22 October 2011

Day 1 - Again


Even though I signed up for Weight Watchers on Wednesday, and I've been tracking my points since then - today is really Day 1. On Wednesday I did not know how much I weighed because my scale is insane, so I just entered 200lbs. Thankfully I'm not quite that yet. I'm starting at 196.6. Still extremely high but I least I haven't crossed that 200 mark. Yeah!!!!

My goal for this week is to track every single bite I eat and to follow my workout schedule and workout 6 days this week. I'm trying very hard to stay away from number goals since that generally leads to feelings of failure. What usually happens, with me and others, is that I will lose weight the first week. The second week I may stay the same or possibly even gain a little. The third and fourth week can go either way - up or down. It's usually at this point that I give up, but if I stick with it the weight will slowly start to come off. A little at first and then week by week it will go steadily downward. So I am committing to this until the end of the year. I hope to lose 5 lbs by the end of the year. More importantly, I will get back into the healthy eating and working out habit. That's my focus here. After the first of the year I will focus in on the weight loss.

I want to address why I returned to Weight Watchers. In my last post I said that I had left WW because I thought they had nothing to offer me. The fact of the matter is they do. They provide me with some level of accountability. When I'm on my own I can put off weighing in or delay tracking my food or convince myself that I'm doing what I should when I'm not. Going to meetings adds an accountability factor that I don't have on my own. It's hard to convince myself that WW scales are off - something I do with my home scale all the time, well, my scale is insane. It's hard to lie about the number on the scale when someone else is reading it and writing it down. It's hard to tell someone else that you did everything right when the scale goes up and up and up. So that and the meetings. I like the meetings because for 30 minutes every week I can talk about me. My food choices. My successes. My challenges. My anything. And no one judges me. No one criticizes me because I ate 6 cookies, or poo-poos the fact that I even care about that. I can talk about things I can't talk about anywhere else at these meetings. And I'm surrounded by people in the same boat as me. I love reading and hearing about successes, but I really love reading and hearing about struggles and that they got through them. I reminds me that I'm not in this alone and if someone else did it so can I.

So there we have, Day 1. I'm off and running.

W-Day


Today is the official weigh in day. Yikes!!!! I've gotten weighed at the doctors office so I have an idea of what I weigh, but my appointments have always been in the afternoon. I always weigh more in the afternoon. When I was a freak and weighed myself 3 and 4 times a day I learned that. Good to know for when I see big number on the docs scale, but also a good way to create the illusion in my mind that I'm not that heavy. So it's a double-edged sword.

Anyway, I've done pretty well since Wednesday. I've tracked my food religiously even when it was over my points. I haven't worked out since Wednesday because these were my scheduled days off. But I'm supposed to workout today and I'm going to. I'm going the meeting. Then I'm working out. Then I have some things to do before an appointment at 3:15. Busy, busy, busy.

So, I'm off. Will check back in later with all the news.....

19 October 2011

I did it again


Last time I swore there was nothing they had to offer me. I said I could not follow their program because it focused too heavily on processed foods. Well, guess what? Not following their program, or any program, has resulted in a steady climb up. I have got to stop the scale creeping up. I have to!!!! So I joined again. I'm going to track my food, go to meetings on Saturday mornings, eat right, and work out. I need to do this. I can not stand the way my body feels. I have a huge stomach and I everything is getting tight. I need to do this. More importantly, I want to do this. So, like I did with the working out, I'm going to commit to one month. One month of tracking. One month of attending meetings. One month of working it. At the end of the month I will reevaluate and see where I am. One month. I saw a cool bracelet for WW that uses Swarovski Crystal beads to help track your daily points. It's pretty too, maybe I'll get that just to remind me what I'm doing.

I did have a huge success with the working out today. Yesterday I was supposed to work out for 45 minutes. But Monday night I went to bed late and didn't get up yesterday morning. So this morning I was only supposed to do 20 minutes but I did the 45 from yesterday. Tomorrow is supposed to be a rest day but I'm going to do the 20 minutes from today and Friday, which is a scheduled rest day, will be a rest day. Saturday morning I'm riding my bike to WW meeting and I'm going to workout for an hour I think. Then I will probably take a nap, but that's okay.

I read a couple of people who have had such success with WW and I have had great success in the past. I need and want to do this. I'm tired of looking at a closet full of clothes that I can't fit into!!!!

16 October 2011

Weekend Update


From my earlier post:
On the agenda today: Clean the bird room, do laundry, iron clothes, grade pre-alg papers, pack things up for morning. I can totally do this.

Let's see how I did. Clean the bird room - check, and I worked up a sweat doing it.
Do Laundry - check
Iron clothes - check
Grade pre-algebra papers - nope
Pack things up for morning - doing that as soon as I'm done here.

Overall a successful day. I also worked out for 45 minutes, tried to help a lost dog, wrote my financial appeal letter to HPU, looked into finishing my masters other places because I don't have a good feeling about HPU, ate dinner, and am now almost ready for bed. Oh yeah, I watched some of Kim Kardashins wedding and fell asleep. I wonder if they are really that boring and annoying or if the editing makes them that way.

Anyway, I've had a good day and I feel like it's going to be a good week.

Progress


is made in small steps. I have been making those small steps for the past week and I'm feeling good. I'm feeling in control. I'm feeling creative again. I've been working out following the schedule and feeling very empowered and strengthened by it. Strengthened not so much in that I'm getting stronger, but in that I'm sticking to the program. When I get one area of my life under control the rest just seems to fall into place. I need that to happen. And I'm making progress. On Friday I came up with a brilliant idea for handling my paperwork from school. You have no idea how much paperwork a school teacher has to deal with. I thought there was a lot of paperwork in Laboratory Animal Caretaker Jobs, which I have done and is regulated by everyone under the sun, but I was wrong. In 3 years I had not been able to come up with a system that worked for me. Well, I think I finally have and I'm feeling very satisfied and accomplished. That has led me to want to tackle the bird room. Today we will power wash cages, I will scrub floors and walls, and clean out that closet in there - move stuff or store it, whatever. I'm really feeling powerful.

Today was the longest workout so far, 45 minutes. It was 20 minutes of cardio and 20 minutes of ab work, then 5 minutes of stretching. It was awesome. At first I didn't think I was doing the abs right because I couldn't feel anything, but towards the end I was dying. Awesome. Tomorrow is a full 45 minutes of cardio. That should be killer. I have to get up a few minutes early so I have time for the full 45 minutes. Luckily tomorrow is Day 1 which means I don't have a class at 8 am. That way if I'm a little late it really doesn't matter.

On the agenda today: Clean the bird room, do laundry, iron clothes, grade pre-alg papers, pack things up for morning. I can totally do this.

Conversation with Hubby

 So yesterday morning I presented my idea of working out at home to the Hubby. Once I presented it to him, he said he was in. I told him I h...