DISCLAIMER: I promise I won’t be blogging about weight loss struggles daily, just every so often to let you know how I’m doing and to keep me an honest gal.

Today my Weight Watchers effort began in earnest as I weighed in for the first time and received all the information booklets that are supposed to help me track my food consumption over the next few months. Can I get a personal assistant with that? Maybe a personal chef?

**(If you’re unfamiliar with how WW works, see my crash course below)

First thing I did was whip out the page where I calculate just how many points I get a day: enter 1 for this, 2 for that, just how active are you? and calculate … 22. A measly 22 points a day which drop to 21 after I lose the very first pound.

Maybe 22 points isn’t so bad, I thought. I mean, I’ve done well all day minding my portions and eating sensibly.

At the end of the day, I felt pretty dang proud at how well I ate, even telling the Modern Beau that if he wanted the privilege of cooking for me tonight he would have to stick to some of my guidelines. As soon as he left to go bar exam reviewing I sat down and started all my calculations: this much for milk, that much for my teeny-tiny serving of Goldfish, and voila! 24 points on the day. 24 points???

And I thought I was doing really, really well. Like so well that I might have to have one more snack to meet my points value for the day.

It’s going to be a long few months.

My initial goal is to lose 15 pounds. That would put me smack dab in the middle of my healthy BMI range, exactly where I want to be. I’ve been saying I ultimately want to lose about 18 pounds, but we’ll assess the situation when — yes, WHEN — I reach MG-minus 15. (How’s that for some optimism?)

I also plan to try both the flex plan and core plan to see which works for me. I’m thinking the core plan might make me feel healthy in a way I haven’t felt it in a very long time, so I’m very interested in trying it. I just need to do it at a time when I don’t have any travel/boyfriend/other demanding distractions.

And so, I raise my sixth glass of water for the day to all you modern gals (and guys) who are blogging or even just thinking about their current lifestyle changes/weight-management plans/NOT DIET. We’re all in this together and we can be our own support group as we do this. We’re going to have a big online party as we reach our goals!

**A crash course in WW:
There’s two ways to lose weight. One way uses a points system. Points are calculated fairly easily based on calories, fat grams and dietary fiber content and you get a certain number of points to adhere to each day. You also get 35 bonus points to use each week however you see fit. The plus side to this is you get to eat whatever you want, as long as you stay at your daily points value. The key to this is mostly portion control and high-fiber/low-fat foods.

The other plan offers you a list of “core” foods from which you can eat as much as you want. Those foods are basically healthy nonprocessed, no-sugar-added kind of stuff. The key with this one is to only eat until you feel comfortably full. You also get 35 bonus points if you feel the urge to stray from the core items every so often.