Challenge

Because my weight loss has not been going so well, I decided I needed to step up my game a bit. John and I do really well with our eating during the week and just kind of blow it on the weekends. We justify this by saying you need a day to cheat a little on the calories. This is true, but we take the cheating a bit too far. Remember that bag of bunny corn? We finished it in a day and a half. I mostly blame myself on that one. Anyway. We're also trying to cut down our sodium intake. We don't add extra salt to our food but that stuff everywhere, yo! The main culprit for sodium: restaurants. When you go out to eat, you just have no idea what's going on in the kitchen and what extra bad things they're putting in your meal.

Thus, the Challenge.

Parameters: For the month of March, John and I will not eat a single meal in a restaurant. All meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner, will be made with food in our very own kitchen.

Reason: To help move past our plateau, to cut back on sodium/fat/calories/etc, and an added bonus -- it saves money!

Caveat: We are each allowed to have one Shamrock shake from McDonald's in March at some point because this is the only time of year you can get them so we are allowing this one indulgence.

Because John and I don't always have a lot of excitement going on in our lives, we often count going out for dinner as our sole source of Saturday night entertainment. We really don't eat out all that often. I'd say 3-5 times a month including lunches and dinners. However, when I posed this challenge to John, he very begrudgingly excepted (read: was cajoled). Oh sure, there were complaints. "But what will we do for fun?" As if eating is the only thing we can think of. Pfft. I already have lots of fun plans lined up for March to take the place of the excitement that is dining out. What does it really say about us when we plan our meals out weeks in advance and often find them the only things to look forward to? If you're placing that much excitement on food, isn't that wrong? "Do we really have to do this?" Yes, honey, we do. It's more about proving that we can, in my mind, than anything else. I'll count my sister ("But you don't eat out that much anyway") and my mom ("That seems a bit harsh") in the nay-sayers camp aswell. Full disclosure, John doesn't think we can do it. So, I've got a little something extra to prove there.

You may or may not know that your weight is 80% determined by diet and only 20% affected by exercise. Since we've got the exercise portion down, our weight loss failures must be diet based.

Stay tuned to see if we can meet our challenge, and if we can finally curb our weekend pig outs.