The slippery slope

Usually a "slippery slope" is not a good thing.  You don't mean to do something and then one small action leads to another and then before you know it, you're gone.  Well, the last few weeks Adam and I have been on a slippery slope but, surprisingly, this time it is for the better.  I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions.  I prefer to make my goals during the year because when I make a goal I'm serious about it and I don't want to be considered a "bandwagoner" whose goals are forgotten by the 3rd week of January.  Every year I giggle at the "get fit and lose weight" crowd that never makes it to February.  When Adam and I rang in the new year "get fit and lose weight" was NOT on our agenda.

Then the phone rang around 8:15 p.m. on January 2nd, and the slippery slope began. "Adam, are you in or are you out?"  Always one to rise to a challenge Adam found himself with a group of guys determined to complete the P90X "extreme home fitness" program.  Sure, he thought, I can work out with these guys every night, it will be fun. He had no intentions of worrying about food even though the other guys were really gung-ho and started counting calories immediately.  Soon the nightly discussions were about how much weight everyone was losing.  Being a competitive guy Adam decided that maybe he should start to watch what he ate a little so that his numbers were comparable with the other guys.  Then he is introduced to a website, "My Fitness Pal", that helps you track everything so you can successfully lose 1 to 2 lbs a week in a healthy way.  It's free and gives you calorie counts for everything and let's you know how many calories you personally burn with different exercises.  He showed it to me and then I started to think that maybe this would be the best time to finally get rid of that last 10 lbs of baby weight I've been carrying around for the last 5 years.  If I'm going to be cooking healthy, low calorie meals anyway than I should probably just get it off once and for all.  Before we both know it we have a food scale in our kitchen, have several conversations a day about how many calories we have left for the day and how we are going to use them and are both working out a lot more.

How did this happen??  I am NOT a January "get fit and lose weight" kind of person! And yet, here I am getting fit and losing weight. I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed.  I'm 1 week in and have 5 more weeks to go.  I've lost an inch around my waist and Adam went to a smaller hole on his belt today.  Somehow we got ourselves into this mess though I'm still not completely sure how. 

I guess sometimes peer pressure can be a good thing.