We're Doin It

Chancho, TG and I have signed ourselves up for Weight Watchers. I finally put my foot down and told Chancho that he needed to lose weight. It has been the giant elephant in the room for some time now and especially after the cruise (with all that awesome food) he has ballooned to an unimaginable size. In reality, he isn't that bad, but he is in an unhealthy weight bracket. So I spoke to him and asked him if this would be a program he would be interested in...I spoke to our friends and asked me to support me on this, so they too could help him see that he is in need of losing weight. Chancho agreed.
We went to our first meeting Thursday night. I loved it. It was incredibly supportive and painless. There was a bunch of clapping, sticker handing out and talking. We got our books and weekly tips. We also had our first weigh in. Along with our weigh in's we were told our point values for what we could eat each day and our goals.
Allow me to break it down (I'll use me as an example)
I am 23, 139.4lbs, and 5'7"
Therefore, I am allowed to eat 29 points a day with a 5% target goal of 7lbs and a 10% target goal of 13 lbs.
Each person gets points based on their age, weight and height.
These points are what you can eat each day. Every single food has a point value. Which helps you make good decisions. The healthier the food, the less the point value is. So all fruits have a point value of 0. Most vegetables as well. The program encourages you to eat whatever you want. If you want that brownie, eat it. Do not deprive yourself. Because then you'll wind up eating twice as much when you break down and eat one or 5. I have always lived my life with this thought process, but my problem is that I don't make healthy food decisions and I also don't do well with portion control. That is another big thing to follow, the serving sizes. There is a reason behind the serving size.
A cool way to earn points towards your daily intake is to be active. So if you go out and play with your kids (tossing a ball) you can add that in and you can get points back! Two days ago I walked/jogged for an hour and got 4 points back. Yesterday I mountain biked for 81 minutes and got 13 points back! You obviously don't need to use the points, because you are trying to lose the weight, but they are there to use whenever you need to. You also get an exciting 49 bonus points weekly. So if you have an event during the week you can plan for it and you don't need to starve yourself. An example, this week we have Yankees Opening Day!!! I will be drinking before and during the game so I'll be using a good portion of those 49 points, which means each day I need to either not go over my allotted 29 points or exercise (be active) to gain more points to drink some beer, which costs me 4 points for each can.
I am very excited about this, just being able to learn how to cook healthy meals and to have the support system from Chancho and helping him live a better lifestyle, makes me happy. He has enough stress on his system he doesn't need weight to be another one. He has lost 17 lbs already!!! He has about 120 lbs to go.
I have a great feeling about this.  

Quote of the Day: "Being happy doesn’t mean things are perfect, it just means you’ve decided to look past the imperfections."
Listening to: "I Wanna Sex You Up" by Color Me Badd