If It's Friday, It's Weigh-in Day!

Weight Watchers friends, I weighed in today another pound lighter than last week. Yay! That makes a total of 22 pounds lost since I began Weight Watchers in early January. 

In the beginning, I wasn't too excited about a one pound loss after a week, but the Weight Watchers Program has taught me that patience is a virtue...and that losing weight steadily teaches me new habits that I will most likely have for life. But most importantly, that steady weight loss adds up to a nice difference over a span of time.

To rethink the value of a pound lost, this is a good article to read:

 Losing Weight One Pound at a Time

 

A Pound of Bacon (Image courtesy of ranierzenz/wikimedia commons)

Have you just started a diet plan? If so, you are probably anxious to rid yourself of those extra pounds and start fitting into the clothes at the back of your closet as soon as possible. Not so fast! Losing weight takes commitment, knowledge and patience. Most importantly, it is best to be realistic about how quickly you can get to your goal weight.

So you just stepped on the scale after a week of dieting and it shows you've only lost one pound. Don't be discouraged! Let's review what it took to get to that scale's needle to move one notch, and why it's not such a bag thing!

1. How many calories equal one pound? One pound of lost body fat requires an intake of 3500 calories less than expended per week or 500 per day. To determine how many calories you would need to cut daily to lose that one pound, use Mayo Clinic's calorie calculator to determine your current daily caloric requirement and subtract 500 calories.

2. How long do you need to exercise to lose one pound? Use the Health Status calculator to determine how many minutes are required of a particular activity to lose one pound. You enter your age and weight and will be given a list of answers to choose from. For instance for a 50 year old, weighing 150 pounds, losing one pound would require 353 minutes of bicycling at 12-14 miles per hour, or 440 minutes on the stair machine, or 1,014 minutes of bowling.

3. What does it cost per week to keep that one pound around your middle? Using Caloriecount.com and Safeway.com's websites as resources, 3,500 calories equals 2.3 pounds of Sirloin Steak at $4.99 per pound ($11.48), or 23.3 ounces of Lay's Potato Chips at 75¢ an ounce ($17.48), 34 twelve ounce cans of Coors Lite at $15.99 for an 18 count case ($30.20), or 219 teaspoons of granulated sugar at .005 cents per teaspoon ($1.10)

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