Category: Fitness

After four weeks of this DietBet, the end is finally in sight.

I’ve been working out like a fiend on my elliptical – shooting for 5 days each week. I’ve also been eating much smaller portions and have been logging my meals into MyFitnessPal each day.

I was kicking major DietBet booty.

On Saturday, I finally hit that magic number and was EIGHT pounds down. If I had weighed in that day, I would have won the DietBet. Instead, my husband and I had a long-awaited date night and I totally overate.

I tried to get back in the rhythm on Sunday and did some additional time on the elliptical in the morning. We went to our friend’s kid’s birthday party and I even got an extra little workout in on the crazy trampoline and bouncy house (so incredibly fun and now I want one for my birthday). We followed the party with dinner at one of our favorite Mexican food places.

On Monday morning, my weight was back up 2 ½ pounds. To say I was kicking myself inside would be an understatement. I fought so hard for every one of those pounds to come off of my body and with a couple bad choices, they jumped back on again.

WHY do I keep sabotaging myself?!
I was SO CLOSE and now I’m so disappointed in myself.

Yesterday, I worked out in the morning AND the night… which is insane for me. Then, this morning I woke up at 5:00 am to get in another session on the elliptical before the day started. This is not ME. This is absolutely NOT the new norm of my life. But darn it if I don’t want to LOSE this DietBet when I’ve been working so hard.

I have until Wednesday night to do my final weigh in, so the plan is to chug water like it’s going out of style today and then weigh in tomorrow morning. Once I weigh in and submit my new photos, I will have to wait for the DietBet people to approve everything. Then, it will take 24 – 48 hours to close the bet and let the winner’s know how much they won. I should have a final DietBet update for you next week at this time.

Until then, please send me some skinny thoughts to help me win this thing!

As of today, I am at the halfway point of my DietBet. According to the rules, you do your weigh in a day or so before the bet’s official start date, so I weighed in on 1/26.

Then I had chocolate chip pancakes.

What?! Is that not a DietBetty thing to do? If it makes you feel any better, I also jumped on the elliptical that day. So, yay for me.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions on what my actual plan is for the DietBet. I’m not following any special diet like no carbs, or raw food, or lots of bacon. Even though a lots of bacon diet sounds pretty tasty. Restriction diets just don’t work for me. As soon as I can’t have something, I fantasize about it and get a huge craving until one day I totally HULK OUT and eat all the food in the world.

Basically, I’m just eating what I usually eat… only less.

I’m using the app MyFitnessPal to keep track of the foods that I’m eating and I have a goal of 1,200 calories each day. However, I can earn additional calories by exercising so I’ve really been eating 1,200 – 1,700 calories each day. The first few days were the worst, but now I feel like I’m in a rhythm of understanding what foods I eat regularly and how much I can have.

As for exercise, I have an elliptical machine at my house and I’ve been on there every day that I have time. This has been the most difficult part for me… finding time when my days are already busy. In order to make it work, I try to wake up early and get it done before my day starts. However, if that means I have to wake up before 5:30am to fit it in, I JUST SAY NO and skip it that day.

I’ve been doing pretty well and over the last 18 days I’ve used the elliptical 13 times. I got the new Kindle Fire HD for Christmas, so I’ve been watching Alias from the beginning, which is 45 minutes per episode. I have to say, it’s pretty easy to do 45 minutes of exercise when you’re watching Sydney Bristow  kick some butt!

I gave myself the goal of losing 2 pounds each week and I’m pretty close to the goal. I’m currently 3.5 to 4.5 pounds down from my starting weight. If I can keep on track, I will win my DietBet with a little extra to spare.

My plan is to just keep on with what I’m doing. I’m going to shake it up a bit this week and throw in an extra lunchtime workout of the Jillian Michaels Ripped in 30 DVD on days that I work from home (2 per week).

There is an additional social part on the DietBet website, where you can add posts on a shared timeline and leave comments to encourage other players. I haven’t really been active in the community, but when I am tempted to sit on my butt I have logged in to see how well everyone else is doing. It has been that little kick in the pants I need to keep with it, when in the past I would have given up.

As much as I’d like to win the DietBet and have a shot of some of that money in the pot (over $160k as of this morning), I’m actually more focused on keeping up with this new habit of exercising. Once the bet ends, I hope to keep working out AND losing those pounds that have crept on over the past few years.

The DietBet I’m doing ends on February 25th, so send some encouraging thoughts my way so I can stick with it for two more weeks and WIN!

Have you done a DietBet before? If so, did you win or lose money? What is your favorite show to binge watch while working out?