New Year 2016

Well, the new year has begun. As part of the new year tradition everyone makes resolutions that are rarely fulfilled. This year we did not make any resolutions but we did make a decision to get better control of our health.

On January 3rd we joined Weight Watchers, again.  This program seems to work fairly well as a result of a couple of things. 

The first is that it created a sense of accountability.  It forces you to log your food on a daily basis. 

Second, there is a cost of subscribing to the service.  We have tried many of the free services like Fitbit, My Fitness Pal, etc. With these, if you didn't follow the plan you don't loose anything. With weight watchers, you are wasting money if you don't follow the plan. This definitely has a psychological effect. 

Third, they have a large list of foods, restaurants and recipes. Additionally because this a points based system. If you decide to eat a bag of Hershey's kisses, you can. Of course, you will starve the rest of the day. If you decide to eat reasonable meals, fruits and vegetables, you get lots of food and you are never Hungry. This leads to a mindset that you can eat whatever you like and still lose weight. 

If you decide to track your exercise you also gain extra points so this allows you to earn more food throughout the day. 

The drawback in our household is that as we proceed I lose weight quickly compared to my wife. This makes me feel good and I want to continue. On the other hand my wife seems to loose weight more slowly and seeing my progress is a demotivator for her. 

We both have to look at this as a lifestyle change. If we follow the plan we work toward improving our health through a better diet. This in turn should lead to better health, which leads to lower cholesterol levels, better blood sugar readings, etc. 

We will have to see how this goes. I am going to try and provide updates here as we reach major milestones and if we encounter significant challenges and how we got through them.