I've hardly ever won anything in my whole life. I can't even remember the last time, and it wasn't much. I think I won 4 juice glasses and a stadium blanket in the 1980s.
I almost didn't enter this challenge 9 months ago, and as the time has gotten nearer, I've driven people crazy with my doubts.
I've mentioned how I've done Bright Line Eating for nearly 14 months now and lost 60 pounds. No reward for that except my own feeling good and being able to take long walks and climb stairs without much exertion.
Several of the people on the BLE community FB group had mentioned something called HealthyWage where you commit to a certain weight loss and a certain time limit to lose it. If you meet the challenge, you win money, but the kicker is that you have to put up money every month, and if you don't lose the weight, then you lose that money.
It sounded crazy, not reliable, risky, all those things, so I didn't research it, but one day I was listening to a Clark Howard podcast, and he mentioned it in glowing terms as a way to make money at home. I trust Clark for everything, so that made me do some reading about it.
It looked legit. It was backed by not only Clark but AARP, New York Times, NPR and more places.
I had just lost 25 pounds in 3 months on BLE and planned to keep on with it, so I put in a hypothetical plan just to check it out. It turns out I could take 9 months to lose 30 pounds, pay $50 a month for those 9 months, and then win $1000 at the end of the time, plus the $450 I put in. I knew I could probably do it, but I still had a little worry about it working or not and whether I was a gambler!
Finally, I just did it. I really didn't want to tell anyone about it at first, because I was sure it was a mistake. I'm not a risk taker. Did I mention that? But 3 pounds a month. I could do that. I could use $1000 too.
So, long story short, I did it. Elise did a video of my weighing in and at the end of 9 months, I would weigh in again. Simple as that.
And I did lose more weight, not steadily but okay. I'm not sure why the next 25 was not as easy as the first. I stuck with no sugar and no flour, 3 meals a day and weighing what I ate but it was more like a pound or two a month. I made it through the holidays, and at the first of the year with 3-1/2 months to go, I still had 10 pounds to go. No excuse for it, but I was still on track. It was the hardest 10 pounds of my life though.
We are given a 14-day window to weigh in at the end. On my first day, I was 1/2 lb above goal. On the second, I was 3 lb above goal. What?! I started seriously worrying that I was going to make it. But one morning I woke up - on the 6th day - and was 1 lb below goal. I quickly gave Elise the phone and did my video.
And!!
I've told everyone that I was going to seriously eat something outrageous if I made it, and I chose pizza.
This is Lorenzo's Pizza down the street - formerly Uncle Si's, which Debby and I know very well! It has Italian sausage, pepperoni, onion, mushrooms, pepper. I'm not sure what all ended up being on there, but it was amazing.
And I still have several more pizza meals to go. The only pizza I've eaten in 14 months is with cauliflower crust or, usually, just a crustless one with toppings only.
I intend to enjoy this to the fullest and start Monday back on BLE. I briefly considered doing the HealthyWage thing again, but it's a little stressful. I know I'm going to be okay now with my usual way of eating.
I also haven't had a dessert or fast food for 14 months either, and I'm considering having maybe one McDonald's ice cream cone tomorrow.
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