About five weeks ago, I restarted Weight Watchers. I joined a 30 Day Spring Weight Loss Challenge on FB hosted by Sarah at The Holy Mess. The challenge lasted the entire month of April. The accountability piece is what I wanted needed and accountability is what I got! We were expected to track everything we ate using the method of our choice and share a picture of our daily food log with the FB group (some 200+ participants BTW). We had weekly live coaching sessions with Sarah, filled out trackers and shared our reflections on our progress over the month. We will have monthly follow-up sessions in May and June.

Like some of the other participants, I am a little apprehensive about the challenge ending, but I certainly now have the tools to keep going! I’ll delve more into features in the WW app and my health insurer’s online wellness incentive programs to help with accountability.

Five things I learned in April:

Weight loss is a heck of a lot harder and slower this time around.

WW is a useful tool for tracking, but I don’t always agree with the daily/weekly point values allotted and some of the point values assigned to certain foods. On Week 3, half of my weekly points disappeared for some reason. Point values in the app are sometimes all over the place for the same food. I choose the middle value or use a rule of thumb of 1 point per 50 calories and track it that way. I’m going to hunt for my WW Freestyle (blue version) program notes and compare them to the current version. The two programs are supposedly very similar; yet I remember having more daily points and fewer points being assigned to certain favorite foods.

Summary: I’m back on track and will keep building on the progress I’ve made over the past month!

What is the one activity, hobby, or interest that the bulk of your time and extra money go toward?

Me?

If you said sewing, crafting or quilting – you’d be correct!

My quilting skills have certainly improved since retirement. I’ve had the time and energy to take classes, watch YouTube videos and practice, practice and practice!

Today, I took a Walking Foot Wonders class with Christa Watson. My quilt guild invited her to be this month’s special guest teacher and lecturer. I’ve anticipated this class for months. It was so worth it! I can straight line quilt and do basic diagonal cross-hatching just fine. I get hung up on more decorative designs using my walking foot. Even on my smaller “travel” machine, I tackled wavy lines, “organic” cross-hatching, angular designs and spirals. I’ll soon be putting my new found skills to work with a wavy spiral quilting design on a charity quilt. I’ll be using my Janome 8900 for that to take advantage of the 11″ of throat space.

Christa Watson will be teaching at several events over the next year, including QuiltCon 2024 in Raleigh, NC. I highly recommend taking one of her classes if you can.

Now, it’s time for dinner!

Georgia Bonesteel is probably best known for her PBS series, Lap Quilting with Georgia Bonesteel. In my book, this quilty icon is up there with Eleanor Burns, Marianne Fons & Liz Porter. I really wasn’t planning to go to Greenville again this year, but the opportunity to see Mrs. Bonesteel in person was a real draw. Hubs encouraged me to take advantage of the opportunity to see her now, rather than wait until later. I might not get another chance. Very true.

Sew glad I went. Yes, traffic was a beast both ways, but the opportunity to hear Georgia Bonesteel speak about her process and see her trunk show was well worth it. Unexpected bonus: a very nice conversation with one of the instructors (Sara Bond) over lunch. I sat at a random table to eat and struck up a conversation with her. She said I really needed to plan on getting out to Sisters quilt show in Oregon at least once. It’s on the list, along with Road to California and the Sewing & Stitchery Expo in Puyallup, WA…and Paducah….and Houston. 🙂