Weight loss and money-making victories! in Life as a Mom of 2 boys.....and a girl!!

Oh wow. As if it’s been 2 weeks since my last entry lol. Ok well I won second place in the weight loss competition, which was $72 so that was pretty cool. I lost 9.5% of my weight in the 8 weeks and the winner lost 10.1% so I was a little bummed that she beat me by that little (1st place prize was $144) but oh well. I was pretty happy to get 2nd considering the 3rd place girl would have beat me if she lost 3lbs the final week but she only ended up losing 1.5 (she won $24).

After the weight loss competition I was like, I have been counting calories and exercising at least 6 out of every 7 days for 19 weeks now. I want a break!! So I took a week off. I didn’t eat a ton but it was sooooooooooo nice not to think about calories and I sat on the couch every evening instead of doing my steps. I had a bunch of halloween candy and ate fast food with the family without worrying about what I got. My weigh in before I started this week off was Nov 7th and I was 168.4. Well, I stepped on the scale the following Monday to start counting calories and exercising again like my regular routine.....and my weight said 174!! Holy crap! I knew I didn’t really gain 5.6 pounds but that was just terrible to see. So, last Monday I got back on track and did really well this week. Things are back to normal, although Monday it was soooooo hard to buckle down and get back into it. And this morning I was 169 so all is well :) Now I will see where I can go from here. A bunch of ladies in another facebook group I’m in decided to start doing a weekly weigh in to keep each other accountable so I joined them. I said I wanted to be 160 by Christmas day so I will do what I can to get there although my weight usually seems to plateau around 165. I honestly can’t remember the last time I was lower than 165. Definitely before having Cody so at least 5+ years!!

So, I have been continuing my frugal ways while on mat leave and making less money than I’m used to. Last week I made $60 on ebay selling Jamberry, got $72 from the weight loss competition, made $100 selling random crap around my house AND I made some money from a new app I found!! I was so excited to find this app for my phone. It’s called field agent and you do small little mystery shops for money. In just over a week I’ve made $120 from it. I look for what jobs are available near me and once in a while I’ll do some. I can’t believe how easy they are too! Like, one day I had to take 3 pictures of the drive thru menu at McDonald’s. That gave me $10. Then across the street I had to do the same with Subway’s menu. Another $10. So I made $20 in 5 minutes. And at a couple gas stations I had to ask them a question about what cigarettes they had. Sometimes I just do it while I’m out. Like yesterday, I had to go pick up a few groceries to get us through the week and I did a quick one while I was at the grocery store. I had to take a picture of any pampers diapers that were out of stock on the shelf. That’s it. That one was $8. The money definitely adds up! That $120 definitely helped me pay the bills.

I also rediscovered the swagbucks website and have been doing great earning swagbucks over the last week or so. You basically do things to earn points and you can redeem those points for lots of different kinds of gift cards and paypal (which is obviously just money). So you do some surveys, do the daily poll, put in swag codes when they become available, set your computer and/or phone to watch videos to earn you points. Anyways, I’ve already earned $50 in amazon.ca gift cards which I’m going to use on Christmas presents. I figure I should regularly be able to earn a minimum of $50 in gift cards a month and that’s just from spending 30 minutes to an hour at it a day. The site is very good at explaining it but you can ask me questions if you’d like to do it too. You can do it in Canada or the states. Here’s my referral link: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/dreaming4ever