Baby Steps

On Sparkpeople you get points for doing various things...tracking your food, reading articles, exercising, and you get to spin the Spark wheel every day for points. I got to Level 2 today. I saw on the Wheel of Sparking one space that had 1000 Spark Goodie points! Goodie Points!? I want some! So I read more to find out what happens when you have a lot of Spark Goodie Points. You know what happens? You can buy yourself or another Spark member "virtual" gifts! Virtual Gifts, are intended to lend incentive to Sparking more effectively. You can buy a new "virtual wardrobe" or "virtual hairstyle".

Now what the hell is that??? How does that induce me to lose more weight? I can just lose "Virtual Weight" and get down to a size "Virtual 0". Happily I'm so irrationally competitive that I will continue to get my Spark Points, which I am sure is what the Sparkpeople were counting on.

Back to my Spark Baby Steps (not their phrase). In order to get your first points you need to pick at least three jump start goals, so I did.

1. Record food intake.... check. (Record like write down, not have Record Food Intake, which I've also done and that brings us full circle).
2. Do 10 minutes of outdoor activity everyday. I don't know if that means 10 minutes in a row or cumulatively but I think I can pull that off.
3. Get up without hitting Snooze. This one is going to be a tough one.

These are sort of like New Year's Resolutions and they do not go into effect until January 3, 2012 because I said so. I have a couple of other Resolutions to add:
4. Go to Church more often. I like going to Church, I'm just lazy.
5. Win a contest. I have already begun work on this and I am entering every contest I see. These are sweepstakes, not a contest where you have to write something or submit a photo. I'm not ready to be judged on a talent.  I don't need to win a cooking vacation in Tuscany but I would like to win an Ipad, a Spark! book, a gift card to Starbucks (I don't drink coffee but it would still be a victory). The odds are not with me on this one so I will have to work extra hard on this goal.

In other blog news....

My ever diligent researcher/boyfriend informed me that a bottle of pinot gris has 623 calories or something like that. I informed him that if I say I don't know something, chances are really good that I don't want to know.

Boyfriend also acknowledged last night that I'm a bit chunky. "You know how you have a chair that is in a room for a couple of years with the sun shining on it through the window and after a couple of years the upholstery is faded and you think 'what happened to that chair?'" Apparently that is how my weight gain just "snuck up" on him.

I may make this blog about my weight loss efforts and stupid things my boyfriend says.