The First Meeting

This morning was the first informational meeting about the weight loss competition. Bottom line: this whole thing is one heck of a sweet deal. Set aside the fact that right now I'm munching on a gorgeous Mediterranean panini with goat cheese and gobs of olive oil and let me tell you how I'm going to lose weight. The competition doesn't start until Monday after all.

For the next 12 weeks, I get regular workouts with my own personal trainer who will kick my ass and monitor my weight, body fat, and measurements. They'll also be keeping tabs on my food journal. If at any time I have questions or need motivation, I can call or email my personal trainer or one of the other trainers running the program. When I'm feeling discouraged and want to give up because I'm not seeing results, I can talk to a pro and get my program tweaked instead of just complaining to my friends. There are also over a hundred other people in my company participating in this challenge, so there will be plenty of people who 'feel my pain' that I can turn to. And if the thought of winning $1,000 and losing weight isn't enough to keep me accountable, our results are being reported weekly to the company CFO.

We spent about an hour at today's meeting going over nutrition information and meal plans. One thing that I already love about this program is that they acknowledge what a huge role diet plays in all of this. According to them, nutrition makes up 70% of the weight loss equation, strength training and cardio make up the rest. In conversations I've had with trainers before, they were much more focused on the exercise portion and gave very vague instructions to "eat right" or "eat a lot of protein" without much further guidance. I'm very happy to have specific direction.

The main guidelines they gave us were pretty familiar: eat plenty of lean protein and veggies, moderate amount of complex carbs, and drink lots of water. They also want us to eat 6 times a day which will probably be challenging at first, but I'm going to lean on their sample meal suggestions for the first few weeks to make it easier. You hear that? They gave us 5 days of sample menus that include 6 meals a day. Thank you! I am going to be waking up 2 hours earlier than usual to go to the gym. I can't handle too much extra planning on top of that. As far as the food journal, I think it's going to be a lot easier than the online versions I've tried in the past. They gave us mini notebooks that are preprinted with blocks for each of the meals and little boxes to check off for how much water we've drank. The beauty thing is that they are not going to make us monitor calories unless our weight loss gets stuck, so all I have to do is write down the foods and not spend hours looking them up.

So. Whereto from here? This weekend I need to plan out next week's meals, clean out my cabinets, shop, and prep as much food as I can. Monday I face a treadmill, a scale, and a measuring tape. And a fun electrical doohickey that will measure my body fat. No calipers! Yay!

...It should also be noted that they gave us a whole page of information as to why we should take off one day a week from our plan. I like these people.