Climb That Mountain

Once again, the Weight Watchers scale told me something I wasn’t expecting, but this time it wasn’t good news like it was before. From this morning’s weigh-in at home, I expected to hold steady or maybe have gained half a pound since last week — after all, I weigh in the buff right after my morning pee, so I have to expect that I’ll weigh a bit more at noon, what with clothes and breakfast and water and all.

I can always tell that I’ve either gained or stayed the same when I step on the scale, and as she’s starting to write my weight down in my book, the nice lady manning the scale says, “Got it!” instead of “Good job!” So, I knew before I even read her upside-down writing that I’d gained since last week. Imagine my surprise when I saw her write +2.8 in my weight log.

My weight log and my bookmark

I haven’t gotten a 5-pound star since… let’s see… last December. It’s disappointing. (By the way, if you can’t quite see them, only four of those 10 stars on my bookmark are 5-pound stars.)

Linda, my WW leader, used the analogy of climbing a mountain to describe our weight loss journey. Sometimes it seems insurmountable, and sometimes we slip backward. I’m not sure how far I want to take the analogy, but it definitely seems like I’m running up and slipping back again, or just kind of walking around the base of the next peak. If I want to make headway against my weekend slippage, I need to be reasonable during weekday evenings and during my weekly department lunch at work, and I need to keep up with this jogging thing.

I let myself slack last week on the jogging. Sunday, my energy was sapped by Becoming A Woman (again); Tuesday, I was just exhausted from work and lack of sleep; and Thursday, it looked like it might rain, so I psyched myself out of jogging. (Of course, it was actually beautiful and sunny by the time I got home from work, but there was no turning my attitude around at that point.) I also didn’t get up early to jog this past Sunday — but today, I got back with the program.

Actually, today I tried to switch it up a little. My first week of jogging involved me jogging through the first verse and chorus of whatever song was playing on my iPod, then walking through the rest, until the next song started up. Today, I tried doing it opposite: walking through the first verse and chorus, then jogging until the end of the song. I wanted to push myself harder. Alas, pushing myself that much harder after a week off resulted in much less actual jogging this time around, since I wore myself out early in the jog and walked for the last third or so of my 1.3-mile course. Also, I need to spend more time out on my walk/jog, as I only racked up 17 minutes of aerobic steps on my pedometer.

This weekend, Aaron and I go to visit my bestest friend Amy in Dayton. We’ll be going to King’s Island, where I haven’t been since I was a VERY little kid. I’m expecting the usual weekend slackitude, as far as food goes — but we’ll likely be walking around the park quite a bit, and we might even hit the water park, so exercise might offset the badness a little.

How bad do I want to lose this last 25 pounds? Bad enough to jog it off, even when I’m not in the mood? Bad enough to say no to the pasta salad at Grumpy’s? We’ll see.