dianaschnuth

It’s kind of surprising to me how much my outlook can change over the course of a month. I’ve been taking notes all month about what’s working and what’s not, and now that I’m going over it all, it swings and varies so much that it’s a challenge to synthesize it into a cohesive post. But here we go…

I started the month double-tracking on Lose It! and Weight Watchers — partially because my Mom is using Lose It! and partially because I wanted to switch things up for myself. I find myself drawn to the details when I feel that I need more focus, and I think that, in that, I may be completely opposite from other Weight Watchers who just want a single number to think about (i.e. the PointsPlus value).

The act of focusing on how the two plans played off of each other helped me to also focus on what I was eating, and how much. Weight Watchers counts most fruits and vegetables as zero PPVs, as an incentive to get members to eat more of them. As I calculated my  Lose It! meals into Points, I started to realize how few fruits and veggies I was eating. But by tracking first in Lose It, I got to see how little protein I was getting in my diet, and how many carbohydrates.

That was the first inkling (OK, the first inkling lately) that I really should start planning my meals ahead of time.

I continued to double-track in WW and Lose It, despite a few days of overindulgence. A couple of my (girl)friends call the last week of their cycle the “Bottomless Pit Week,” where you eat and eat and could still eat, and eat all the bad things. In retrospect, once I identified that was happening, I gave myself license to go ahead and indulge, which is the exact wrong way to go with that. Next month, I’ll expect the Bottomless Pit Week and plan accordingly with healthy indulgences.

After the end of the month, I switched back to solely tracking on WW. Truth be told, the app has vastly improved — the scanner is now built in, instead of being a separate but linked app; the search actually brings back what I’d expect it to; and the Favorite Foods list has an alphabetical jump index (which I’ve been wanting for a long, long time).

Not today’s At Work meeting, but last week’s, I inadvertently hijacked with my question of how to get the fire back into my weight loss. The topic was celebrations, and I really couldn’t think of anything to celebrate, outside of just showing up. As soon as I got back to my desk, I took some notes on what the other members said:

• Weekly weight goals. Sure, I have about 20 more pounds to Goal, but what am I shooting for this week?
• Take Measurements. I’m not sure when I last took measurements — it may have been when I was first starting to show with Connor, back in Spring of 2011. In any case, I’m due for a full weigh-and-measure.
• Celebrate Non-Scale Victories (NSVs). I already do this, but it bears repeating. This month’s main NSV: after two days of me overeating unhealthy foods, a co-worker asked if I’d lost weight. (I was actually wearing a Spanx undergarment that day, but she said she’d noticed before today, so I didn’t mention it.)
• Remember how far you’ve come. In the meeting, I referenced what my weight loss graph looks like, starting at the number 250 (or thereabouts). My wedding photo is my “before” picture.
• Try “Simple Start” — the most recent incarnation of what used to be called “Core” back in the day. Choose from a list of foods instead of counting Points.
• Revisit old food journals. Also, blog entries from when I was most successful at losing on WW.

It was that last one, revisiting old journals, that really struck a chord with me. I looked at my weight graph and found that first big loss on Weight Watchers:

I hunted down what I wrote in the Summer of 2008, and was reminded of not necessarily what I ate, or what I looked like, but how I felt, both physically and emotionally.

That sparked something.

What also sparked something was the conversation I had with a fellow Weight Watcher as we went up the elevator after the meeting I hijacked. She was feeling quite the same as I was, with being kind of blah about the whole thing lately, and our quick back-and-forth ended with her telling me, “You know, if that’s all you’ve got, that’s all you’ve got.”

I watched the doors close and traveled the next few floors alone with my thoughts.

I haven’t been following the program like I used to. I’m only just now ramping my activity back up to where it needs to be, after figuring out what I can and can’t do with my spondylolisthesis. I know I don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. I know there are so many other tweaks I can make to follow Weight Watchers more closely, and to make it my own.

Is that all I’ve got?

Hell, no.