dianaschnuth

Apparently, my Weight Watchers leader has taken a bit of an interest in seeing me succeed. Which is cool, except for when I come into a weigh-in knowing that I haven’t been applying myself for the past week, and I end up stepping on the scale feeling like I came to class without my homework.

This week wasn’t such a raging success — I gained two pounds in one week, from succumbing to doughnuts during training and from failing to track my late-evening “snacks.” The sub-par tracking I did over the weekend might have had something to do with it, too, although we ate fairly healthily: Korean, Mediterranean, our usual dim sum Sunday brunch.

During today’s meeting, I accepted Linda’s challenge to follow all of the daily Good Health Guidelines, including:

• six 8-oz glasses of fluids (anything except alcohol)
• five 1/2-cup servings of fruits and veggies
• two 1-tsp servings of healthy oils
• two servings of dairy
• one daily multivitamin
• 30 minutes of daily activity
• two 3-oz servings of lean protein
• whole grains

I didn’t get my exercise in today, but I’m doing great otherwise. Committing to following the Good Health Guidelines means a decent amount of planning will have to go into my meals, and that’s a good thing. I can’t just go throwing frozen meals and sugar-free puddings into my lunch and call it done. I also need to plan dinner around what I need: veggies? protein? grains?

So, the good news is that I continue to be 15 pounds lighter than when I started WW about a year and a half ago. The better news is that I haven’t quit after a year-long plateau. The best news? I know I can break through this plateau if I can just stick to program for more than a couple weeks at a time.

I’d be happy with a 3.4 pound loss any week, but it’s even sweeter after three straight weeks of gains, the last two fairly substantial. I’ve brought myself back to where I was three weeks ago (which is the same place I was three weeks before that), and am looking forward to continuing the downward trend.

Honestly, I attribute a good deal of my success this week to tracking — and, therefore, to the new Weight Watchers iPhone app. It’s so much faster and more functional than the mobile site, and I only have a few qualms about it (which I plan to address at length in a later post, and in an iTunes review). It’s just so helpful to have a big, bold number there, in my face, telling me YOU ONLY HAVE 3 MORE POINTS TODAY.

By extension, I’ve discovered that the eTools are actually more helpful than my paper-based 3 Month Journal. I can tabulate how I did during the week, as far as Points intake and exercise goes. For instance, I can see at a glance that, holy mare, did I go ballistic on Friday! Ate up half of my Weekly Points Allowance (formerly known as Flex Points) just during that one day alone. Note to self: watch out for Friday nights.

My leader asked me what I’m going to do this week. I told her, “The same thing I did this week!” Truthfully, though, I’m going to take it to the next level. When I was getting down on myself this weekend, feeling all frumpy and weak-willed, Aaron said that this week was the week of getting back to tracking, and next week will be the week of eating better and following the program more closely. And that’s what I plan to do.

Tonight, I ate exactly all of my Points by the time I was done with dinner, and now I’m using two of my weekly allowance on a hot apple cider with sugar-free caramel syrup. That’s way better than, say, blowing seven or twelve points on snacks or imitation crab or soup (or all of the above) to keep my cakehole occupied.

Tomorrow is Team Lunch Day. Wherever we go, whether it’s the Mediterranean place or the sports bar, I’ll come up with something tasty to enjoy, without blowing all my extra points for the week. Yep, this is do-able.

Sometimes, I wish I could hold onto the anger and frustration I’ve felt in recent weeks at my Weight Watchers weigh-in. Had I sat down to write this blog entry at, say, noon today, it would have been vitriolic and self-deprecating and full of fight. Instead, I’ve had nearly nine hours to come to terms with the fact that, yes, I gained two pounds this week, on top of the 1.8 I gained last week, bringing me all the way back up to 198 pounds.

It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even want to publicly (or even semi-publicly) announce what I’m planning to do in regards to my weight-loss plan, because I so rarely follow through anymore. I could tell you that I’ve decided to work out with weights three days a week and take a lunch walk three days a week, but even I won’t believe me until I’ve actually done it.

Weight Watchers likes to stress that it’s a lifestyle, not a diet — this is true of any Way Of Eating. Even so, I think I’m more likely to successfully drop pounds and stay on-program if I have a “diet” mindset: I’m in this to lose weight, and I’m going to lose X number of pounds by X date. I understand that I’m going to have to eat like this indefinitely, for the most part, in order for me to not gain my weight back. (Case in point: the last two weeks, wherein I slacked off.) For now, though, I need to have that diet mentality in order to succeed.

Tomorrow is my weekly lunch out with my co-workers. I’m planning to choose the healthy option wherever we go, but I’m going to try to strongarm my co-workers into going to my favorite downtown Mediterranean joint instead of the sports bar. If I fall face-first into a giant fried fish sandwich for lunch, though, I’ll balance out dinner accordingly.

Next week, the scale will be moving in the right direction.

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.

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.

The Weight Watchers scale said that I’m down one more pound this week. Again, the scale at home said no such thing, but I’ll believe the WW scale, I suppose. This puts me officially on a downward trend, which is awesome.

I went for a walk-jog three days last week: Sunday morning, Tuesday evening, and Thursday evening. My “Aunt Flo” showed up in time for the weekend, so I opted to skip Sunday morning’s jog. Today, I was recovering from a busy day at work, after a late night watching YouTube videos, so I not only skipped my evening jog, but I inadvertently took a half-hour nap on the loveseat downstairs.

I’m going to make a concerted effort not to let this new habit fade out before it has a chance to take hold. Surprisingly enough, I’ve really been enjoying my jogs, once I get out there and do it. I used to think I hated running, but I think I just hated running in gym class, at the ass-end of the pack, feeling like people were staring at me because I still had two more laps around the gym when most everyone else was already done. Running at my own pace makes me feel fantastic.

This weekend, Aaron and I ate lunch at the International Festival, at the mosque in Perrysburg; had Korean with friends; made takoyaki (octopus dumplings) at home; and I *still* lost a pound. This gives me hope for the future: maybe this way of eating is totally sustainable for me, if I can eat especially healthy during the week, eat fun things on the weekends, and still lose weight.