The Road to Weight Loss

This week was weigh in numero uno. And since I plan on never seeing this number again, I'll go ahead and post my progress in numbers and percent. I started at 197.2. YIKES!! Yep, that's right, I was nearing the big 2-0-0! Blah!! Just like me, others at work weren't very happy with their number either, so we all decided to do a biggest loser competition, with a $10 buy in (which reminds me, I need to buy in along with several others lol). Over the course of the first week we got 10 participants, so the winner stands to make a pretty decent profit. This was exactly the motivation I needed to get going w/restarting my healthy lifestyle. Thanks to my friend Tabitha (who is tracking her own weight loss via her blog at http://probablytabitha.com/) I discovered this great site, http://www.sparkpeople.com/. I saw how sucessful she was being and decided to check it out. I was impressed with it, and signed up (it's free). It helps me track my daily caloric intake, water drank, and exercise performed.
With the help of this site, I made my weight loss game plan. Since I'm out of practice on making healthy choices when it comes to food, I decided the first two weeks are dedicated to retraining myself to choose healthy stuff no matter where I go. This sure was a test considering that I spent two weekends in Vegas. But I'm happy to report that in week one I lost 6 pounds. Yep, you read that right...SIX POUNDS!! WOO HOO!!! That's 3.04% down from the week before. I very rarely went over my daily alloted calories. And even when I did splurge, it wasn't that bad b/c my other food choices had been super healthy. I know that those results won't be typical, but it was super rewarding after the hard work I'd put in during the prior week.
Ok, so now this next week will be spent doing the same...getting back on the healthy eating horst. After that I'll re-introduce the gym. I'm going to start light for the first week, just cardio. The second week I'll add some other exercises I do on machines. The third week I'll bring back weight lifting exercises. And finally at the fourth week I'm going to throw at least 2 days of P90x at home.
The competition ends on October 26th. I'd like to see myself in the mid-160's (which was my original goal before I got so off track). Once I reach my goal I'll probably scale back on the aggresive work outs, but I figure by then I'll be back in the habit of working out that it won't matter.
My number one thing to avoid: splurging on days that I'm going to the gym. That was the bad habit I developed before, and I am NOT going to again!
Wish me luck all! I'm anxious about introducing exercise, but I have faith in myself!!