Sunday, April 15, 2012

The Biggest Loser & Meal Planning

Good Sunday evening readers!  I hope everyone has had an enjoyable weekend and if you've experienced some rough weather lately, or will be, that you stay(ed) safe.


I have two really exciting things to tell you about; 1. The Biggest Loser competition at work 2. Meal Planning.

1.  My employer is hosting a Biggest Loser competition for the second time now.

The point of the program is to obviously be a motivator for weight loss for the employees at the company.  But it also part of the Wellness program so completion, with some success, of the competition means those on the insurance through the company earn so many wellness points towards their reduced rate (I think?).  I don't really pay attention to that part of it as I am still being insured under my mom's plan so I don't need the wellness points.

I did not participate in the competition the first time it was offered but decided to after my mom mentioned it to me Wednesday night last week.  I was pretty excited about the program because not only would it give me accountability with weekly weigh ins but it would also serve as motivation because of the great opportunity for prizes.

I'm talking weekly Target gift cards for $100!

The grand prize is AN ALL EXPENSE PAID TRIP FOR 2 TO THE HARD ROCK HOTEL IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC!

How absolutely freaking awesome is that right?!

Well, sadly my excitement for the program dwindled when I got the rules for the program.

Thanks to my part-time employee status at work I am not eligible to win the weekly prizes or the grand prize for being The Biggest Loser.  I was pretty fired up about that when I heard the news from my mom.  I thought about emailing the director of benefits in HR (who's been organizing the competition) because it doesn't seem fair that just because I'm part-time that the weight I lose should deserve any less of a reward.  So far I haven't gone through with the email though.  I haven't even really begun to type it up, only thought about it in my head.  I doubt I will write and send one but it still makes me pretty fired up that now this program will serve as no real motivation for me, other than what I'm already motivated to do.

Moving on though...

2. Meal Planning

I forgot to mention my mom decided to sign up for The Biggest Loser through work as well.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to bring up meal planning and actually measuring the servings we are going to eat.

I printed off two SparkPeople articles I thought would be helpful to us and let her read them.  Friday night we sat down and planned out what we would eat for the whole week.  Saturday we went to the grocery store and stuck to the list I had prepared the night before other than a few things for my dad and brother who are not watching what they eat as closely as my mom and I are.

So far so good!  We have the plan and today we stuck to the plan for the most part.  We ran into trouble at dinner when I found we didn't have broccoli in the freezer like we had thought and we decided to not have potatoes.  But other than that today was pretty awesome as far as sticking to the plan.

Now, the trick for tomorrow is for me to wake up when my alarm goes off (no snoozing) so I can prepare and eat my breakfast along with grabbing my lunch for at work.  My mom and I made Beef Noodle Soup today to serve as some of our lunches for the rest of the week.  I have never tried it before so I really hope I like it!

Because of the meal plan, and wanting to know how much I'm really eating, I've been pretty involved in the cooking process today which is awesome.  Definitely need to gain some skills in the kitchen so I can handle cooking completely for myself when I'm no longer in mom and dad's house and am on my own.

It makes me feel pretty darn good to finally be planning and measuring my meals!


I'm off to do some homework I have been avoiding all weekend.  Wish me luck!

2 comments:

Alexis said...

I would TOTALLY write that email. That's SO annoying! Its like discouraging PT workers from doing it at all! How annoying!

HollieisFueledByLOLZ said...

I would honestly write the email. You never know until you try and whose to say you couldn't or wouldn't. :)

Glad everything else is working out for you though! :)