The weight loss challenge has officially started! My official weigh in is 301.6, ugh. That’s still a shocker.

I’m still unsure of a good goal to set for myself. All the reports out there say a healthy amount to lose is 1-2 pounds a week, probably 3 pounds a week for someone my size. So, a 6 week challenge is 18lbs, let’s just add my competitive spirit and say my goal will be 20 pounds.

Here’s my official plan of attack.

1) Working Out

Naturally, as it’s sponsored by Orange Theory Fitness, one of the rules of the challenge is I have to attend at least 3 classes a week (with only one counting per day, not that I have any idea how anyone could possibly do multiple workouts in a day).

2) Water

Every article I read on weight loss says to drink a ton of water. Apparently, most of us are perpetually dehydrated, which leads to water retention. So, drinking more water will lead to you losing water. Water is also good to keep all the body’s systems going, everything from digestion, to carrying nutrients in the blood, to removing waste.

The amount of water to drink varies. Some say (your weight)/2 ounces, some say 3 liters, some say 1 gallon. Empirical vs metric system conversion confusion aside, that’s a lot of water!

It is possible to drink too much water, but it seems like you would have to drink WAY more than any of the above recommended amounts in a very short period of time, within a couple hours. Figure, it can’t hurt to try right?

3) Nutrition

This is the biggie right here (pun intended!). It’s no secret that my nutrition is horrible, also, I have pretty much no education on what’s right. There’s the food pyramid, but I hear that’s all wrong.

Here’s the nutrition steps I’m taking:

– One of the trainers said that someone of my frame, an aggressive weight loss diet would be 1600 calories on non-workout days and 1800 calories on workout days.

Of course, how many calories are there in anything?

– To help keep track of calories I downloaded the MyFitnessPal app, there’s also a MyFitnessPal Website. This thing is awesome, honestly, I have no idea how it’s free. Most foods from restaurants are searchable in there, it can use your phone’s camera to scan barcodes to enter the nutritional information. If you’re cooking something, you can input the ingredients and it’ll make nutritional info for you to plug in when you eat it.

It tracks more than food, you can input workout data, it can sync up to a bunch of other apps like Map My Walk, and even connect to a FitBit and put in burned calories. Also, at the end of each day when you complete your food log it tells you how much you’d weigh in 5 weeks if every day was identical to that day.

– Start cooking and stop eating out!

This is the big one. Dinners can be under control when I cook them, but the biggest place to screw up is weekday lunches. There’s too many delicious options, so for the entirety of this weight loss challenge, I will only eat soups I make for lunch!

I’ll break down specifics in the next post, stay tuned and wish me luck!