13-in-13 Challenge: Week 1 complete

I don't really follow football. I understand the basic rules of the game, but I don't follow any teams or know how long a whole season lasts or spend my Sundays watching games with friends. That said, I adore Friday Night Lights. It's a terrific, nuanced, beautifully-acted show about the complicated lives of a town who lives and dies by their high-school football team. I can't wait for it to start again on NBC this January (don't have DirectTV).

Anyway, on FNL they occasionally have a "bye" week, when they don't have a game that Friday and they spend the week taking it a little easier and recharging their batteries for the game the following week.

I think I should have had a bye week between my (self-imposed!) challenges.

I wasn't super-horrible, going on some crazy binge ordering pizza** and eating pints of ice cream or anything close to that. I just didn't TRY to do any of the 4 goals I set. I didn't even feel guilty for not trying. By about Thursday I started asking myself what I was doing and why, and the best I could come up with was that I just didn't feel like it this week. That's when the "bye week" phrase popped into my head, and I realized what I had done.

Well, I wish I had tried more, but hopefully my total procrastination -- and that I have to confess said procrastination publicly right here and now -- will spur me on to getting it right this week. I am so tired of not fitting in all my cute dresses!

For posterity's sake, here is the review of my goals.

1. LOSE WEIGHT.
Weight: 180.2
GAIN: 1.2

Dang. DAAAAAAAANG.

2. Eat one vegetable-based meal a day.
This was the one thing that I did most consistently; I think there were only 2 days out of 7 where I did not have at least one veggie-based meal per day.


3. Do at least 2 different types of exercise each week.
Oh, hahahahaha! Heeheeheehee! Oh, I crack myself up with my grand plans!
But my new running shoes arrive this week, and I truly am looking forward to getting to use them again. I miss running a lot.


4. Limit my sweets/dessert/treats to 3-4 per week.
I think I was acting like this week was a farewell tour to cookies; I ate some of all of my favorites! And Thursday we had our division holiday luncheon, and there were sugar cookies galore. I love Christmas sugar cookies, the shaped ones with sprinkles, and especially the colored ones you make with the form-shooter thing. It was four hours of listening to people drone on and on about project plans, and platters of sparkly sugar cookies in front of me. Guess how I chose to keep myself awake?

There are 2 more parties this week; I won't be falling into the same trap. But I will save up my treat days for those, so I can have something delicious at each.


**Hubby and I made a promise earlier this fall that we were going to not order pizza for the rest of the year, in a reverse New Year's resolution. This was a huge shift for us; pizza is our default "I'm too lazy to do anything, we deserve a treat" meal, and we often order it once a week. We've stuck to our vow, though, and it's actually getting easier over time. We've come up with quick meals to replace it at home, and now when we want a treat we go out to a nice dinner. Even there at that "treat" moment, I am getting better about making smarter choices. We also often select Sweet Tomatoes as our "treat" restaurant, and we pile on the salad fixin's.

I am looking forward to a nice thin-crust pizza with onions, spinach and sausage on New Year's Eve, I will admit, but I think after that I'm going back to the No-Pizza Promise. It's really been a great help in not careening completely out of control.