We're Starting Weight Watchers (Unofficially)

Happy New Year. New Year marks a good time to make new goals (or renew old ones) and be determined to achieve them. A goal that my husband and I have for this year is to get ourselves to healthy weights. After watching so many other people have success, many of my in-laws among them. My husband and I have been looking at ourselves and feeling like we really need to make changes. My husband's parents unofficially do Weight Watchers. Meaning they count points and such but they don't officially join, pay, and go to meetings. This works really well for them. In evaluating the way that Weight Watchers works we decided that this could work for us.

Our overall Goals:

1. Eat a lot more veggies. Instead of making the main course, our main focus at dinner, we are going to make sure there is always a full veggie side.
2. Exercise 5 days a week. We both realize that with our body types we aren't going to see great or lasting results unless we make exercise a habit in our lives.
3. Potion control. This is a bad habit of ours. We love to eat until we are too stuffed.
4. Eat out less. WE LOVE TO EAT OUT. As single individuals we at out a lot and after getting married breaking that habit has been hard. Over a year and a half of marriage add that to all our lazy habits and we've spend a lot of money not to mention eaten a lot of extra calories.
5. Eat less sugar. I love sweets, and not just sweets-but CHOCOLATE. For years now I have felt that if it’s not chocolate it’s not worth the calories. I need to cut down my intake of sugar. This is probably my biggest fault outside of my lazy habit of not exercising. Many of my family members have done really well losing weight and keeping it off by cutting all natural sugars out of their diets. My mom originally did this because she was convinced that sugar was the cause of her headaches. Sure enough her headaches went away and so did about 15 lbs of baby weight she'd been trying for years to get rid of. I don't know if I could cut sugar completely out of my diet, but I know I need to decrease it.
6. Make from scratch. We are saving to go on a Mediterranean cruise. To do this we've been trying to find ways to decrease our expenditures. We use cloth diapers, eating out less... There are a number of things we've found if we make it from scratch ourselves we save money here and there (Taco and Italian Seasons for example). In addition, we've learned that a lot of these pre-made items have a lot of extra calories from the preservatives.

With all these goals and looking at the way Weight Watchers works we think we should be able to do this. Not only do it but do it long term. We started today. I calculated our daily points and many of our healthy foods we enjoy eating. From an online used bookstore, I ordered 5 Weight Watchers cookbooks. I know there are lots of healthy recipes out there, but I figured I'd be more likely to use something that already had the points calculated for me rather than having to figure it out myself.

We're excited to get healthy again. I'm not normally one for New Years Res. However, since getting married, and especially since having a baby I have found myself getting into a lot of less than desirable habits. Becoming healthy by losing weight and making a lifestyle change is only one of my goals. Good luck with all ya'lls goals, I hope that 2010 is a year for achieving!