I'm missing out on a lot

I missed my meeting.  I know that missing meetings is not a good thing, and I know that I need to keep myself going because that keeps me on track and motivated.  Honestly I didn't go because of a combination of reasons. Firstly, because my weight gain has been really bad.  Secondly, I was in too much pain from derby to have any motivation.  Instead I took about 2 hours getting ready and went food shopping.  I mapped out my day's worth of food for today and tomorrow.  I'm hoping that by doing this I'm on my way to getting back on track.  Understandably my weight gain has been exponential because I have been purposely out of control.  How can one do this purposefully? I am always fully aware that I should not be eating something, even while I am swallowing it down.

No control. My main problem and the story of my life...

You know what's another thing that I keep doing?  I keep eating and then taking a nap.  Putting myself in a food coma on purpose.  I think that what's happening is that the eating is making me happy (the way food always does) and the sleeping is making it so that I don't have to feel the backlash of negative emotions I feel when I don't eat the way I should.

This pattern has been going on for several months.  I think my goal for this week will have to be to try and stop this.  I hope that getting back to an exercise routine will help to do this by boosting my energy levels.  I can't really think of another way to break this cycle.  Sometimes I tell myself "well stupid" if you would just stop going to bed then problem solved!  Although in reality, if it was just a matter of "don't do it" I would most likely not be having this problem.  

Ok so my positive thoughts for the week to make sure I make it through. Track, track, track...get my but up doing my new exercise routine, and maybe stop calling myself stupid.  I can be really harsh, what's that about? Oh yeah, its just me being me...

Before the storm...

I've never posted before going to a meeting I realize. Let's see if I can capture this. Before a meeting I'm usually up and ready to go. I get dressed ahead of time and then sit and wait. There used to be this sense of excitement and in a way there still is.  However, mostly now there's just the thought of traffic and parking. Today, I weighed myself in the morning and saw a weight drop but I get nervous that I won't see that when I get to my weigh-in. I rarely eat breakfast unless I have a Slimfast available. That is something I'm usually not afraid to have before I have to go get weighed in. It's like I don't want the added weight of food in my stomach to add to my overall weight. Breakfast I think will derail me.

I'm going to Minnesota to visit my "ever present in this blog" cousin. I want to find a meeting location there and see if I can get to a meeting and a weigh-in. That will help me stay on track. My cousins make the most delicious food and when they don't make it they find places with the most delicious food! So I know I'm going to be eating and that's ok, anything is fine in moderation, but I don't want my brain to think that it can just let me devour the whole world:) I'm excited about seeing them so much I don't care if we eat lard all week but in terms of my eating well and losing weight I know that won't be ideal. Boy is that an understatement. Anyhow, these things are what's running through my head today. I'm leaving early because I'll be driving slowly, what with all the snow from our recent blizzard. I'm hoping for the best and that there is actually a meeting going on. I'm sure there is, WW stops for no one! So here's to getting up and getting through the storm that is each weigh-in.

Update** I went to my meeting and I did indeed have a loss! Yay me:)

There's a storm a'comin!!

So Hurricane Sandy is going on outside my door and all I can think about is food.  It gets pretty boring stuck in the house with nowhere to go and nothing to do.  Food is my favorite past time.  The eating of it of course, not the making.  I'm glad that when I went to shop for the storm I decided I would buy some fruit.  I have been munching every few hours.  Strawberries, bananas and grapes...I just ran out of grapes so that has lead me to finding entertainment in blogging.  We'll see how long this lasts.  Good thing the storm should be out of here by tomorrow night because if I run out of fruit I am going to start in on the ice cream in my freezer and that is "no bueno", nope, not good at all!

Yesterday I went to McDonalds.  A terrible decision I'm sure but I needed something to eat and I needed it fast.  I had been awake for hours, a little hungover, and on my way to meet my neighbor to get take her to BJs wholesale so she could buy things for our annual Halloween party for kids in our building.  I definitely needed to eat before then.  I bought a Big Mac and two apple pies (and water to drink).  I ate that burger and one pie for a total for 21 points.   The big mac being 14, the pie 7.  It was such a shock! That's like two meals worth of points.  Let me put these points in perspective.  This afternoon I had a Lean Cuisine Chicken Parmesan meal, a string cheese, a banana, strawberries and an ice cream sandwich for the same points of the Big Mac.  That really makes you think twice about what you are eating and why.  My whole life is now a matter of points and I don't mind it mostly because I don't think I get a sense of what I'm eating in any other way.  Not even if counting calories.  The numbers being smaller are manageable and easier to count.  (I'm mathematically retarded)  I think that's why this is working for me, although lately I've been pretty bad and just maintaining.  I really need to get back in the groove of things and go back to a meeting.  Good thing I have a monthly plan that lets me go back anytime I want.  Its time to kick this into high gear again!!

Oh, how the mighty have...leaned to the side?

I have not been to a meeting in about 4 weeks.  I was too busy involved with other things.  My weight loss I think has been maintained for the most part but I think this Sunday will be the true testament to that.  I actually miss my meetings.  My meeting leader and all the people who are there regularly have seemingly become a staple in my life.  I like feeling like I was part of the regulars and I'm curious about how everyone else is doing.  These past two days have been hard.  My emotions are running low and I find myself eating more, but I have been tracking even the bad stuff and that is what I need to keep myself in control.  Two nights ago I dropped a friend off at home and then drove by a McDonald's on the way back and actually pulled into the driveway and ordered.  The whole time I was thinking that I really should not eat that stuff but that little voice inside my head was overwhelmingly overpowered by my stomach.  The thing is I'm pretty sure that I was feeding my emotions and not my body.  I'm pretty sure that, that is what I have been doing since then as well.

Emotions seem to be my downfall.  I need to keep them in check if I am going to succeed and yet how can one control emotions?  Especially when they are caused by third parties!  Eating is my longtime soother and I just don't know of another way to soothe.  I spoke to people, did not keep my emotions bottled up and did what I thought I would have to in order to feel better, like exercise (gasp).  That however, did not alter the way in which I approached food over those days.  And I'm left feeling bad, but I refuse to have this make me feel it's all over.  So, I feel a need to stand myself up straight, know that I can do this, and keep on trucking.  And realize, that the important thing is not that I soothe my emotions with food, but rather that in the end I recognize that it won't solve my problems or take the emotions away and when it comes to the hard stuff, you just have to let yourself feel it and go with the flow. Right? Right!

Back in the Saddle Again!

Last week was expectedly disappointing.  I had a 2.6 pound weight gain but I determined that I would think positive and I did.  Yes, I gained two pounds but it was over the course of two weeks.  Yes, I gained two pounds but even with those two I still had over a 50lbs weight loss; and yes, I gained two pounds but I was determined to get back on plan, track my butt off, workout, and get back to being a loser in the best sense of the word.  And, that is exactly what I did.  I this week I lost 3.4 lbs.  Now coupled with the gain that 3.4 loss means I'm only 0.8 lbs less then I was at my last lowest, but still... every little bit helps.  I haven't always been the most positive person (and I'm not going to link to any of my old posts because you can look at ALL of my old posts and see that negativity is a big part of who I am) still I feel myself changing from the outside in and the inside out.  It's like my transformation is coming at my from all angles and to be honest it is both exciting and a little frightening.

I want to lose weight, and if I was happy with the old me I would not have felt a need to bring about so much change in myself, but to see yourself becoming someone else leads you into the "what if I don't recognize who I am at the end of this?" territory.  A happy, sad, crazy, and pretty much everywhere on the bipolar scale prospect.  Excited yes, but a still if I am honest with myself, definitely frightening.  Its so much easier to keep the status quo.  I'll have to think on this more.  But on to my meeting today.

So, my meeting was good.  We discussed how to make, order and enjoy a good salad.  Because some people think as long as the word "salad" is included in what you eat then it doesn't matter.  Not knowing or acknowledging that once you get done adding toppings and extras to it, your once healthy salad can be has points/calories/fat dense as any other meal.  People add all this stuff to their salads because they are seriously under the mistaken impression that as long as its on a bed of lettuce anything is healthy or good for you or good for your weight management plan (Sort of like the way I approach non-fat frozen yogurt. "Sure I can add those nothing but sugar loaded and fattening cookie dough bites, mini peanut butter cups, sprinkles and/or cheese cake bits...this yogurt is fat free!"). 

As I was saying...It was a good meeting and full of good advice.  We had an interim leader who took over for my normal leader who is on vacation.  She wasn't my favorite but she was very enthusiastic, and much better this time around then she was last week (hmmmm...I wonder....maybe my weight gain/loss was coloring my perception?).  Anyway next week its back to our regular leader, although she did do something I liked.  She not only celebrated any good news (aka weight loss) but she asked what people attributed this week's success to, that was inspiring to hear what others did. My answer: "Exercise, tracking, and getting back in the saddle when I was bucked off my horse!"

A Day of Reckoning

Tomorrow I have a meeting and I am so nervous I don't know what to do with myself.  I know I will have a weight gain of anywhere from 2-4 lbs.  I've been very bad this week, as seen here and here, and although I began again today and did very well I know I am not going to see the kind of progress I want by tomorrow.  I keep going over this dilema of whether or not I should skip my meeting.  Intellectually I know I shouldn't.  And, really according to the plan and how it works the whole point of the meeting is moments just like these.  They help you stay on track and do what you're supposed to do.  Still, I can't help but want to pull an ostrich.

I hate the feeling of failure.  Thinking of the big picture 2-4 lbs of weight gain still has me at a 50-52 lbs overall weight loss but still, my eternal pessimism isn't equipped to handle that kind of positive thinking.  It is such a daily struggle to look on the bright side and keep myself going.  Like I'm constantly running low on something that seems like it should come so easily...positive outlook.  I think I need to pull a Stewart Smalley if I'm going to make it through tomorrow without binging because I'm sad and depressed and I'm hoping this blog will reinforce my previous belief.  So I'm going to go to my meeting, I'm going to accept that I did not do what I knew I should be doing, and I'm going to go from there.

Go me!!

Back from my meeting and all I can say is....I DID IT!! Today I weighed in and I had lost 6 lbs from last week.  Don't ask me how, because I have no idea, but even more momentous was that I finally reached my 50 lbs weight loss!! 51.8 lbs to be exact:)  I did it in a little over 5 months and its unbelievable!

So now a few things have to happen.  1. I need to keep going because I'm not there yet! But I'm gonna get there.  2. I need to go get a pedicure (lol and sigh), though I'm not in a rush to do that if truth be told.  However, I said I would do it and I will.  And I have one person who came out and said they would go with me and since only two people are actively reading my blog you can guess which of two it is and of course she's totally going to be there!

The most incredible thing though is that I have a little over 20 lbs to go to reach Onederland.  Onederland is a term I've seen all over the internet on weight loss sites.  It's the term used by people who are over 200 lbs to describe being 199 lbs and less! I can't even imagine what that day will be like but I am sooooo looking forward to it, there are no words.  I honestly cannot remember being in the ones.  The last 1 weight I remember was when I was 12 and my scale said 160 or somewhere there abouts.  Can you imagine a 12 year olds already 160 lbs?  Thats crazy, especially considering that at that point I was only about 5'4" or 5'5".  But this time its different, because I'm taller and because its means so much more now.  I can almost taste it and being that this is all about changing how I eat the ability to taste something is really important.

And so, here I am.  Standing close to the halfway mark on the climb up my personal mountain.  It's going to be hard and I know I'm going to fall back down a few times but its all about getting up again and continuing my climb, right? Right.  So off I go.

Breakfast Anyone?

My brothers and I seemed perfectly spaced for our high school years.  When one was entering their freshman year another was graduating.  So about the time that my brother went off to high school and I found myself the last sibling in grade school, my mother decided I was old enough to go to school by myself or with friends.  At roughly that same time, I got another option as well; I could wake up early and make sure I had breakfast, or I could sleep a little longer and skip breakfast before going to school.  Like any self-respecting, cool and "not knowing what's good for me" preteen would do, I decided sleep was much more important then breakfast and thus began my moratorium on breakfast.  In this fashion I made it through grade school, high school, college, grad school, and becoming a teacher.

Its not that I never ever had breakfast, just rarely on a weekday, or weekend that I wasn't in Jersey if we're talking about the last five years for that matter, fast forward 20+ years and over 100 pounds, and I found myself sitting in my first ever weight watchers meeting getting reprimanded by the lady next to me about the importance of breakfast.  By the end of the meeting I was making both a promise and a pledge that from that day on (or the next day since breakfast was long over by then) I would start having breakfast.  Sure you're a strange woman I met 5 minutes ago, sure you have a death grip on my hand like a woman in her 10th hour of labor, but you are also a woman who quite obviously cares about breakfast and her fellow man's lack there-of, and isn't this what I joined for, to have support and help, no matter how off-putting and forceful the source?  So I promised, that no matter how small or insignificant the portion, no matter how pressed for time I may be, I would have breakfast, and I did.  I kept the promise for exactly 14 days, and then today happened...

Running late, frantic to get out of the house so I wouldn't be in trouble, I skipped breakfast and you know what I found?  Your body gets used to eating things quickly!  For years I have managed to go for upwards of 6 and sometimes more hours on not a single bite, 2 weeks of breakfast and I can't make it past 10am.  By 10 o'clock I was STARVING, cranky, pissed, starving, restless, starving, I had a headache and did I mention that I was starving?  It was the craziest thing.  Who the hell am I?  Great, so already my personality is changing along with my eating habits!  Have I become one of those horrible people who eat your head off when they haven't had their coffee or something?  Am I an addict?  A Breakfast maniac?  Or, (gasp) have I turned into the woman at the meeting, soon to find myself holding hands with perfect strangers eliciting promises about their eating habits from them?  Has my lack of breakfast made me slightly insane?  Maybe, maybe not, but I'll tell you this much, I think tomorrow I'll be sure not to oversleep.

So today's post is a warning, if I ever get pissy with you from this moment on, just ask me if I've had any breakfast.