than this week where I started last Friday at 261 and ended up at 259.6. That’s only 1.5lb in 7 days.

And since people will likely ask, during the week I was at the gym working out for at least 30min five of those days, and a typical week sees me in the gym roughly every other day. It can wreak havoc on my schedule, all the gym time, but I feel like it’s the critical additional contributor to losing weight in a healthy and effective manner.

One thing I did notice this week? More stress. I seem to recall reading somewhere or other that being stressed and therefore sleeping less has a deleterious effect on weight loss, but I’m not positive about that. It’s the entrepreneurs dilemma: there are only so many hours in a day, but there are always 25hrs worth of things you want to do in a given 24hr period. Or 30hrs worth of stuff! Add in sick children, school activities, meetings with counselors, and it’s hard to keep all those balls in the air as I juggle away.

Still, I’m fired up to get back to the Shrinking Dad Project this coming week, and am eager to drop below 255 and, more importantly, to drop below 250. That’s going to be a great milestone since I started out at 268 or thereabouts (it’s not on the graph because I couldn’t get the Withings scale to work properly for the first week)

Meanwhile, I’m eating a lot of the quasi-camping food Nutrisystem meals and finding it’s actually pretty darn good for the most part. A few things end up being pale shadows of their high calorie siblings (in particular, the black bean soup just doesn’t seem to want to hydrate for me at all, however I prepare it. Altitude?) but there are also things like the lasagna with beef sauce dinner which is quite tasty and filling.

The next 24hrs will be a bit tricky as I’m attending a wedding tomorrow evening and based on tonight’s rehearsal dinner and how full I feel after trying to minimize my consumption, well, I might need to spend some extra time in the gym Sunday and Monday to compensate. But what I have learned is that skipping food is not a solution. The carefully measured small portions are a more effective approach to weight loss than starvation. And a lot easier to stomach. Yes, pun intended.

So that’s this week’s update. Next week will mark the end of my first month. Let’s see how I do!

Want to lose weight and get healthy on Nutrisystem? Join today by calling 888-853-4689 or by visiting Nutrisystem.com