Week 1 - Setting a 12 Week Weight Loss Goal

The BodyBugg system asks you to set a short term, 12 week goal. When you first get the system, you go through a series of tutorials that help you figure out the amount of calories you should be taking in, as well as the amount you should be burning per day to hit your goal.

While they suggest a loss of 2lbs per week, I'm shooting for 3. This means I'll need to have a 1500 calorie deficit each day. Over time, my progress will be charted on this page on the BodyBugg software. My first weigh in day in on Tuesday, 1/20. I need to weigh in at 199 to be on track. Bleh... 199 seems so horrible, but I have to think of it in terms of weekly goals and not look at the actual number. Sometime it helps to think of the fact that each pound of fat would look sort of like a package of 4 butter sticks. When I think of being 12 butter sticks smaller, that makes me feel pretty good.

If I actually stay on track, I will weigh in at 166 lbs on 4/7. I'm actually not that terrible looking at 166lbs. I will feel ok about "being with" my husband and not worrying too much about how grossed out he must be. After 12 weeks, I'll set a new goal, which is likely to be another 3lbs per week if it goes well.

This is a snap shot of my Thursday. You can see how it sort of plots out the calories burned over the course of the day. You have to go in and enter your food eaten for each meal. I try to plan ahead and enter in all at once. You can see here that I burned 3209 cals and consumed only 1695, creating the needed 1500 deficit to stay on track. We'll see how this well this works when weigh in day comes. The BodyBugg has really helped in 2 ways so far. It really helps me be more mindful of what I'm putting in my mouth, and it also helps by showing the caloric burn rate for normal things you do anyway. For example, I burned nearly 500 more calories on the day that I did a lot of house work and walking up and down the stairs to put laundry away one day. On most days I've been showing around an 1800 calorie deficit. Not too shabby! The real challenge is not drinking....