well hello again!

Two months.  8 weeks.  56 days.  

That's how long it's been since I felt like blogging.  

That's how long it's been since I let myself slide off track.  

That's how long it's taken me to gain 4.8 pounds.  

That's how long it's been since I think I gave a damn.  

Well I'm giving a damn again.  

Not because of the new year's resolutions, because those things are junk and I know it.  

Not because the holidays are over, although I did manage to give myself free reign and it got ugly.  

Not because of anything anyone else said to me.  

I'm giving a damn again because I need to.  

I need to because I miss the way it felt to be getting in better shape.  

I need to because I miss the way people smiled at me when they hadn't seen me for a few months.  

I need to because I miss the way that old clothes became new again.  

I need to because I have invested quite a bit of money in a new bicycle, loads of new workout clothing, and some home exercise gear throughout 2012 and I cannot let that go to waste.  

I need to because I don't feel right without taking care of myself.  

I need to because I need to be in control of something, even if some days I can only control the amount of water I drink or that I ate fruit with every bite of a guilt laden snack option.  

I cannot wait for January 1st to come back and begin taking care of myself.  I especially cannot wait until my meetings resume on January 8th to start acting like a Weight Watcher again.  I cannot delay signing up for my beloved spin classes until after the supposed "New Year's Resolution" rush dies down.  

So I've made a few small changes, but I hope they have a large impact.  Here's where I'm starting:

1.  I logged in to the Weight Watchers main site and I changed my weigh in day to Friday.  

This was completely personal, and I'm not saying everyone has to do it.  I only did it because for the past 14 months I've had my weigh in day on Tuesday which means that I would fall into the following bad habit: I would track on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but on Friday and Saturday I would consume so much junk that I'd give up tracking on Sunday and Monday and just tell myself I'd start over on the following Tuesday.  This did not work well.  Let me rephrase that, this did not work at all.  

2.  I updated my Weight Watchers application on my phone.  

If you haven't done this yet, go do it.  Don't pass go, don't collect two hundred dollars.  Go update your app.  Now.  There are so many more features now on the program and I want to take advantage of every single one of them.  I want you to take advantage of it too!  The points program hasn't changed and neither have the good health guidelines, but the good people of WW have added a ton of new mental diversions and though process changing tools that I am really optimistic about.  I want to see if they work, because I know the points plus already does and anything on top of that is simply a bonus!  

3.  I logged on to my favorite spin studio's website and I signed up for 5 classes in the next three weeks.  

Back to the good old days.  I was cycling outdoors quite a bit over the summer and into the fall, but when the clocks changed and the weather got cooler I found excuse after excuse not to exercise outdoors anymore.  I've removed my excuse for the next three weeks because my beloved Pedal Spin studio is climate controlled and the rain doesn't change the ride at all.  After I signed up for the classes, I put them all on my calendar so I wouldn't have an excuse to forget...again.  

4.  I made sure that all of my exercise clothes are ready to go at a moment's notice in an easily accessible drawer.  

It sounds stupid, but because I'm putting my house back together after an unexpected and lengthy remodel (which I'll explain later, with pictures!) I had clothes all over my bedroom and in piles of disarray.  Just getting all of the necessary items in one place is going to help me, even just a teeny tiny bit.  Another small part of this equation is going to be getting the residual junk food out of my house, but I'm not going to try to tackle that all at once.  I find that getting rid of all the junk food makes me feel deprived, then I just rebel and eat like crap anyway.  It defeats the purpose.  

5.  Last, but not least, I'm back to my good old grocery shopping list.  

For a long time I had a routine of what foods I would buy and the good thing was that I got really comfortable with knowing the points plus values of my usual goodies.  The last couple of months have been a disaster of me grabbing whatever I could find at my local Target and eating junk food and fast food like it was the end of the world.  By adding my old grocery list to the knowledge that my beloved Trader Joe's has partnered with Weight Watchers to add over 1,000 of their food items into the Weight Watchers points plus database and I feel like I'm setting myself up for some baby steps back to success.  

So there you go, I'm going to coming around again.  I appreciate the "are you alive" emails, text messages, and tweets.  In fact, if you're not connected to me online somehow then I really hope you'll take a second to do so.  The easiest way is on Twitter, since I try to keep the health related stuff there.  I'm not shy though, feel free to get in touch with me in other ways such as Facebook.  I can always use another friendly person that is willing to share some accountability and support, and I hope I can provide the same to all you lovely people as well!  

progress update

If you've been a Weight Watcher for any length of time, you remember that at one point they called their plan "Momentum."  I never understood why.  

I do now!  

You see, I'm a numbers based person.  In my life, numbers mean everything!  Numbers like how much money is in my accounts or the numerical value of how much of a chemical is in a sample I'm testing.  You could say that I'm sort of obsessed with numbers.  

So a few weeks back, I decided to explore my eTools page on Weight Watchers.  It tracks my food and keeps track of the number of points that I'm shoveling into my mouth, but it also records my weight every week after I step on that scale at my meeting.  

Let's just say eTools rocks.  You can set it up to only show you points tracking, activity tracking, or weight records for a specific date range!  I had to play around with this feature to truly appreciate how hard I've been working.  

Step 1: I asked eTools to show me results from the last week in 2011 into the first week of 2012, basically my first year back on plan.  This was sort of a disappointing year for me, I spent a lot of time hopping on and off of plan and I spent almost no time exercising.  The results weren't bad, but they weren't all that great either.  In twelve months, I recorded a loss of 11.2 pounds.  Less than one pound per month on average.  Actually it is a loss of 0.93 pounds per month.  Like I said, I like numbers.  

Step 2: Then I started looking at some small life changes.  Like when my mom joined Weight Watchers with me back in the fall of 2011.  She's been on plan with me for approximately six months (I don't remember her exact start date, so I'm estimating) and I managed to lose 8 pounds in that time.  Now that means that my average weight loss jumps up to 1.33 pounds per month since my mother has come into this journey with me!  That's a 40% improvement from 2011, when I was faltering and trying to do it on my own!  Yowsah!  

Now let's look even closer, at some more recent changes.  The last week in 2011, I committed to plan 100% and I started taking control.  At the time of writing this blog post, I am approximately three and a half months into these changes and I've lost a total of 7 pounds.  That is an average loss of 2 pounds per month! It is a 107% improvement from my average weight loss for all of 2011 and it is a 50% improvement from my average over the last 6 months.  

What did I do?  Not a whole lot actually.  I started by attending spin classes twice a week.  It is only about 2 hours of my week, which I manage to fit in, and it makes a big difference in my confidence level.  Then I started taking more control of what I was bringing into my house to eat.  In other words, I became a more careful grocery shopper.  I followed the simple rule that you cannot eat something if you don't have it, and it made a huge difference.  If you don't have healthy food in the house, it is going to prohibit you from making good choices.  If you don't have junk food in the house, it is going to slow you down on bad choices.  

Notice I just said  it will "slow you down on bad choices."  This is because I didn't give up things like going out to dinner.  I can still make bad choices if I go out to dinner with friends and family, but I'm less likely to let them occur.  My mom and I have this saying that we got from a past Weight Watchers leader, "Date the enemy, don't bring him home."  What this means to us is that it is okay to go out to dinner and splurge a little, but you need to leave the bad stuff at the table.  It isn't a huge deal if you split ice cream dessert at a restaurant, but it would be horrible if you brought home a 5 gallon tub of ice cream and started chowing down on it!  Date the ice cream, but don't bring the ice cream home.  

It is for this reason that I don't buy frozen french fries at the grocery store, but I still eat them at a restaurant. I don't keep loads of pre made pizza dough in my fridge any more, but I'm not afraid to buy a cheese pizza at a restaurant.  I have also started (sometimes) asking for a box with my dinner, and in some cases that waitress will box half of my dinner before she even brings it out to me so that I don't have to do it myself.  The reality is that I'm usually satisfied (or even full) after eating half of the dinner, and I can eat the rest of my dinner at a later time.  Saves me money, saves me time, saves me points, what's not to love?  

So there you have it, my numerically motivated and highly personal update!  If you have eTools or another way of tracking, I challenge you to take a look at how you've been doing in the past and present.  It's really eye opening!