Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Whaddya know!  Tracking works.  You know that, and I knew that.  I know it again, too.  I lost 2 lbs this week, for a total of 113 lost.

I know that tracking works, so why did I stop?  Because it was all too much.  When I was originally tracking, I was doing flore- eating core foods but tracking points.  I wouldn’t eat my weekly points or my activity points.  Not surprisingly, it was very effective, but also hard to maintain.

When I got down to 22 daily points, I panicked.  This isn’t the way I wanted to live my life!  So I stopped tracking.  For the most part, my diet has changed enough so that worked well.  But after the Halloween debacle, it was time to get serious again.  Not too serious, though–I’m going over my daily allotment of points by a few each day.  And that is ok!

I’m hoping Thanksgiving won’t be very challenging this year, even though I’m not doing the cooking.  We are traveling to LA, and my sister and mother in law are both doing Weight Watchers.  We’ll have pumpkin pie for the kids, but we’re going to try Hungry Girl’s Pumpkin Smash.

Speaking of pumpkin, I now do a variation on the Hungry Girl pumpkin pudding, but instead of using premade pudding I use an immersion blender and blend in a can of pumpkin into 2 cups of milk, vanilla or butterscotch pudding mix, and some pumpkin pie spice.  Add a little lite Cool Whip, and you’ve got a fantastic dessert.  No, it’s not pumpkin pie, but it’s great for every day.

But oh no! Apparently, we are looking at a pumpkin shortage this year! Ohhhhhhhhh noooooooo!  Should I go and buy a crate of pumpkin now?  Screw the Eggo waffle shortage people; this is serious.  (Serious=it affects me.)

At least half of the Hungry Girl recipes feature pumpkin; why, I’m eying a chocolate and peanut butter fudge recipe on her site right now that uses a can!

I AM going to clear out the local Lucky.  If you can’t find pumpkin to make your pie, you can blame me and my pumpkin hoarding.

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

I knew the news wouldn’t be good today, and sure enough, it wasn’t: gained 2.2 lbs.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t eat that much Halloween candy; it must magically multiply in my thighs.

But the good news is, I do know what works, and that is tracking.  I haven’t done it consistently for about a year (?!? could it be that long?), and my weight has more or less drifted downward.  But now it’s drifting upwards.  I threw out all the clothes that don’t fit me, so that’s not a direction I want to go.

So thanks to DH Joel who hit me with the “Duh” stick.  Sometimes, it takes the obvious to get unstuck.  I’m back to tracking.

I realized I’m going to have to be a little less hard core when it comes to tracking.  When I was making good progress, I was doing something I called “flore”: eating mostly core foods (now filling foods on Weight Watchers) but counting points, using just my daily points and not eating any activity points or weekly points.

That worked great when I had 28 or 30 daily points, but now that I’m down to 22 daily points, it’s no wonder I found it too restrictive.  The solution is not to give it up altogether, but to do it the way it’s supposed to be: with room for life.  No program that is inflexible is something you can live with.

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Down another .6 for a total of almost 113 lbs lost!  Pretty good considering I’m not doing what I “should.”  Meaning I’m not tracking.

Our leader handed out a slip of paper with nine tracking free days on it.  Hah!  Every day is a tracking free day.  Really, I would be losing 1-2 lbs a week if I were On Plan.  But I’m not, and I don’t.  And I’m ok with that.

At most, I think I’ll go for another 10 lbs.  I’ve achieved my goals with weight loss: I’m healthier, I don’t have joint pain, I can do stuff I want to do, and I’ve inspired my husband to come along for the ride.  I’m living a healthy life, regardless of what the scale says.

I cook most of the food I eat now, and I think that has the most to do with being healthy.  Oh, I guess WHAT I choose to cook has something to do with it… I used to make fudge and cookies for myself, yum!  Those days are no more.

I really do believe that junk food is as addictive as heroin.  How else to explain continuing to do something you know is bad for you?  Like those rats in the study, I would’ve tolerated electric shocks for that fudge.

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

I’m jealous.  My husband lost a whopping 4.2 lbs this week following my “pay to eat” plan.  So did I have similar success?

Not so much.  I lost only .2–that’s right, there’s a . in there.  Ah well!  Better luck next time.  Maybe if I tracked… nah!

My meeting was rather annoying, too.  The topic of the day was getting in your filling foods, but we got stuck at the vegetables.  What was annoying was the attitude of one of the participants.  Now, one of the things I like about my meeting is it isn’t all “everything is wonderful” all the time.  But still, you have to wonder why some people return if there’s NOTHING they can do to improve their situation.

In this case, this member couldn’t find any way to eat more fruits and vegetables.  She doesn’t like vegetables like eggplant or bell peppers.  Her brother-in-law bought tons of fruit, but it didn’t “call” to her.  Her inlaws cooked, and she couldn’t get them to follow a recipe.  She won’t cook.  When she made a big salad, she gained weight the next day.  And so on.

At the end of it, it’s like she wanted the room to agree that, yes, you are powerless.  Yes, there really is nothing you can do.  But if she really believed that, why was she there?

We can always come up with reasons why we “can’t” do something.  And sometimes, we really can’t.  But sometimes, we’ve boxed ourselves in with reasons so we don’t have to leave a place that’s comfortable, but not making us particularly happy.  Don’t fool yourself though that you are really powerless; you’ve made a choice, and you’re coming up with reasons to justify that choice.

So I’ve made a choice not to track points.  I’d definitely lose weight if I did. But at this time, I just don’t want to.  It’s not that it’s too hard, or inconvenient.  It’s a choice I’ve made.  Maybe I’ll change my mind.  But it’s my choice to make; I’m not the hapless victim of circumstances.

So what are your reasons?

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Finally got rid of that pound I gained when Joel was in the hospital (yes, I’m not above blaming him stressful circumstances).  I’m at a point now where I’m seeing where things take me.  I’d like to get down another 9 lbs or so, but it won’t kill me if I don’t.

I made some headway in thinking about my halloween candy dilemma.  I realized that the only differences between the candy at work and the candy at stores were 1.  an unaccustomed location and 2.  it’s free.

I’m used to putting on my virtual blinders when I go to the store so I don’t “see” the candy.  But finding it at work is tough after it’s been relatively junk-food free for a while.  I did just fine when we had huge amounts of junk food at work because I had trained myself not to see it, and I just need to do the same now.

The second piece of it is they are “free.” When I see candy in a store and I purchase it, I have to make a conscious decision and pay for it.  When it’s free at the office, that piece of decision making, the very act of making a decision, is removed.  It’s not like the money involved in purchasing a candy bar is so onerous; it’s only a dollar.  But it does make the transaction conscious in a way that grabbing candy out of a jar doesn’t.

So, I’m going to pay someone (some cause I don’t like? The George W. Bush Library Foundation?) a dollar every time I get a candy bar out of the free jar.  It’s a bad deal, since I could get a big candy bar at the store for a buck instead of a “fun” size.

Will that make the difference?  Maybe!  Similar capricious rules have worked for me in the past.  And really, why should I eat something just because it’s there, when I can spend a buck and get exactly what I want?  Because I don’t really want it.

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

The good news is I didn’t gain any weight this week. The bad news is, I didn’t lose any weight this week, either.

I certainly started the week in a good state of mind.  I am reading The Beck Diet Solution by Judith Beck.  If you can get past her writing about the Beck Diet Solution in every sentence, there is a lot here that is very useful.

This week, I was experimenting with being hungry.  In last week’s WW meeting, we discussed hunger and how you know you are hungry, and the difference between physical and emotional hunger.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to easily classify hunger as “real” or not.  When I get “really” hungry, I get anxious and cranky; so, when I get anxious and cranky, it’s hard to know if I’m actually hungry (i.e. really needing food) or just anxious and cranky.

I experimented a bit with letting myself be hungry and experiencing what that is like.  If I had recently eaten, I assumed I wasn’t “really” hungry.  I also didn’t try to dampen the sensation by chewing gum (much).

If I hadn’t eaten for more than a few hours, I assumed I was “really” hungry, but if it wasn’t a snack or meal time I let myself experience that, too, without stuffing it down with food.

I think I got increasingly anxious toward the end of the week with this little experiment, and started eating more.  This week I’ll experiment with the small meals method.

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

One of those pounds I lost last week found me again.  Given how stressful the week was, I’m glad it wasn’t worse. It could have been worse from a weight perspective; I was very stressed due to Joel’s episode, and I wasn’t able to work out the way I normally would. I’m still down 111.6, so don’t cry me a river.

There was also a little voice saying, “go ahead,get something decadent!  You deserve it!  You need it!”  I did well ignoring that voice, and didn’t get the slices of cake strategically placed by the entrance of the grocery store.  But I did pound down more of those “filling foods” than I usually would have.  I’m a little disappointed, as I was doing so well there for a while.

I did talk to my leader about what my goal weight should be, and her perspective was that if I’ve made all the changes I’m comfortable with, and if I’m satisfied with the weight I’m at, I should talk to my dr so I can get a letter so I can go on maintenance at WW.  Maintenance is a big deal for WW, because you can get weighed in and attend meetings for free.  It’s a different mindset for sure.  I’ll have to think if I’m ready to say “this is it.”  Given it will take two months to get an appointment with my dr, I’ll have some time to think about it.

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Despite my nut eating adventure earlier in the week, I still managed to lose 2.2 lbs, for a total loss of 112.6.  I actually lost more, but wore a sweatshirt to my weigh in, hoping to keep the loss at 2 lbs so the e-tools on Weight Watcher’s wouldn’t scold me.

So why the sudden success?  My idea of allowing more weight loss to be provisional is helping the most.  I’ve made so many changes, and have been reluctant to make more that may be too difficult to sustain.  I’m trying out new things, but if they’re too hard to sustain I’ll be ok with stopping them and returning to where I’m at now.

Which is a damn fine place.

The new changes I’ve made that apparently are making a difference are:

1. Adding a daily walk to the mix. As a manager, I always have a lot to do and not enough time to do it in.  But let’s face facts; working through my lunch won’t add up to that much extra work done.  I’m not getting any mystical wonder worker brownie points (not a good metaphor… tofu points?  carrot points?) for denying myself a 30 minute walk in the middle of the day.  So long as I don’t walk to Berkeley Bowl and buy nuts, it will improve my health and my mood.  As I wrote in a previous post, recess isn’t only for kids.
2. Asking for help. DH has substituted all of the old snacks in the house with portion-controlled 100 calorie snacks, a definite improvement.  But instead of having just one for dessert, I’d been having one of each.  I don’t like making choices for dessert; give me all of them!  I asked him to put them away so I don’t have to see them, and have made a promise (to myself!) to not look for them.  I also wrote about how asking for help isn’t easy, but people genuinely want to help if you give them a chance.
3. Substituting new foods. I’ve started eating apples with low-cal caramel dipping sauce.  I’ve NEVER eaten apples before, but find they are ok if dripping with caramel (really, isn’t everything?).  It makes for a very satisfying snack.  I’ve also started making the Hungry Girl pumpkin pudding.  She makes it from the premade jello pudding, but I make it from “scratch”: one can pumpkin, one carton jello instant vanilla pudding, 2 cups milk,  one teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, one carton lite cool whip.  Mix together the pumpkin, pudding, milk, and spice, and chill.  Add cool whip and eat.  It’s dessert AND a vegetable.

Speaking of pumpkin, it’s off to the kitchen!  I’ve got a nice big kabocha that I’m going to turn into Morroccan lentil stew and other yummy things.  I think I’m going to turn orange again with all the orange veggies I’ll be eating!

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Even though I am visiting my inlaws in LA, I had a feeling I had hit my next goal and I was right!  I lost two lbs for a total loss of 110.4, or 50 KG.  I’m now at 175.8.

A few weeks ago, I reframed the next “target” in my weight loss to be in kilos, since I’ve been finding all the numbers past 100 lbs to be too scary. 

I’ve also been scared by what else I’d need to do to lose weight, as I’ve made so many changes already. 

To counter that fear, I made it ok to lose that weight, and then decide later to regain it if I found how I had to live unsustainable for me.  I’m pretty happy and comfortable at this size, even though I am still overweight by the health charts.  It could be that the ideal weight for me is considered by the medical community as “overweight.”  I want to make that determination for myself, out of experience and not out of fear. 

My next goal is 115 down, which will be 40% of my original weight. 

I have been walking more during the day, as sitting at a desk for 9 hours straight just isn’t good for me.  The extra activity on top of my usual workouts has really improved my mood.  Or maybe it’s just taking a break from work!  Taking a lunch break, think of that!

In other weight loss news, I learned there is a category of obesity above “morbidly” obese, which you’d think is as far as it would go since if you’re so fat they think you’re going to die any minute what could be worse than that?  But there is a further category called “super” obese.  I am now very disappointed I wasn’t in this elite, “super” status back when I weighed close to 300 lbs. 

If you’re super obese, it’s like you’ve pushed past moribidity and are, well, super!  You’re really fat, but you are immortal and get to fly around in too-tight spandex. 

Apparently, the super and just plain morbidly obese can only be helped by gastric bypass surgery.

To which I say, 2 years after starting and  110 lbs lighter without surgery, oh, really?

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Down 0.2 this week, for a total loss of 108.4.  Kind of surprised, since the scale at home was being more charitable. Also surprised because I decided to try to get to my BMI specified weight and then if I didn’t like it or felt the changes were too much to sustain I’d give myself permission to regain to someplace I was more comfortable.  Crazy sounding, I know, but I’ve been scared of losing more because I didn’t want to change my life too much more–I’ve already made so many changes.  Maybe I’ll be happier even lighter, but if not, I’m letting that be ok.

So at this rate, I’ll reach that weight in, oh, about 2 years.  Plenty of time to get used to it.

So I’m disappointed I’m not further along in my “experiment”.  I’m also disappointed I’m not doing better on my Lose for Good Challenge, which was to lose 5 lbs in 7 weeks.  Does that mean I need to donate more food to make up the difference?  Oh, and I DID bring a jar of PB to donate, but it mysteriously remained in my workout bag.

What’s motivating you?