Plain Advice

For those of you who regularly read this blog, you may have been wondering why I have not been posting my weekly weight loss updates as I was doing, and as I said I would. So here’s my explanation.

As you may remember, I have not been very consistent in my weight loss efforts. I have gone “on and off the wagon” (as my fellow weight watcher buddy and I like to put it) so many times over the past few months that I can’t even count (actually, this has been going on ever since I had my youngest child who is now 21 months old!) .

Honestly, I get tired of sounding like a broken record when I am giving updates. “This week, doing great” and then back to “not doing so good” the next week over and over is embarassing, and I don’t think it is helping you to read it, either.

It is not that I have given up on my weight loss goals. In fact, right now I am back on track and hopeful. But I have decided that before I include you readers on my journey, I need to get a little time under my belt, experience some success, and develop some confidence in this area of my life again. After all, you can’t help anybody else unless you can help yourself, right?

This doesn’t mean that weight loss is never going to be the topic of discussion. It only means that I am no longer committing myself to update you every week on my progress. Maybe someday I will start again, but right now just isn’t the time.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

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To be honest, even though I followed my weight loss plan this past week (thank goodness I am back on the wagon!) I didn’t really expect to lose at my Thursday weigh in. I expected that my little dieting “detour” was going to keep showing up for this week, and maybe then I would start losing. So I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that I had lost 1.8 lbs. If you recall, that is exactly how much I had gained last week, so now I am back at where I started before I got off track.

I don’t have any epiphanies regarding weight loss to share at the moment. Sometimes, you just have to keep going along doing what you know you need to do and that is all. That is exactly what I am doing, and so far, so good.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Since my “Coming Clean” post a few days ago, I have kept the commitments I made to myself. I have written in my food journal daily, I weighed in on Thursday. And here I am, updating as I said I would.

As expected, I gained weight since I stepped on the scale 2 weeks and 2 days earlier. The gain was 1.8 lbs. I actually expected it to be more. But regardless, I am glad to be done with that weigh in, to be moving in the right direction again!

Journaling is so valuable when it comes to my weight loss efforts. Just tonight, as I was tallying up what I ate today in comparison to this past week, I realized that I am out of weekly flex points. This is not good, since I have 3 days left before a new week starts.

In the past, flex points have been very important to me psychologically. Knowing they are available tells me that I can eat a little more than my daily points and still be within the plan (and lose weight). When I have run out of these points early in the week, I have felt discouraged enough at times to give up for the rest of the week. That cannot happen this time. Despite my disappointment that the weekly allowance is gone, my journal allows me to know exactly where I stand, and I can plan for it. It is so true that knowledge is power.

When I realized the situation, I committed to exercise over the next few days so I can earn a few extra points, giving me the flexibility I need. We are leaving town in the morning, and I wasn’t planning to squeeze a workout into my schedule. But now I am planning to.  If for some reason I don’t, Plan B is that I will just have to stay within my daily points!  Not impossible.  It just requires me to be very conscious of what I am eating and make the smartest choices. 

It is very important to my weight loss success that I do what it takes to stay on track today, tomorrow, etc. Right now is a critical time because I am still getting back in the groove.

As always, thanks for stopping by and sharing my journey with me. Have a great day!

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I sit here in my hotel room. It is 4:47 am and I can’t sleep. The world is silent and finally I stop to think. And what do I feel? I am sad. Sad that I have broken commitments to myself. The commitments that if kept would make me more healthy, more fit, more confident. Sad that my 5 year old told me recently that I am fat because I ate too much candy. Sad that I feel self conscious about my body all the time. Sad that I don’t feel attractive. Sad that I don’t know how to trust myself about food. Sad that I am not exercising. Sad that I am not setting a good example for my children. Sad that they might be sad like this someday. Sad that I am not living up to my potential. Sad, sad, sad. (by the way, thanks for indulging me in my pity party).

Now what?

First of all, where did I go wrong? I don’t know the cause of my problem. Something inside me drives me to eat when I am happy, when I am sad, when I need comfort, when I am angry, bored, and again, when I am happy. And then there is the part of me that is so “all or nothing”. Meaning, I do everything right, or else I do nothing right. If I eat more, you would think I could realize that I should step up my exercise to compensate. But I don’t… I stop exercising. Something in me says “what’s the use?” Totally irrational. I don’t know why I am this way.

This time, it all started to fall apart…when, I am not exactly sure. But some things started happening that were not good signs. I stopped writing in my food journal. That is commitment #1 to myself that I broke. I felt bad about it the first day, the second day, the third day…but then I fell out of the habit and stopped thinking about it. I know myself, and I know if I don’t hold myself accountable through a journal that I cannot manage well. That is why I committed to do it. Because I know it is essential to my success.

When I stopped writing in my food journal, I also broke other commitments to myself. This past week, I broke a major one… I didn’t weigh in. I didn’t want to face the consequences of my actions. I wanted to continue in my behaviors without having to be conscious of what I was doing. I stopped updating my weekly progress (or lack thereof) on this site. Again, I didn’t want to face the reality of what was going on. And I was, and still am, embarassed. Who wants the world to know when they are failing miserably?

In the short term, I like to live unconsciously. I like to feel free to do what I want when I want. It is the part of me that likes to wake up in the morning free from restrictions, free from rules and structure. In so many ways I am not “free” to do what I want because of time and money constraints.

It’s not that I have a super-strict, super-structured life. But I do have a lot of people who need me to do things for them, important things. My family needs me. My job needs me. My life needs me. I need me too, to be healthy, awake and alive. But instead, I do a lot of taking care of myself through food. Problem is, I am not taking care of myself at all when I use food in this way. I end up just hurting myself, causing the disappointment and pain that is coming to me so poignantly right now.

But I am thankful for this moment I am having. It is a turning point. I am thankful for the quiet opportunity I am at, where I can reflect and redirect myself. It feels good to realize where I am and to know that I don’t have to stay here. I am so glad that I can change my course and start over. Actually, I don’t want to start over . This is not day one. This is day 112, or 8 weeks. I take responsibility right here and right now for all 8 weeks of what I have done since I made my goal to lose the weight. There are good things and bad things I own in that. And right now, I recommit myself to do the things I know will take me where I want to go.

I will write in my food journal every day. Every single day. I will weigh in every week, once a week. I will live consciously. I will do the things that nurture myself in the long run. I will exercise again, 4-6 times per week. I will be an example of healthy living to my children, and feel good knowing that I am passing something to them of great value. I will weigh in weekly. I will share my journey on this website by posting a weight loss update once per week, at least. I will believe in myself once again.

I feel weak and tentative, but I feel hopeful. I can do this. I have done it before and I will do it again.

Thank you for coming to this site and reading this post. I hope my journey will uplift and inspire you in some way.

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This past week has been tough on the weight loss front. The unexpected weight gain of last week threw me f or a loop. It’s difficult to maintain a high level of effort when the results aren’t reinforcing the behaviors.

Despite the struggles, I did not fall off the wagon. I did eat a little more than I should have… but I did not abandon my efforts and go on a binge. I continued exercising, and I continued to write down everything I ate, which helped me do some serious damage control.

My efforts paid off, at least a little bit. Yesterday, I saw a loss at the scale of 1 pound. What a relief. I knew that another bad weigh-in would make it so much harder for me to keep going. The pound I lost infused me with hope that this is working. But it is so true that weight loss takes an incredible amount of patience and persistence.

It has now been 45 days (6 1/2 weeks) since I started this program. My total loss is 5.4 lbs. I am definitely not on target to reach my goal of 30lbs in 14 weeks (that is only about 8 weeks away…). I needed to lose 2lbs a week to reach that goal, and I am just under averaging 1 lb per week. Perhaps my original goal was too lofty. I will reassess, and maybe I will adjust my goal to be more realistic.

As alway, thanks for stopping by!

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Today I went into Weight Watchers feeling fairly confident that I was going to have a great weigh in. I have been following the program for the past 4 1/2 weeks and I have lost every week. I have done well since last weigh in… so I thought.

I stepped on the scale and I was UP 1.6 lbs! I was actually in shock and didn’t say much for a few minutes. I went into the meeting and got really tired and feeling discouraged. I felt a little scared, too, because I know myself. I know that when I don’t get the results I want, I tend to rebel against the goal I have set out to accomplish. I don’t want to go there this time. My objective right now is to remain conscious of this pattern, and not let myself slide because of today’s disappointment.

The leader said something that motivated me during the meeting (once the shock started to wear off). She said (to the group) “if you will be patient and persistent, I guarantee that the weight will come off”. That will be my mantra for right now…

Really, patience and persistence are very important to any lofty goal we try to reach. Relationships, finances, career, weight loss, parenting, personal development, … patience and persistence are very powerful forces that will eventually get the job done. Big changes don’t happen overnight, and sometimes, despite our best efforts, they are not entirely in our control. Giving up because the results aren’t coming in the way (or speed) I planned will do no good for me. It will only divert me from what I really want.

So here I am, 1.6 lbs heavier, but I am going to keep plugging away, and hopefully next week will be better!

Thanks for stopping by! Come back soon…

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It has been 24 days since I commenced working toward my goal to lose 30 lbs by the beginning of September. Today was my fourth weigh in, and I was very pleased to see I had lost 2.8 lbs over the past week.

Here are my stats so far:

Day 2: -.6

Day 9: -1.8

Day 16: -1.2

Day 23: -2.8

Total: -6.4

My total lost at this point is about 0.7 lb behind my September goal, but I am still happy with how things are going. I have definitely gained some momentum and it is not so hard to exercise and follow the Weight Watchers program any more. I am feeling more energetic and I can tell my clothes are fitting looser. Today, somebody told me they could tell that I lost weight because my face looks thinner. I really didn’t expect to have anyone notice anything yet. That was a nice little bonus.

Getting past the 10lb mark is going to be a big deal for me. In the past year and a half, I have lost and gained the same 5-10 lbs back and forth, over and over. Breaking 10 lbs means that I am breaking through a barrier and really getting somewhere! Hopefully I will get there within the next 2 weeks.

Thanks for checking in… I will update again on my weight goals next Thursday. In the meantime keep coming back… I have lots of thought provoking stuff to post in the next few days.

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I realized that since I started my weight loss program, I have not updated this site on my progress, which I said I would do once a week. I will update up to this point and then do the weekly updates as I originally planned. Today is day 20… only 1 day away from being 3 weeks into my plan. I am continuing to be very motivated and encouraged with how things are going.

My first weigh in was on day 2… I had lost .6 lbs Not bad for only 2 days!

My second weigh in was on day 9… I had lost 1.8 lbs. Yippee!!

My second weigh in was on day 16… I had lost another 1.2.

That is 3.7 lbs as of day 16. My goal was to lose 2 lbs a week, and that is about 1/2 lb short of my goal. But I realize I really cannot control my rate of weight loss… I will just keep following the Weight Watcher’s Program and I know I will continue to see results!

In addition to the success I am seeing on the scale, I am also feeling much more healthy, energetic, confident, positive, optimistic… there are a whole bunch of positive side effects coming as I make efforts to be more healthy.

I have been exercising regularly, which is so good for me in so many ways. I have been lifting weights a couple times a week, running, cycle class, and using other cardio equipment at the gym. I have been doing all my exercise in the morning, which I really like to do.

I have also been writing in a weight loss journal each night, recording my food, exercise, and feelings for the day (I will post this entire journal for anyone who cares to read it, after I have reached my goal). I really feel that this part of my plan is helping me to maintain my focus. I had a couple of days where I got off track, but writing in the journal before bed helped me redirect my attention back to what I really want. This is a huge accomplishment for me… to get up and get right back on the program after messing up. In the past I have had problems with slipping up and then taking major detours… sometimes for months at a time.

Another thing I feel is helping me is this website. Not only that I have obligated myself to report to the whole world (if they care to read) about my progress, but because I love creating this site. I think its really true what they say about replacing bad habits with good ones… in my case I think I was often eating out of boredom. I am never bored anymore, because I always have something to think about or do that I really enjoy… and that is, writing about the things that matter to me most, so I can share them with you.

So there is my update, for those of you who care to know!

Thanks for stopping by!

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