dianaschnuth

Today I received my 16 Week “Clapping Hands” award for attending 16 weeks of Weight Watchers meetings. This falls under the “eighty percent of success is showing up” category, and I’m not as proud of it as I am the simple star sticker I also received today for losing another five pounds. (Our leader didn’t give out my five-pound star in front of everyone in the meeting, though, since it would clue everyone in about at what pace I’m losing weight. Not that I really care if everyone knows I’m losing about one pound a week.)

I have just over five pounds to lose per the official Weight Watchers scales until I hit my 10% goal — it’s been statistically proven that losing 10% of your body weight can have a major positive impact on your health, and that goal is built right into the WW program.

Slow and steady wins the race and all that… If I ever need a pick-me-up, though, I look back over the past five-plus years and see how far I’ve come:

Thanks to the wonders of blogging (and journaling in general), I can map most of these trends in gains and losses to a particular time in my life: pre-wedding, Atkins, complacency, dieting, unemployment, Weight Watchers. It’s a valuable tool, and I’m glad I’ve been anal-retentive about weighing and charting over the years.

Since I’m a shutterbug, too, I can map photos to all these weights: obese Diana in 2002, post-Atkins Diana in 2004 (still wearing pre-Atkins clothes), almost-obese Diana in 2006, and less-overweight Diana now, in 2008.

Yo-yo dieting? Not exactly. Actually, not at all. I lost 50 pounds — and I still maintain that low-carb diets are a valid way to lose a shit-ton of weight and see the results you need to keep you motivated — and I hovered within a ten-pound range over the course of three or four years. And now I’m back on the wagon and picking up where I left off.

Perspective. I haz it.

I’m starting to step back from myself and see the differences between then and now. It’s surreal, almost.

For instance: when I reach around to scratch my shoulder, there’s a definite lack of a fat layer there. I can feel the boniness of my shoulder blade, and the existence of that little hollow at the top and back of my shoulder area.

Also: when I lay on my side to go to sleep at night, I’ll sometimes wrap one arm around myself and kind of tuck it under my rib area. This rib area is actually starting to feel like ribs, and not like some sort of water balloon or something.

I’ve always had a gut. I think the anatomy of this gut is partially hereditary, being that all the womenfolk in my family have had the same shape of lower-abdominal fatness. Anyway, I was sitting on the john today, and realized (as I had some time on my hands) that my gut is deflating. I actually picked it up as best I could and squished it around and noted that it feels much less dense than it once did. I can still quite easily pinch more than an inch, but now it at least feels like skin with some fat underneath it, rather than a big, dense girl gut.

It’s fun to notice the small things as I lose weight bit by bit. Funny — back in late 2002, I noticed I was getting fat obese when little things caught my attention: like the fact that the fat-roll creases in my love-handles were permanent and only went away with a major side bend, and like the fact that there was no space between my arms and my torso when I stood up straight.

I guess little things can make a big difference — in a good way — if you let them.

I mentioned earlier that I am now at the lowest weight I’ve been in probably ten years. What’s interesting is that I’m actually starting to feel it.

This week, I started actively working out in the evenings again. On Monday, I dug out one of my old PUSH DVDs from two years ago and did a 40-minute full-body strength-training workout. Yesterday, I did a grow-your-own sort of lower body and ab workout (focusing on the muscles that weren’t already sore). Today was Zen, so no workout, although the deep breathing involved in a half hour of zazen really garners some of the same effects, I think.

I’m not sure if it’s my body glomming onto the exercise it’s been craving or what, but I feel taller and thinner this week. Plus, swear to Jebus, I reached up to scratch my upper arm today, and actually felt the definition between my triceps and my deltoids. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that on me before.

Also: I recorded a video clip of myself yesterday (that’s a different post entirely), and noticed that my face and neck are getting noticeably thinner. I even filmed from what would normally be a horribly unflattering angle for me — basically, up my nose — and the double-chin only flashed into existence once or twice, and only because I was looking for it. For the most part, my face looks more square than round now, and my neck has definition instead of flab. Not much jiggle happening, despite the fact that I was playing “drums.” (More on that later, I promise.)

So. This Weight Watchers thing seems to be coming up roses so far. I’m losing an average of about… *crunches some numbers* …just over a pound a week since the middle of May. Assuming I keep at the same pace, that would put me at my 10% goal by the first day of Autumn. Maybe we’ll see if I can’t step things up a little, and speed up the pace to two pounds a week.

First on the horizon, though: making it successfully through Thursday evening and Friday in Cleveland, at funeral services for Grammie, where there will almost certainly be some sort of comfort food to be had at some point, and not much opportunity for a nice long walk around Lakewood with Aaron. Real life doesn’t re-route itself just because we’re on a diet, though… and Grammie did Weight Watchers herself in the ’70s, and frequently sang its praises, so she’d want us to stay on program. And we will.

Today, I weighed in at the lowest weight I’ve been in over five years.

When I started logging my weight back in November of 2002, I was about six months away from getting married, and I was obese. I thought that by being more conscious of what I was eating and by documenting my weight, I would manage to somehow lose weight before the wedding. Unfortunately, my wedding pictures ended up being my “before” pictures, as I weighed somewhere between 245 and 250 pounds on my wedding day.

In September of 2003, one week after I’d broken myself of my Mountain Dew addiction and was beginning a pasta-free week, Aaron decided to go on the Atkins Diet; I decided to join him. I lost 33 pounds in four months, and continued to lose for the next six months after that, eventually coming to a stop after having lost 50 pounds total. At that point, in July 2004, Aaron had reached the upper end of his normal weight range, and decided to go on Maintenance. After a year of dieting, I was glad to “take a break” myself, even though I still had thirty pounds to go.

For the next few years, we still ate low-carb, but weren’t in active weight-loss mode. I slowly put on ten pounds over the next two years (“Chinese won’t hurt me, just this once…”), then slowly took that ten pounds back off with the help of my friend Sheryl and a diet plan she e-mailed me. Actually, I took off more than ten pounds with that plan; it took me a whole year, but I got all the way down to 195, which was lower than my Atkins all-time low.

My next major hurdle came when I found out I would be losing my job of five years. My entire building was being eliminated due to a merger, so we all tried to make the best of it by having lots of parties on work time and organizing potlucks and generally trying to keep chipper with food and games. My weight loss had already stalled by then, but my lack of willpower — or, rather, my desire to join in and eat all the yummy consolation food — helped my weight start to creep back up. I’d gained a few back by the time I became unemployed, but I then proceeded to gain ten pounds in under six weeks of unemployment.

The past seven months or so have seen me succeed in losing ten pounds, gain five of it back, then lose another ten on Weight Watchers. I’m now down to a weight I haven’t seen for probably ten years or more.

And this is just the beginning.

After the jump: weights and measures…
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I gained one pound since last week’s weigh-in, but I’m OK with that. See, I’ve kept up with the practice of weighing myself daily at home, and I know that I’ve actually maintained a slow but steady decline. For last week’s weigh-in, I ate a ridiculously tiny breakfast and drank just enough water to take my multivitamin, just so I would weigh in at hair-cutting weight at noon. It only makes sense that today, after eating a normal breakfast and drinking a full glass of water (at least) before noon, I could weigh more.

I’ve also noticed small things, like the looseness of the dress pants I wear to work — even the ones I just bought recently. My bras fit better now. Some of my shirts hang just a little funny in places. I think my neck / double-chin is shrinking. My posture is better (for the most part).

A big part of my recent successes is the companionship of Aaron on the diet bandwagon. Since he’s decided to officially eat healthier and exercise, I’m less tempted to eat things I shouldn’t. He’s the main grocery shopper, so the food in the house is now overwhelmingly healthy (although we still have some throwbacks in the fridge and cupboards), and there’s very little to tempt either of us. Plus, the weekends are on their way to becoming times to try out new recipes (like Asian Mushroom Stir-Fry) instead of eating out at the Indian buffet (and not stopping at one plateful).

Overall, I’m doing well. I’m slowly ramping up my exercise — I don’t allow myself to watch Good Eats unless I’m on the mini trampoline — and I’m eating my fruits and veggies and drinking my water.

I’m learning to work the program… so the program will work for me. That’s my mantra.