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!  

i'm talkin' to myself over here

A few weeks back, the meeting topic was positive self talk  I think my leader, Scott, had it right when he said "I am never going to look down at the scale, see that I've gained weight, and tell myself that it's a good thing."  

Boy, ain't that the truth.  

So the meeting started to shift it's direction at that point, and it went from a bit of a tense subject (what I really think when the scale goes up) to a great big happy celebration.  

One member had gained weight that week, but she didn't care because she had one hell of a non scale victory: Early in the week, she had gone to see her doctor and had an amazing report.  No more high blood pressure.  No more high cholesterol.  No more medications.  

Now, I'm not an emotional person like my mother, however I definitely got teary eyed at this accomplishment.  

Then the conversation shifted even more with the question, "What do you tell yourself when you aren't happy with the scale, the way you feel, your appearance, etc?"  The truth is, I start to slip and slide at that moment and I eat anything and everything in my path.  I don't have a sweet tooth, but I start cruising for cookies and candy.  I may have just eaten lunch, but I want something more.  

Then I spiral out of control and wake up the next morning with a stomach ache and one heck of a guilt cloud over my head.  

But one of our members said something absolutely brilliant (and so logical that I'm embarrassed I've never thought of it myself!).  She said that if a friend had come to us and was at a really bad place with their weight loss journey, we would encourage that friend and tell her to stick with it while keeping up the hard work.  One bad day, one bad week, or even one bad month is trivial because this is going to be a long process, and in the grand scheme of things, a few mistakes won't kill us.  She also pointed out that none of us would ever look our upset friend in the eye and simply say, "Well, that's it.  Throw in the towel.  You're never going to be able to do this."  

Lightbulb.  

I would never tell my friend to give up on herself, so why do I let myself do the same thing?  

Why do I have one bad meal and let it slide into a horrific day of binge eating and skip tracking?  

Why do I have two bad days and quit tracking for the rest of the week?  

Why do feel absolutely horrible for having to miss a work out?  

Why do I skip tracking something bad that I ate when I'm the only one that ever sees my tracker?  

Why does it seem like I don't love myself enough to be honest with myself and admit my mistakes?  

As you see, the list could go on and on.  I'll stop there.  But I'll leave you with this photo that proves that some weeks, the number on the scale doesn't mean much.  

weighing in: no matter what

I've heard it over and over again:

When you have a good week, your meeting needs you.  When you have a bad week, you need your meeting.

Well, ain't that the truth.

I usually weigh myself the day before, the morning of, and when I get home from my meeting.  Then I avoid the scale for the rest of the week.  Why?  I have no idea.  

I was reading a friend's blog, Bikini Countdown, and she talked about how she would avoid the scale and tracking all week until the day before her weigh in.  Then she'd avoid eating all day just so she could weigh in at the same or similar weight as the week before.  

I wish I could say that I've never done this, but I have.  I have woken up on a Monday morning after a really bad weekend and panicked about my Tuesday evening weight in, then I avoid food all day only to completely over indulge on Monday evening.  Or I avoid food all day on Monday only to over indulge on Tuesday, just hours before my weigh in.  

None of this is realistic or good behavior!  

How about the Tuesday afternoons that I used to realize that I'd had a bad week or bad weekend, so I was just going to skip my meeting?  That happened a few times also!  The best thing that happened to me that changed this behavior was that my mom joined Weight Watchers with me last fall.  Since that time, we talk every Monday about meeting at our meeting the next day, and we have dinner after our meeting and talk about our week together.  

I have to say, this has really helped us as Weight Watchers, and as a mother-daughter duo.  We're already close, but I'm so proud and happy that she's chosen to join me on this journey (again!).  

So now, I can't skip meetings anymore.  Today, I take the bad with the good.  From here on out, I weigh in weekly even if I know I face a + sign on that tracker.  It isn't about losing every week, after all.  It is all about changing my lifestyle in the long journey that I hope will be my life.  

I'm leaving you with another Zig Ziglar quote, one that happens to be very pertinent to this particular weight lost battle.  

Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.