The Last Word: Weekly Weight Goal = OWNED

Yay! It's only Wednesday and I've met my weight goal for this week! (My goal is to lose one pound per week for 10 weeks, and then maintain). I was 129.8 on Sunday and now I'm 128.8. If I could lose another pound by the end of this week, that would be awesome sauce. Of course, I know that right now it's probably just water weight that I'm losing from a week of crappy/salty eating, but I'll take it.

Wanna know how I'm doing it? Here are some things that are helping me:

Writing down everything I eat (so I can't disregard that cookie, etc)
Taking pictures of meals - I only do this occasionally, but it helps
Measuring. It's really easy to misjudge measurements and food portions. For example, a serving size of my cereal is 3/4 a cup, but its easy to put 1 cup or more in the bowl without realizing
Smaller plates and bowls - a half cup of cottage cheese in a big bowl looks like nothing, but it feels like a perfectly satisfying amount if you eat it from a cute ramekin. Same goes with plate size, I'm trying to eat off of 8" salad plates
Weigh myself EVERY day. I'm better with short term goals because I'm so impatient. Its much easier for me to take things one day at a time. If I weigh myself every day, I also can't trick myself into believing that I can take the day off, because I see the results.
Eating IN. This is a huge one. We got rid of all the junk food in our house and stocked it up with healthy options. Its better that I don't have the choice between french fries and an apple (like at Wendy's) because I have no will power. I'm also not being bombarded with delicious crave-inducing french fry aromas.
Taking note of what's on Oprah. Because I cannot survive for 45 minutes on the treadmill without something good on tv. If Oprah sucks that day, Keeping Up with the Kardashians (shh, don't tell anyone) will suffice. My gym has an individual television on EVERY piece of cardio equipment, which is AMAZING.
Keeping stress in check. I'm an emotional eater and a stress eater, and everything stresses me out (just ask my husband). That's a bad combination. I'm doing my best to do the things that I know will ease stress, like getting my work done on time, keeping the house clean, going to bed at a decent time and waking up ~~early~~ before 9:00.
Inspiration. This means staring at pictures of hot healthy women, visualizing the beach, reading your blog posts about healthy eating, etc.
Keeping it reasonable. My husband, Frank, does things to the extreme, like 24 hour cleanses, super-intense workouts, super-strict dieting. This works for some people, but not for me. If I starve myself, go too hard at the gym, I just burn out, get overwhelmed, cry it out and then eat a pizza. Instead, I'm trying to stay under a certain daily calorie count, get in at least four good workouts per week and generally eat healthy foods.

Here's lunch:

Tuna salad, hummus and celery, blueberries, creepy dark weird cell phone pic