dianaschnuth

May 2017 Weigh-In

May 16, 2017: Hopefully not a day that will live in infamy.

I do believe that might be the first time I ever skipped a weekly weigh-in just because I knew I had gained. I justified it by saying that I needed to eat breakfast if I was going to go to my fitness class at 12:30, but the truth was that my preview weight at home was 180, which means I’d gained almost FOUR POUNDS since the last week’s weigh-in. I wasn’t about to face that at the scale.

I’ve been having a really rough time focusing on eating right and planning ahead. I’ve gotten much better about not binge-eating in the evenings (usually), but I’ve shifted to eating poorly during the day and failing to track, which is much worse.

My attitude lately has been to retreat to comfort food, and damn the consequences. I’ve also been engaging in (unbudgeted) online retail therapy, which is not a good idea, no matter how much I would like a new laptop bag or a new dress for work. I’m feeling like there’s too much to do at home, I can’t focus on what I need to do at work, and the workouts that were once invigorating and revitalizing leave me unsatisfied. So I eat and I shop.

Well, I should take that back: my workouts have been increasingly more positive. April was bad, but May was better. There were more classes offered at the work gym that I enjoyed, like kickboxing and yoga and core fusion, and the times I lifted weights were physically positive but disappointing from a performance standpoint (i.e. I’ve lost a lot of fitness by slacking off on working out). I also went running at the very end of the month, and managed a 20-minute run at just under a 13-minute mile pace with no walking.

My weight is hovering around 180, which is ten pounds above my lowest weight, and 20 pounds from my goal weight. My clothes don’t fit right, my face and arms feel extra fat, I no longer feel comfortable in my own skin (again), my knees hurt, and my moods swing like stupid. I’m such a delicate flower, especially when I’m tired.

I’m not sure what’s going to make me give a shit again, but I know something needs to turn around, and soon. I’ve been saying that since October, and nothing has changed. I have days where I’m totally on point, but I have more days (or unfortunate hours) where I eat my emotions and fuck all.

I’ve started keeping a handwritten journal over the past few days, logging my emotions, hunger level, and fatigue. The very preliminary findings, unsurprisingly, are that I eat my emotions when I’m tired and alone and emotionally vulnerable and something sets me off (like, say, my son not staying in bed like he was asked). Also, afternoon walks are more effective than afternoon coffee for a pick-me-up.

Perhaps if I keep up this journaling, painfully obvious though the results may be, I’ll figure out a battle plan for out-thinking my tired lizard brain ahead of time.

I just know I’m tired of feeling fat and frumpy and, well, tired. I need to take control back from my lizard brain, and I need to do it NOW.

April 2017 Weigh-In

There’s not much to say that I haven’t already said, as far as my weight loss journey is concerned. My weight is creeping up and up and I don’t like it. It’s mostly attributable to evening snacking, although I’m sure other factors come into play, too (like my waning workout habits).

I’ll be in the right headspace for a few days, then I’ll eat something that triggers me to binge, and then it takes me a few days to find any fucks to give — and by then, even more damage has been done.

Because it’s worked before, I’m going to photojournal my meals for a while. I’m not sure where I’ll post them, or at what frequency — daily on Facebook, weekly on my blog, or daily on Twitter (which feels like talking out loud to no one in particular at a loud party), but I need to post it publicly for added accountability.

Here’s today’s meals — and yes, I’m seeing a distinct lack of fruits and veggies here. While I’m trying to ramp up my protein intake, that doesn’t mean I should ignore plants. I’ll work on that.

I need to get and stay in a healthy headspace. I’m starting to feel extra frumpy and puffy and not at all awesome, and I miss that awesome feeling and I want it back.

This sucks.

If You’re Bored Then You’re Boring

Just having one of those evenings where nothing I’d planned to do sounds good. I had a whole to-do list figured out: balance my checkbook, post a blog entry from some notes I’d typed out earlier, epilate my legs, some other stuff. Instead, all I want to do is play on my phone and stuff my face.

Last week was weird. My son was home from pre-k with a fever, so I worked from home on Tuesday, took a personal day Wednesday, then worked from home again on Friday, with my husband rocking “Daddy Days” with Connor for the remainder of the week. I didn’t plan my meals well, didn’t get much activity or even any time outside. At today’s Weight Watchers weigh-in, I’d gained just over a pound in two weeks.

I told my leader I wasn’t that worried. That was kind of a lie, since I continue to be worried about my lack of judgement and self-control in the moment. Tired, cranky, depressed, thrown off, worried, stressed — all those lead to food.

When I’m in the right mental space, I know what to do. When I’m feeling shitty, I still know what I should do, but I sincerely don’t care in that moment. It’s not All Or Nothing thinking — I don’t go down a crazy rabbit hole all night or all week because I screwed up — but it is self-sabotage of a sort.

I don’t fit in my clothes right anymore. I feel jiggly and frumpy and blah, even though I currently weigh 32 pounds less than when I started Weight Watchers, and over 70 pounds less than when I got married 14 years ago.

I had reached the point of feeling a certain kind of awesome, back before I gained this ten pounds back over a year and a half, and I need to recapture that awesomeness somehow. It’s not going to happen during this week of birthday cakes and fancy dinners (and I’m fine with that — birthdays only come once a year), but I think my present to myself for my 41st birthday will be to Treat Myself Right.

March Weigh-In: A Slip Becoming A Slide

Every month since October 2016, my average monthly weight has crept up by at least one pound. What I once blamed on a blip during the holidays has become an upward trend that I need to stop.

Something had to change.

(more…)

February 2017 Weigh-In: Stay the Course

We had a Weight Watchers At-Work Open House today, and 25 potential new members showed up. I know only a handful of those signed up — I watched to see how many people took a payroll-deduction form — but it was still encouraging to see the meeting room so full of new faces.

It was also eye-opening to me to see where I stand on the weight spectrum. Sometimes I forget to be thankful for the health and fitness I currently enjoy. Sometimes I forget that I’m only 15 pounds above my current Goal Weight, not 50 or 100.

This morning’s preview weight on the bathroom scale led me to believe I’d be up a smidge today, but I actually lost 0.6 lbs from last week. I’ll take it, especially since my weight has been slowly trending upward over the course of this month.

I haven’t really been keeping up with my Non-Scale Victories lately. I should really get back to that. I guess one pretty big NSV is the paczki that sat on my desk all morning long, untouched, waiting for my weigh-in, and went home in the container with the remainder of the blueberry muffins I brought, with the intention of splitting it with my son for dessert later. (Edit: unfortunately, my son opted not to split the paczki with me, and I ended up eating it after he went to bed.) Another one is the fact that I ate the WW snack buffet for lunch — muffin, cooked veggies, fake guac with chips, and a chocolate whoopie pie — and felt sated enough not to go get an additional lunch on top of all that.

It’s important to focus on the little things: the small habits changed, the feeling of health. I’ve recently lost that lovin’ feelin’ about active weight loss, and focusing on the little things — and having my eyes opened to where I really am in the journey — makes all the difference.

I remembered that, to jolt myself out of a previous slump, I had gone back to my blog and re-read the entries from when I was experiencing awesome weight loss. So, I did that again, and came across this gem that I so badly needed right now:

I’m too close to let myself screw this up now. When I eat healthy, I feel healthy. When I eat crap, I feel like crap. Like I said last month, wearing cute clothes is its own reward; so is feeling awesome.

Stay the course.

The answer isn’t adjusting my Goal Weight back upward to 170, like I’d briefly considered this month. The answer is to get back on track, be mindful, be active, be appreciative, and stay the course.