My First Few Days

I've made it through four and a half days already even though I didn't have a full menu planned out and my kitchen fully stocked like I originally intended. I'm the kind of person who throws in the towel the minute things don't go as planned so that was a big deal for me.

The first day was a little rough. I was hungry and still just wanted something to chew, crunch or whatever. I got past it though. I didn't want to screw up my first day. Those urges got less and less the next couple days. I still feel uncomfortable in those times when I would eat to calm myself or just to feel better, but at least I could recognize those times for what they are and hopefully learn better ways to handle them. My ability to stay in points so far is boosting my confidence.

All the food I've prepared for myself has been delicious thus far(I have a TON of WW cookbooks to help with recipes and ideas). The tactic that has proven to be most useful though, is forcing myself to eat slowly. Taking small bites and throughly chewing, putting my food (or fork) down between bites to drink or talk to my family, that's what's been helping me to feel less deprived during and after meals. My impulse is to shove as much stuff into my mouth as I can, and so by forcing myself to eat slowly I am eating less and giving my body time to feel full.

I also got over another perfectionist issue this week. In the past I would be meticulous about weighing and measuring so that I can calculate exact point values. When I'm home and have the luxury of my food scale and measuring cups that's not so much an issue. When I go out though I would have to estimate not only how much of what I ate, but what I thought an appropriate point value would be. This issue has led to my demise in the past. If I can't be exact I can't deal with counting. I was able to resonably estimate a meal and still feel like I was being true to the program. That was a huge victory.

So I am happy so far with my progress, but I can see how this is a battle that needs to be taken one day at a time. Or rather one meal at a time!

My Weight Watchers Journey

I decided it was time to bite the bullet and seek some professional help!

I knew that I would eventually go back to Weight Watchers one day, but I needed to wait until I was mentally ready to commit to it again. My faith is strong in the program itself. Any time I have followed it in the past, the weight melted off my body rather readily. It teaches you how to eat real food in real life situations. It promotes healthy natural foods (although they do offer prepared foods for those who like that route) and activity. They even address the mental and emotional roadblocks that derail us from our success and how to stay positive.

All common sense things right. I know I should know how to do that all on my own, but there's something about the support of the other people in the meetings, and the motivation the leader provides (if you find a good meeting group which I believe I did!) and the accountability of having someone else measure my progress (I have a hard time keeping myself honest) that makes it all worth it for me.

Part of me is nervous. I am a WW veteran, having tried the program numerous times throughout my life. As I said the program itself is something I can really stand behind, it's myself that I'm less sure of. The last time I did the program was when I started almost 2 years ago. I lost 25 pounds then fell off the wagon (pretty hard I might add). I lasted only 3 months.

That was the time I joined with my mother. She kept going even after I stopped. In a little over a year's time, she lost over 120 pounds and hit her goal. She is now a lifetime memeber, still going to meetings and still keeping the weight off. Like me she had done WW numerous times throughout her life with a certain level of success each time before fizzling out. I want this to be the time where I can make it click for me and keep going the way she did. The last time I tried, I was so determined that time would be my success story. This time I want it to be, but I have the fear that it will end like all the other times did. It's disturbing me that I'm going into this with my self confidence so low, though I suppose it's good that I'm at least doing something.

My Elderly Neighbors

Where I live, there is a large population of senior citizens. It's nice because they keep an eye on things in the neighborhood and the place doesn't seem desolate during "normal" work hours. I like to keep my kitchen blinds open during the day to let the sun in and there's a certain comfort in seeing the regulars do their daily walks around the block.

Then it dawned on me. My senior citizen neighbors are more active than me!!! They are out there every day, some of them twice a day. Most power walk, some just stroll and others take their pets out for their daily walks. When I realized that these people who are mostly twice my age are 100% more active than I am on a daily basis, I have to say it really made me feel terrible. It's inspiring to see them out there doing their thing, but how can I honestly expect to be active like that in my older years, if I can't even do it now? Talk about putting things into perspective!

My Next Decision

My success came to a screeching halt this week. There's been a family issue that unexpectedly took up a lot of my time, however at this point even I know that that's just an excuse. I could have squeezed in a 20 minute walk if it were on my priority list, and yet I have not even 1 sticker on my chart this week. I am infamous for self sabotaging.

Even if I had been getting stickers though, my eating is still very out of control. I managed to eat breakfast everyday, but I'm still binging in the afternoons and evenings. So even though I've worked out more in the past two weeks than I have in the past few months, I still gained weight. Gosh I must have gained 10 pounds in the last month alone.

So after weeks of soul searching and trying a gentle approach, I realize I need more structre if I am going to have any kind of success. I decided that I'm ready to once again join Weight Watchers. The plan works for me. Whenever I follow it I lose weight and I feel that I am determined enough now to follow through with it. I am starting to see that watching what I eat is not a punishment for being fat. I am at a point where I want to stop abusing myself with food, and learn how to nuture myself and start feeling good. I think I am ready for that.

My meetings wouldn't start until next week, so I will be trying to mentally prepare until then. I intend to clear out the garbage from my house and stock it with WW friendly foods and snacks (I am very familiar with the plan, being a WW veteran and all). I will continue to keep a sticker chart for my workout progress, as moving is essential to the WW program.

So, I had another huge set back. But in this learning curve of life I've taken the lesson from it I think I needed to and will hopefully let it propell me onto a better path.

My Second Week

Sucess is such a relative thing!

This week I have two squares on my chart staring back at me with no stickers. So in that sense, I suppose I did worse this week (though I was sick one of the days). Still it was much easier this week to keep going despite my missed work outs. The compulsion to view myself as a failure was not as strong and so I was able to continue through a setback. In that sense I was far more successful.

I will continue this last week with the same 7 day goal I originally set. Though next week when I reset my goals for the next 3 week period, I think I will make some adjustments so that the goal is a little more reasonable, but still increase my level of activity.

I have been 100% with my goal of eating breakfast everyday though and so I am very proud of that. Even the day I was sick and unable to keep things in, I made sure to at least have a glass of orange juice with pulp in the morning. A habit is definitely being formed and I believe I can continue to build on this progress. My next food goal will be to aim for preparing a proper dinner at least during week nights, so that I am eating a regular breakfast at breakfast time, and a regular dinner at dinner time (as opposed to the constant grazing I do all day now). I am going to take the stress of finding highly healthful recipes off me for night now and just concentrate on making dinner every night. I figure once I get my eating patterns reset, then I can tweak it with the more healthful goals (not that I'm striving to cook unhealthy stuff now).

So week 2 not so bad!

My Bad Behavior

Well friends, I feel like I am winning the battle but losing the war. I have been faithful to my sticker chart which is tremendous progress for me. Today was really great. After I dropped my oldest at school I did my walk outside in this beautiful weather while pushing my 2 year old in the stroller. Holy cow what a difference a little resistence and some hills make! I felt good though, and very happy to be outside. It might be easier to track my progress on the treadmill, but my basement is much less scenic and there's just a little less pleasure when you're doing all that walking, but you never get to go anywhere!

However, I have been highly stressed out lately. Some of it just regular life with two kids stuff (my oldest is testing her limits these days and my youngest decided she doesn't like to go to sleep when it's bedtime), but there's more to the stress, a certain kind of urgency that I have yet to pinpoint the source of. So my hair is fallig out and I've been stuffing myself with food. Even if I do well getting through a day, I tend to fall apart at night.

I'm not quite as hungry during the days since I started eating breakfast, but my eating obvisiously ignores all hunger/fullness signals. Fast food is my biggest vice and all it took was one taste of it before I fell into all out junkie mode. Let me paint you a picture....

My youngest is sick and very cranky. My husband gets home a little late. When he gets in I offer to take my oldest out (she's been getting nuts from hearing the little one complain all day). Of course we stop for a quick bite to eat since there was no formal dinner that night. My daughter eats 1 quarter of the personal pizza from Pizza Hut express and is more interested in the icee it came with (she snacked before we left the house). I, on the other hand, inhale the rest of the pizza. We make it home and my husband asked if we brought back any food. I offer to run out and get him whatever he wanted. He's been trying to eat healtheir these days, but tonight he requested The Baconator from Wendy's. Of course I couldn't go there and not get myself a little something, so even though I was full I ate another cheeseburger and a side of chicken nuggets. I was disguested with myself. I considered using my old behaviors to rid myself of the garbage I ate, but I held strong and forced myself through my workout that evening.

One taste of a fast food hamburger and that was it for me though. I wanted more. I NEEDED more. It's the end of the payweek though and so I had only 2 dollars left in my wallet. So what do I do? I STOLE some cash from the drawer I've been socking extra money away for a special trip we are taking the kids on this month. I had put an extra $5 in there recently to put towards gas and now I was sneaking it out of the drawer while my husband was playing with the kids and making a secret run to Wendy's on my way to return a movie. I can't even explain the shame I felt when it was all said and done. That night, after about a year and a half of staying strong, I finally succumbed to the urge of using my old behaviors to try to undo what I had just done.

So here I sit this morning, proud of myself as I add the newest sticker to my chart this morning, but really I just feel like it's all just a lost cause.

Big Mac Attack

Who could resist those two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun???

Man Obsessed With Big Macs

My Imperfect Perfection

Okay so today marks the end of my first week. Did I earn my reward?
No, BUT here's the breakdown:

Breakfast was eaten every morning so I was successful on that front. I have to say that making myself eat breakfast did help control some erratic eating patterns throughout the day. I find that I do not crave typical breakfast foods which are carbohydrate based in the morning though, I crave more protien rich foods (just wondering how good it is to eat eggs so often, anyone have a good suggestion for non egg based protien rich breakfasts?) The protien rich breakfasts also help me to feel more energetic and fuller longer.

Working out was not a failure, although my "all or nothing" mindset is having a hard time accepting that. I worked out for 20 mintues everyday except Sunday. Now, I have lots of legimate reasons why I did not do 20 minutes on Sunday, but I'm not sure they really even matter. The bigger point is am I going to let that one day cancel out my efforts and ruin the rest of my plan?

If I can make it through the remaining 2 weeks with only that 1 missed day, that will be quite an accomplishment. I am right back on the horse today with working out again, but when I look at my chart all I see is that one square with no sticker in it. I have to start retraining myself to be proud of all the stickers I did earn and use that empty sqare as a motivator to work harder, not as a means for reminding myself that I wasn't perfect which will in turn lead me to quit (since I can't do it anyway).

A wise poster once told me that I should strive for improvement not perfection. Excellent advice, let's see if I can do it!

My First 20 Minutes

I did not want to do my 20 minutes of activity yesterday. I was (still am) exhausted due to the fact that my kids have not yet adjusted to going to bed earlier even though we have to be up and out earlier in the mornings. I know we'll adjust but the first week is brutal in that respect. We did our family walk after dinner, but I don't count that as my activity. It was 8:30 after we put them to bed (almost 10 until they actually fell asleep) and I just didn't feel like doing my own activity....but I did!! YAY ME!

I have to say that the only reason I did it was because of that silly chart. I have 20 minutes of activity as something I need to do on an everyday basis, so I did not want to mess it up on my very first day. So I dragged myself over to the treadmill and pushed myself through 20 minutes of walking. It was tough, mentally. The treadmill is pretty boring, but I did it and it felt good. I know I will do it today because getting over that first hump was pretty motivating. Hopefully it gets easier.

My Sticker Chart

So the long weekend is over, school officially started and I am ready to get myself moving...literally.

To movitvate myself, I took a lesson from my 4 year old and made myself a sticker chart. My daughter has already taken charge of monitoring my progress and is sweet enough to share her stickers with me for days that I do well!

The goal is to do 20 minutes of activity every day for the next three weeks. Each week I sucessfully complete I will earn a reward (which I will put up on my sidebar somewhere once I figure them out!). The weeks need to be consecutive in order for me to earn the reward for weeks 2 and 3, otherwise I start the count back as week one.

I am also using the chart to monitor my first food goal. My goal for that is simply to eat breakfast every day. Something I have a very hard time with. I figure, start small and build from there.

The goals are simple and basic, yet have been too much for me to master until now. I realize that in order to reach that big picture, I need to start with baby steps and build on them once as I master each one. I chose 3 weeks as my initial starting point because I read somewhere that it takes 3 weeks of continually doing something before it starts to become habit. As each behavior becomes habitual, I can then start to add on. The chart worked like a charm for my daughter, so why not try it for me!! I need to have a place where I can physically see my progress and be accountable!

How do you all keep yourself accountable???