Staying On Program Is A Full Time Job!

(In Windsor Ontario, on the Detroit River.)

This morning in our Weight Watchers meeting we talked about slip-ups, and how we respond to them.  Do we "act" or "react"?  Everyone in the room raised their hands when our leader Marci asked if we had ever slipped up while on Weight Watchers.  I would find it hard to believe if anyone has not.  I know I have, many times.  And in the past, I would allow my slip-ups to multiple into landslides, until I was in such a bad place mentally that I would simply abandon WW and the whole weight loss process.  I would give up.  I would let one or two instances completely derail me and I would throw in the towel.  But not anymore.  That was reacting, and in a horrible way.  This time, I am all about action and moving forward, no matter what.

One of the ladies in the meeting admitted that on weekends, she just continues with her bad habits and choices, and then works extra hard during the week to lose before Friday morning.  Then her cycle started all over again as soon as weigh-in was "over".  Another lady said that on her weigh-in day, she thought of that as a "freebie" day and ate whatever she wanted the rest of that day.  Lots of folks nodded, including me.  But that was how I used to behave.  It was always about meeting and beating the number at the scale every week, and like those ladies I manipulated my diet and exercise on certain days, depending on how closely the day was to weigh-in (or how close it was to being the day after).  I basically stayed on the program part time.

Sure, this morning after my meeting I would have loved to stop at McDonald's for a breakfast combo and large Coke.  In the old days, I would have, I would tell myself okay I lost a pound at weigh-in so I can eat this and I have all week before I weigh again.  But I didn't even consider making that choice, and I came home and had my whole wheat toast, and I don't feel unhappy or cheated one bit for doing that.  

It used to be that one fast food breakfast on a Friday morning would turn into a weekend of nonstop noshing, with me telling myself I had "time" to get back on track by Monday.  But as the lady at the meeting said, by doing that, she just had to work harder during the week to lose what she gained over the weekend.  I would do that, I would lose a pound at my weigh-in on Friday, then gain 2-3 pounds over the weekend, which meant come Monday I would act crazy trying to lose 5 pounds just so I could continue to see small losses at the meetings.  Sounds stupid when you put it that way, doesn't it?

So now, come Fridays after my meetings, come the weekend, my diet and exercise plans do not change.  The day of the week should have nothing to do with me getting on the treadmill or eating a big salad for dinner.  And so far it's worked.  This week, coming back from vacation, I had a two pound loss.  After vacation.  In the past it would have taken an extra month to lose what I would have gained on a week long trip.  In the past I would have said, it's vacation, I can "take a break" from my weight loss efforts.  But I did not do that on this trip, and I'm proud and excited that it paid off.  I am proud that I can say, I LOST weight while on vacation!  Yes, James and I ate out three meals a day in restaurants (no fast food), and we had snacks too.  But first and foremost, I continued to exercise on this trip, and if we didn't get in enough walking during our sightseeing excursions, then in the evenings I put my sneakers back on and headed out for another walk along the river.

I made very deliberate choices about my meals on this vacation, especially at breakfast.  Not once did I order any kind of combo or platter.  I always ordered from the "sides" menu.  Normally I just had toast in the morning.  At lunch, if the sandwiches were monster portions, I just ate half, and again I didn't order combos- no fries or chips.  At one lunch, James and I even shared an entree and I still didn't finish my half.  At dinner, I also watched my portions.  I would only eat half, or eat a large salad, and one night I even ordered an appetizer as my entree.  I did not feel deprived for one single moment at any restaurant.  In fact, one of the best dinners I had on the entire trip was a big salad at a Max & Erma's, and we ate many great meals.

I let James snap a photo of me (above) on the trip, and normally I don't like to have my picture taken because of my weight.  But this photo really made me notice how baggy my clothes are on me now.  Even with the 25 pound weight loss, I'm still wearing the same size, and I am starting to realize that by wearing overly large clothes, it's actually making me look heavier than I am right now.  It's a good feeling to have, instead of tugging at shirts that are too snug and clinging to every lump and bump.  I'm not quite ready to get out of the plus size section at the stores, but I know if I keep this up, I will be strolling out of there very soon.  

I did not give up my substantial income to stay at home and half-ass this.  If I don't lose the weight this time, I know I never ever will.  I will be 50 in a little over three years.  I spent most of my 20's, all of my 30's and my 40's very overweight and tired and frumpy.

It has to be NOW!!!  Yeah!!

SANDY

My Milestone

I wanted to blog with a short post today because I reached a milestone, and for me it's a very important one.  Now that my health has become the most serious reason for me to lose weight, my recent three day stint in the hospital is always at the forefront of my mind these days.  That and all the many follow up doctors appointments since then- still one more this Friday in fact for yet another round of blood work.

So I have to share my weight from today.  I am down to 205.6- in fact I've been at 205.6 since Friday which is a miracle in itself.  I say that because I almost always gain 1-2 pounds over the weekends.  But this weekend, even though we went out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants, I restrained myself and ordered a small side salad and a cup of soup.  Funny thing is, they got my order wrong and brought a large bowl of soup instead, but I made myself stop eating it well before I hit the bottom.  Come to think of it, I didn't even finish my side salad either.  So I am proud that I was able to forgo my normal menu choices, and guess what?  I had a nice lunch anyhow, because I was with my husband and we were talking and enjoying ourselves. What I had on the plate in front of me, didn't influence my good mood at all.

So 205.6 is a milestone for two reasons.  First of all, I haven't had a weight that low since fall of 2009- which is the last time I wasn't working and I was faithfully going to my Weight Watchers meetings every week- just like I am now.  Secondly, it's a 20 pound loss since I came home from the hospital in April.  I know this because I weighed that first day, and took a photo, to remind myself I was not ever going to weigh that much again (below).  If this isn't reason enough to carry on with the Weight Watchers program, and to keep exercising and eating right, I don't know what else it would take to keep me motivated! Here's to the next 20 pounds gone......

SANDY

(APRIL 2013)

Calm Waters

No loss this week, but no gain either, and I am okay with that.  I told myself before I started back on this journey, that I wasn't going to beat myself up for imperfections.  Or at least what the old me would have perceived as imperfections.  Maintenance is okay, it means I am still on the right path and doing the right things.  In the past I would have been upset to not "lose" at least something every single week.

I posted the picture above that I found online, of our vacation destination in July.  Pretty isn't it?  I know I set a goal of being at 200 for vacation, but that's 8 pounds and now 3 1/2 weeks away.  I am not the type to do fad diets or fasting or starvation, whatever you want to call it.  I try to eat right most of the time, and I try to move more.  It's a simple formula, and there are no blaring headlines about dropping two sizes in two days, or losing 20 pounds in two weeks.  And once the weight loss is over- once I reach my ultimate goal of 140 one day- then the rest of my life will be about maintenance anyhow.  So, not losing or gaining anything this week, is acceptable.

This is the first week where I've realized that my cravings for junk food are diminishing to the point where I've actually noticed it.  Now that fruits are considered zero point foods on Weight Watchers, I've been trying to eat a lot more of them.  Like most people who struggle with their weight, I would certainly rather have an Oreo Blizzard or a bag of Cheetos, instead of a piece of watermelon or bunch of grapes.  But I would also like to wear a size 12 instead of an 18.  For me, the two don't go together.

As for my triglyceride number, I have been racking my brain to try and figure out how I can go from years of normal numbers, to something so high my doctor told me I crashed their computer program.  Yet, all my other numbers were fine, even my blood sugar.  Something in my diet had to have changed drastically, so it has to be something new and something I do a lot of.  A day after my test results, I came across an article about agave nectar, then started doing research online about it.  It seems that agave, although it's touted as an alternative to white sugar, is almost all fructose (sugar is glucose).  I found multiple articles stating that fructose was harder for the liver to process and therefore was known to raise cholesterol and triglycerides (but does not raise blood sugar). And of course, it was my liver that just put me in the hospital in April too.

One article said only a small amount occasionally was okay.  About two years ago, I switched over to agave nectar for my coffee.  So I am using a couple of spoonfuls every single day!  I printed out all the findings, and when I go back to see my doctor after my next round of labs in mid-July, I'm going to show it to her.  This is really the only thing I can think of, that I have added to my diet recently in a large quantity, and every day.  Other than that, everything else I eat or drink is pretty much the same.  So hopefully by retiring the brand new bottle I just bought, to the shelf in the pantry, I will see my numbers go down.  And of course, this is all a guess anyhow.  My doctor told me to stop using creamer in my coffee and stop eating yogurt, but I've been doing both of those for decades now and they never caused high numbers, so I doubt that suddenly creamer and yogurt caused my triglycerides to shoot up from the 90's to the 600's.  Hhhmmm.

So the agave is gone from my diet and I continue to take the fish oil.  I will keep on moving, whether on the treadmill or walks in the neighborhood or simply just my normal chores around the house and yard.  So far it all seems to be working, and I'm down 17 pounds since getting out of the hospital in April.  Nothing drastic enough to be on the cover of a magazine, but 100% the right direction for me.

SANDY

Baby Steps...Still

One more pound gone this week, and I will take it.  One pound a week doesn't sound like much, but it's progress in the right direction so I am happy with it.  I'm down to 210, so that inches me closer to my first short term goal of 199, which I would like to get to before our vacation in late July.  My goal for this summer is not to have to buy new (bigger) clothes, which is what I go through every year.  Especially for vacation.  And I won't buy any new clothes for our July trip this year.  Even at 210, I'm finding that the clothes I've been wearing lately fit a lot better, and I'm not tugging at them because they are too tight.  Plus, I have plenty of smaller sizes already hanging in my closet, some even with tags still on them.  I have sizes from 3X all the way down to regular XL, so as long as I keep losing weight, I will already have a new wardrobe waiting on me!

I am still wearing my ActiveLink (below, backwards in the mirror).  I am surprised every day at how many activity points I get, even when I'm not "exercising"- which I consider getting on the treadmill or doing a workout DVD.  I am earning 5-6 points a day on my non-treadmill days, just with my normal activity level around the house.  I don't sit for long periods of time and I am not watching TV during the day at all.  I may sit for a little bit at the computer or when I'm making pottery, but even then I'm up and down constantly.  I haven't even been reading lately, not for several weeks now.  I found that once I cracked open a book, I would be there for 2-3 hours before I realized it, and that's not what I want to do all day long.

One trick I've been doing is to leave my coffee or water in the kitchen, no matter where I am at in the house.  It makes me get up every few minutes to get something to drink.  I find that I can't even get through checking my emails, and I've gotten up to walk back and forth to the kitchen a half dozen times.

I haven't been getting on the treadmill every day, and that's something I am still struggling with.  But I like that the monitor lets me know that I am still moving.  Most days I get almost to the 100% mark- usually in the high 80's or low 90's- so there is definitely a lot of room for improvement.  But, looking back on the tracking program that goes along with the ActiveLink, 20-30 minutes on the treadmill doesn't seem to make a huge difference on getting to the 100% spot.  Still, I know that since I've been at home, I am moving a lot more than I did at work.  At work, I never got up from my desk except to go to the bathroom or to lunch.  That was it.  I would sit sometimes for 5-6 hours without taking my hands away from my mouse and keyboard.

So my goals right now are to continue to eat less junk and more whole foods, and to move more.  And to be happy with any progress or loss, no matter how small or how slowly it comes.

SANDY

Long Winding Roads

Whenever I find a new blog to follow, I like to go back to the beginning and read all the posts. I like to get to know that person, see their struggles and successes.  Yesterday I sat and read all of my posts, since I started this blog in 2009.  Surprisingly, it didn't take very long to get through them all.  I would post for a few months, then drop out of sight for awhile.  I've written about all my excuses, all my set backs, but hardly any successes.  Reading my posts from 2009, I felt as though I could have written them now four years later.

When I started my blog, I was not working after our move here to Georgia.  I was going back to my Weight Watchers meetings and following the plan.  I slowly lost weight, from the 245 pounds I was at the end of 2008, down to 211 by the time I finally went back to work in late 2009.  In the time that I worked, I managed to gain the weight back and get into the 240's again, but for the last two years my scale has stayed around 220-225.  I will give myself a very tiny pat on the back for that maintenance, if you can call it that.

I am back down to 211 now, going back to Weight Watchers again, and in my fifth week of non-employment.  I feel as though it has taken me four years, but I am back to my starting point of the blog again.  So I can only move forward this time.  I voluntarily gave up a very secure job and a very large paycheck, in order to stay at home to focus solely on my health and my weight.  I'm grateful for the opportunity my husband has given me, to tackle these issues without the burden of the stress and long hours of my job.  I have zero excuses, really.

Yes, we still go out of town a lot and we still gallivant on the weekends.  I will always eat at restaurants, I will always have temptations.  Hopefully I will not always keep making the same bad choices.  I even have the WW app on my iPhone now so I can look up the points for any restaurant or fast food- I can't use "not" having my Eating Out book with me as a reason for choosing an unhealthy meal.  If I keep making the wrong decisions, keep making the same old excuses, then this blog is pointless.  No wonder no one is following me.  Who wants to read the same thing day in and day out.  And I don't want to keep writing the same things as I was writing in 2009 either.

I see so many of the old blogs I followed are no longer around, or the last posts were from one or two years ago.  I would say at least half of the blogs I used to read, need to just be deleted off my list.  I want to find new ones to read for inspiration, and they really do give me a glimmer of hope.  Everyone else is struggling with my same issue, and everyone else keeps plugging away at it day by day, hour by hour, just like me.

I can't control every situation in my life.  We have to eat out sometimes, we have to be out of town.  I have to leave my comfort zone.  That's part of life.  The only constant is ME.  Even if the only choice is a fast food place, almost all of them have salads with low-fat dressing- no one is forcing me to order a burger and fries and large Coke.  So why do I keep making that choice over and over again, knowing what the results will be?

When I told James yesterday that I skipped my WW meeting because I had a gain, I could tell he was disappointed.  I said, I don't have to weigh in on Tuesday, I have all week to make it to a meeting.  I'll go another morning.  He said, sometimes you just have to go and face the music.  And that's true.  Pushing my meeting back 1 or 2 days, just to avoid seeing a gain on my WW log, is sort of petty and defeats the purpose of sticking to the program.  It's playing games, and frankly that's not very becoming or genuine.  I know next week my schedule will be off, because I have appointments on both Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, so I'll have to get to WW when I can.

But I will get there, they have meetings there every day of the week but Sunday, so there is no real reason to miss one as long as I'm in town.  And I will get there this week too.  I weighed at home, I already know I had a small gain, so if I already know it- what good am I doing by dodging the scale at my meeting?  None whatsoever!  I have lots and lots of meetings in my future, and ups and downs at each one of them.  And hopefully, lots more blogging to do here too.

SANDY  

Back On Track

It seems as though a lot of my weight loss focus is always on getting back on the right path.  I know some people can stay dedicated to a program 24/7 and never have to look back.  I have my ups and downs though, and I think realistically most of us do.  But I let my "downs" get to me.  Today I skipped my Weight Watchers meeting because the scale showed a big gain.  Big as in, pretty much everything I have lost since joining, I regained in one week.  It wasn't much of a total loss to begin with, but it was enough that it made me feel a sense of accomplishment and success.  I won't skip my meeting completely, I will go one morning this week.  Just not today.  And I am trying not to beat myself up about it.

Last week when my dad was here and in the hospital for his broken hip, I barely ate all day for the whole week.  So when I weighed in last week, it showed a big loss.  But over the weekend I fell into my self-destructive trap of eating out several times, and not even trying to make healthy choices.  Fried chicken tenders, pasta, Cokes.  Last night, even though I cooked, I did not even bother to measure the amount of food I put on my plate.  And I haven't exercised in about two weeks, since we were in  Alabama.

All of that added up to an ugly number on the scale this morning.  I know it sounds childish, but I really love that Weight Watchers hands out charms and awards for milestones, and I've always used that as one of my motivations to keep on going.  Plus, I have my Pandora bracelet that I bought last year- with a charm for every five pounds lost- and I still have to lose about 15 pounds before I can allow myself to wear it again.  I know, rewards are shallow and not a "reason" to lose weight, but everyone needs that carrot dangling on a stick out in front of them.  Right now I'm too far away from my ultimate weight loss goal to even think about it, but I sure would like to wear my bracelet again.  I can see that right in front of me, and it's a closer goal to attain.

Vacation is looming, only seven weeks away, and once again I have that challenge of being able to fit into my summer clothes and being happy with how I look in our vacation photos.  Will I be healthy enough to do the things we will plan, will I get too tired too quickly?  Can I keep up with my husband, or will I be a party-pooper and want to fall into bed too early?  I want to be able to enjoy our trip without any nagging pains or exhaustion to ruin it for me.

SANDY