dianaschnuth

There was a time when I would sit at my computer every Tuesday evening and write about my weigh-in. I’d determine where I’d gone astray that week and make plans for the following week. After a while, those posts started to get repetitive, and I started to wonder why I kept writing them if I didn’t plan to do anything different.

So I stopped.

Tonight, I’m sprawled on the loveseat, smartphone in hand, tapping away at the screen. Wondering where my tape measure is — it’s been months since I took any measurements — but not caring enough to look for it. My mouth still hurts from yesterday’s adjustment to my braces, so I went over my Points allotment for today by holding off on eating until I was starving, then eating all the soft and unhealthy things I could find.

I’ve gained a few pounds back that I had previously lost, but nothing epic. Yet. If I keep eating this way, with wanton disregard to the program and my daily target, I’ll quickly balloon back up to my Oh Shit weight.

I’ve been in this weird half-assed limbo for some time. Not really tracking, not really caring if I lose or stay the same.

The thing is, I do care.

Deep down, I’m tired of my clothes not fitting quite right. I want to honestly say that I don’t care if my shirt touches me just so. I want my pants to fall more naturally in the front, and not do that weird fat puckery thing in the crotchal region.

I also want to feel better. To have more energy. To sleep better. To reduce the stress on my offset vertebra and relieve my bulging disc.

It’s a challenge, though, to draw the parallel between Right Now and my Someday Goal of losing 20 more pounds. Right now, I want dessert. Right now, I want to go out with my co-workers, or my husband, or my friends. Right now, I want a hard cider. It’s challenging to step backward from that goal and to see how tiny choices will affect my getting there.

But they will. And they do. And they have.

The next time I decide I want something from the vending machine, or some French fries, or an order of fried rice, I need to step back and reconsider. Eye on the prize and all that.

Sometimes, though, it’s just so hard to make myself give a shit.

My weight loss journey has been slow going. I lost a shit-ton (about 50 pounds) fairly quickly on the Atkins Diet about ten years ago, and only gained back a small fraction of that. Almost five years ago, I joined Weight Watchers to take off the few pounds I’d put back on, and to get the momentum going again, since I still had about 40 pounds to go to reach my goal weight.

In the five years I’ve been on program with WW, I’ve gone through a few up and down cycles. I lost 15 pounds in three months when I first joined, and that was the steepest loss I’ve seen since. After that, I took six months to lose five pounds, then gained back ten pounds in eight months, then re-lost those ten pounds over the following year. Then I got pregnant, and lost a relatively quick five pounds in that first couple of months before I realized I was expecting. My post-pregnancy weigh-in actually wasn’t so bad — then I gained five pounds and didn’t lose it for a good six months. I’m finally back down to my lowest weight (not counting the pre-pregnancy baby hormone bonus weight loss), but it’s been really, REALLY slow going.

So, when my favorite diet and fitness blogger, Roni Noone of Roni’s Weigh, announced that she was hosting another DietBet game, I decided that, this time, I’d jump on board. Maybe what I needed was some incentive. Maybe I’d have that extra oomph if I had the promise of a payout at the end for losing 4% of my body weight in a month. I realized that losing seven pounds in a month was a big stretch for me, looking at my track record of weekly half-pound losses in a good month, but i figured I’d give it a shot, anyway.

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“If you could have any food you wanted this week,” my relatively new Weight Watchers leader asked the group, “Any food at all, what would it be?”

“Chicken paprikash!” answered one woman.

“Ice cream,” said another.

My response? “Sushi!”

The point of that question had been to get us to think about being more active, then using our Activity Points toward a kind of a splurge or reward food. Or, rather, to use that food as a dangling carrot of sorts to get us to earn that many APs during the week, so we could eat our reward food without guilt. That struck a few different chords with me:

#1 – Last week’s meeting included the phrase, “Don’t reward yourself with food. You are not a dog.” Doesn’t this sort of count as rewarding yourself with food? Also, if someone wants to lose weight, shouldn’t they be banking their Activity Points instead of eating them? Creating a deficit?

#2 – Funny, isn’t it, how my OMG-I’d-love-that food has become a healthy choice, rather than a splurge? Granted, if she’d asked on a different day, I might have said prime rib, which would be considerably more Points than salmon and tuna sashimi. But, today, my brain threw out a healthy option, and I consider that a win.

I haven’t been attending meetings since I got the edict that I couldn’t run anymore. To keep up my lunchtime activity, I started attending the Tuesday yoga classes at my work, which conflict with the Weight Watchers meeting. I weigh in, then go straight to the Fitness Center to change into my yoga gear.

Today, though, I got a flu shot in the morning, and my shoulder was so sore (and still is) that I opted to bail on yoga and attend the meeting instead. The week before, someone in my department ignored the fact that I had my yoga time blocked off on my calendar and scheduled a meeting that conflicted with yoga, but not with my At Work meeting. The week before that, yoga was rescheduled for Wednesday instead of Tuesday; that was my first meeting in months.

At first, going back to meetings was a treat. There were a few Lifetime members there that I remembered, and a few Oldies But Goodies like me who are still fighting the good fight after so many years of watching the scale barely budge. After attending a few meetings in a row, though, I remembered how much I loved how my old leader ran the At Work meetings; this new leader does it different, doesn’t give anyone a chance to speak up and brag about their Non-Scale Victories, is too cheery and peppy, and — although I know this shouldn’t matter — only had 30 pounds to lose to hit Goal when she first joined, as opposed to our old leader, who lost over 100. I remembered that I’d been getting bored with meetings, and that’s why yoga trumped them hands-down.

So, if meetings are so old-hat to me… why am I still losing so slowly? If I know what to do so well, shouldn’t I just do it and be done with it?

It all comes down to planning and sticking to that plan. Even when I’m at home. At work, it’s easy: just don’t hit the vending machine. Eat the lunch I brought. Plan ahead for that weekly team lunch. Drink lots of water and tea. At home, though, it’s easy to start shoveling in the diet snack foods and the frozen meals and the diet brownies and canned corn and light ice cream…

My plan this week is to have a big loss at the scale. I know, duh, right?

No. Usually, if I make a plan, it’s process-based. Eat all my fruits and veggies. Do some activity every day. Don’t eat after Connor has had his dinner. Don’t use any Weekly Allowance Points. Something small and measurable — and if it doesn’t translate to a loss on the scale, well, at least I changed up some habits.

Thing is, those sorts of things work for a few days. Then I get into a mood, or I have that lapse of judgement, or I go out for lunch and eat all my daily Points in one tasty burger. And it’s not that those things cause me to go all-or-nothing; it’s just that I end up making it that much harder to stick to my mini-goal for the rest of the week, depending on what that goal was.

Next week, I go back to yoga, and go back to dashing in and out for my weigh-in. We’ll see if that weigh-in reflects a renewed vigor for the program, or the same old one-pound yo-yo.

Weigh-in: up one pound exactly.

Maybe it’s time for a new strategy.

My only two goals for the week were to a.) complete Week One of C25K and 100 Pushups and b.) have some Weekly Allowance Points left over at the end of the week. Two out of three ain’t bad…?

The bad news: I ate all of my Weekly Allowance Points. The good news: I earned so many Activity Points from running and pushups that I managed not to eat through all of those.

From here on in, completing each week of C25K and 100 Pushups is a given. I have some additional accountability through a weekly coaching call (a free service of the fine folks at the Slow Runners Club), so I feel like exercise is no longer just a weekly goal; it’s non-negotiable. Now I’m working on improving my fitness level, not just showing up (although that’s a good and necessary start).

Perhaps, as food goals go, I should do something a little more in-the-moment, rather than something that I don’t care about when I get to the end of my day and I’ve got the munchies and say To Hell With My Weekly Points. This week, I declare that I will eat one serving of fruits or vegetables with every meal. That includes late-night snacks.

Next week, maternity leave is over and I start back to work. Back to a normal environment — albeit with a few tweaks, like taking pumping breaks and running two to three times a week. We’ll see how that affects things.

Weigh-in: down 1.6 pounds!

How did I manage this? Hell if I know.

My major oopsie: Saturday. For whatever reason (I’m chalking it up to Mommy Brain), it didn’t occur to me that a baby shower held from 2pm to 4pm would include a lunch potluck. So, luckily, I did eat lunch before I went to the shower. I still ate one plateful of delicious food, though: green been casserole, cheesy potatoes, mustard potato salad, and ravioli — all ¼ to ½ cup servings, except for the cheesy potatoes, which were a major 1-cup indulgence.

I’m guessing that I went over my Weekly Allowance Points, but I didn’t track Saturday’s meals, so I’ll never know for sure. I’m assuming I did. So, my first weekly goal to have some Weekly Allowance Points left over at the end of the week is out the window.

My minor oopsie: exercise. Or lack thereof. I didn’t really get going on the exercise tip until yesterday, when I started the Hundred Pushups program. Today I started Couch to 5K®, which accounted for 24 minutes of cardio. But that counts for this week, not last week. So, my weekly goal to exercise for at least 20 minutes a day for at least three days is totally blown.

NSV (Non-Scale Victory): I did eat more fruits and vegetables than last week — or at least the same amount, since I only maxxed out my servings for three days, not more than three days.

NSV #2: As mentioned above, I started the Hundred Pushups program (at the suggestion of Adam Tinkoff, aka Zen Runner of the Slow Runners Club). I attempted this years ago, but didn’t last long. This time, even though I’m doing modified pushups on my knees (aka “girlie pushups”), I’m going to see the program through to the end… then restart doing standard pushups.

So, what are my goals for this week? Mainly, complete Week One of C25K and 100 Pushups. If I can manage that on the exercise front, and have some Weekly Allowance Points left over at the end of the week, I’ll consider the week a rousing success, whether the scale says I gain or lose.