Stephanie was one of our winners in the Refresh You $5,000 Makeover for You and a Friend Contest. She’s in the midst of the Very Low Calorie Diet Program. As she and her husband Aaron journey through their makeovers, we’ll share their updates. Their blogs are 99.9% unedited. You’ll read it all, as it really is — the triumphs, the setbacks and the results.

A lot has happened in the last few weeks. For the first time, I got a little off track, and probably not in the way you’d expect. I was skipping shakes. I’m supposed to have five a day and I was averaging about four, sometimes three. I was legitimately having a hard time fitting them in and I figured it couldn’t hurt too much, right? Wrong.

It showed up on weigh day. I lost two more pounds. That’s it. Two pounds.
I talked a lot with my doctor that day.  (She’s actually quite entertaining and I’m not just saying that because I know she’ll read this.) She really stressed the importance of getting all of my product in and the importance of exercise. We set small goals: Get in every shake and take my son for a walk. They were easy, attainable goals and I left feeling like I had some work to do, but it would be OK.

Then I went home and cried. I was so frustrated with the results that I really started to question the program. The changes I’ve made are so extreme that I felt entitled to extreme results.

Oh, did I mention that my husband started watching what he was eating when I started the program? No? Well, he did, and he has already lost 20 pounds. I was coming in at about 17 pounds lost and he was at 20. It didn’t seem fair. No, it just plain wasn’t fair. He was eating real food and even had a two-beer-per-week allowance! I was eating shakes and bars.

So after I told him how much I hated him and he wasn’t allowed to lose anymore weight, I started to calm down and we talked. I know this is a long road. I’ve done this successfully before, but nothing ever stuck. I need this to be a permanent change. So I made up my mind to quit whining and push forward.

And it worked. I got all my shakes in over the next week and started getting more exercise in. Not necessarily formal exercise, but I started taking the stairs at work and went out of my way to take more steps. I was really feeling good and the scale was responding. At my next meeting I had lost over five more pounds!

At this point, my total pounds lost was 22.3! And I surpassed my husband!

But something even cooler started happening that week. I started getting comments. People who hadn’t seen me started asking if I’d lost weight. And those who knew about the program starting saying things like “I can tell you’ve lost weight” and “your hard work is really paying off.”

Some of my coworkers started to harass me about the pants I was wearing, calling them clown pants because they were clearly too big. I started pulling clothes out of the far back of the closet that hadn’t seen the light of day for months or even years. And I felt smaller. It was amazing. Nothing like progress to keep a girl motivated.

My husband’s family is going to be visiting soon. That’ll be a real test. I’ll tell you all about it soon, OK?

Stephanie was one of our winners in the Refresh You $5,000 Makeover for You and a Friend Contest. After we met with Stephanie and her friend/husband Aaron (who’s going the refractive eye surgery route) we sheepishly asked them to blog about their experiences and tell their stories. They agreed, and as they journey through their makeovers, we’ll share their updates. Their blogs are 99.9% unedited.

On to Week Two! With the success of Week One, I was confident that the pounds would keep melting away and I would begin meeting some of my preliminary goals in no time! And Week Two was pretty easy. I had no major events and I was getting the hang of the program.

I got the go ahead from my doctor to start exercising in Week Two. I bought some new exercise DVDs. God forbid I go outside – there are bugs and heat and other people who might see me all sweaty and whatnot and we certainly couldn’t have that.

When the DVDs arrived I took them out of the package, read the inserts and then put them back in the box and never pulled them out again all week. I could give a million excuses as to why I didn’t exercise, but in the end, as always, I didn’t make it a priority. I planned to bring that up in the next meeting and see what others do to get and stay motivated.

Heading to my Week Two meeting, I was feeling good. I didn’t get the exercise in, but I stayed on course with eating and never deviated from the program. So I headed back to the scale and lost…drum roll please…

1.2 pounds.

Wait…what??? 1.2 pounds??? WHAT?!? I ate nothing but shakes and bars all week long! You have GOT to be kidding me!

OK…so maybe I should have exercised. And OK, so on average, I lost over 5 pounds a week over the last two weeks. That’s good. Frustrating, but I’m still on track, I guess. This will be a great motivator to get active next week.

I went back into the meeting. This week Toni the nutritionist was presenting and she did a really great job. I am – no was – a  serial dieter, so I consider myself to be fairly well-versed in what one should and shouldn’t eat. But Toni had a way of reframing some of the things I already knew so that they made more sense to me. She is coming back in Week Three so I’m already looking forward to hearing from her again.

Week Three was also fairly easy. The shakes and bars are becoming the norm. I actually popped in those DVDs! They were HARD! I probably took a few more breaks than my perfectly sculpted virtual trainers would have liked, but I got my body moving and that’s what counts.

I did have one major roadblock in week three – a Brewers game.

I love sports. I love going to baseball games. I have never in my entire life attended a Brewers game without consuming a beer (or several) and a brat and probably some waffle fries covered in cheese sauce. Maybe even some Dippin’ Dots or warm cookies to round things out.

I gave this a lot of thought: Would baseball games even be fun if they didn’t include those things? I thought about why I like baseball and why I love the Brewers. It’s not because of the food and drink (although those are fun, too). It’s because I love the team and I enjoy the sport.

So I went to the game with my entire family, while my kids ate cheese fries and hot dogs. (Thanks again to my husband for not drinking – you certainly made my night easier.)

Then something crazy happened. I had a great time! The game was phenomenal. The Brewers came back from a two-run deficit in the bottom of the 9^th to win the game! It was a perfect night and it was just as much fun as any game I had ever been to. It is actually really fun to discover that events don’t have to be about food.

I have spent most of my life treating the consumption of food as an event. To celebrate something, I went out to eat. If we were bored on Friday night, we went out to eat. When we went on vacation, we actually spent time figuring out where the best (which pretty much meant the least healthy) places were to eat. But this time, we went to the ball park. We spent time together as a family. I ate nothing but a shake and a bar. And we had a great time.

Again, feeling like I could conquer whatever obstacle came my way, I headed to the Week Three meeting. Toni was back and took us on a virtual tour of a grocery store. Did you know that Peanut Butter Captain Crunch and Special K Red Berries are practically identical in terms of nutrition? Calories, fat, sugar, fiber, you name it! Read labels carefully, people!

My name was called and I headed back to the scale. This week I lost 3.8 pounds! Much better than last week! And for those of you keeping track, that gets me to a total of 14.2 pounds in three weeks!

Feeling good and moving forward. I’ll keep you posted about what happens next.