Friday, December 30, 2011

Requisite Emo New Year's Resolution Post

As I continue to hover within a couple pounds of the same weight I’ve been at for roughly five months now, I wonder if I’ve become too content with my current weight.  And more importantly, I can’t help but wonder if that’s such a bad thing.

I’m still anywhere between 25-40 pounds from my goal weight and I’m not set on any particular number- anywhere in that range would tuck me into the healthy weight bracket.  Although I feel like I’m pretty healthy at my current weight and I’m in as good of shape as I’ve been in since early college, I know I could be a bit healthier at goal, and I know I’d be happier with the way I look at goal.  I’m a vain bitch by nature.  But at the same time, I don’t have a lot of serious complaints where I’m at now.  Maybe that provides me with a bit less motivation to keep plugging away at WW, but maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world either.

In fairness, I should mention that I am very fortunate to never have been truly miserable with respect to my weight, even at my heaviest.  I was definitely less pleased with that aspect of my life 100 pounds ago, I didn’t like the way I looked or felt, and pictures became an increasing disaster.  But I still enjoyed my life and my weight didn’t severely take away from that.  However, looking back to my starting weight this time around, I also realized that my reasons for wanting and needing to lose weight were less superficial than they normally have been in the past, and definitely less superficial than they are now. 

Although I wasn’t experiencing any major health problems or at imminent risk of anything awful, I have to call a spade a spade and acknowledge the fact that I gained 114 pounds in 6 years and that is not healthy any way you slice it.  I was wearing sizes I had never seen before and my shopping options were becoming limited.  I remember sitting on a plane and realizing that there was not much seatbelt left and that if I gained more weight I’d need an extender.  I rarely worked out and walking multiple flights of stairs at a time was a chore.  I was increasingly experiencing acid reflux and indigestion symptoms and I had a solid year or so where I had this nagging cough and chest congestion with no particular cause that I imagine was at least somewhat weight/fitness-related.  That’s not to say that vanity wasn’t still a huge factor in wanting to lose weight.  There was no “lightbulb moment”, so to speak, but some unflattering pictures of me were at the forefront of my mind when I re-joined/re-committed to WW in February 2009. 

My point is that, silly as it sounds, I feel extremely lucky to be back to a point where my weight is mostly just a vanity issue once again.  My weight has always been up and down but up until 2005 or so it had never really been a major problem so much as a vanity-based annoyance.  Yet back in high school and early college I sometimes let my dissatisfaction with my appearance snowball my weight into more drama and irritation than it probably required.  It’s unfortunate that it took SO much weight gain to put things into perspective for me as far as what is truly important, but from here on out I will try not to take things for granted with my weight.  In other words, embracing the fact that vanity and wanting to look hotter in a bathing suit are pretty good fuckin problems to have in the scheme of things!

Anyway, I don’t know why I’ve been feeling so introspective about things lately- maybe it’s somewhat New Years resolution-related.  I hate resolutions and I sure-as-shit am not going to plan my year around losing x number of pounds, because that’s just inane.  But I’d like to continue losing weight while also continuing to develop a healthy outlook towards weight and life.  Last year I stopped weighing myself mid-week and have pretty much stuck to that faithfully for a year now.  I would like to take more steps in the direction of making my weight and health a priority while also NOT making it a major focus in my life.  I don’t want to know what I weigh on a daily basis just like I don’t want to spend a great deal of emotional energy based on where I’m at in my weight loss.  I like writing this blog and I want to continue living a (usually) healthy lifestyle, but I also don’t want WW and weight loss to be such a huge part of my life- surely my life is more interesting than that!

I hope to re-read this post periodically throughout the year to see how I’m doing.  I want to keep following WW but I hope to reach a point where I spend fewer hours a day thinking about it, and I will try to update about my mindset from here on out as much as I do about my weight and other shenanigans.  Reaching my goal weight without being where I want to be about it mentally first is just going to spiral me through ongoing dissatisfaction that won’t change no matter how low the scale gets.  So with that said, hope everyone has a wonderful New Year in which we can all achieve the resolutions we set out to accomplish.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Quick Pre-Holiday Check-In

Here I go again being the shittiest blogger ever!  I'm also still not doing much on the WW front, and my last 800 WIs have basically been: up, down, up, down, up, down. And so on.  All things considered I'm not terribly unhappy to only be a shade over my lowest weight as I haven't exactly been knocking shit out of the park this month, but hopefully in January we'll have some more downwardly progress.  My sister and I are going to Indianapolis for Super Bowl week so I need to be a flyass bitch for those parties!

I don't have much to report otherwise, but I am enjoying the crap out of the holiday season thus far and I hope everyone else is as well!  My roommates and I threw what I can only describe as a fabulously bangin holiday party a couple weeks ago, and since I'm really lazy about posting pictures I'm including a pic of me in my party dress here.  Yes, I exist in black and white.

my sister and I and some really freaky lighting

Anyway, I'll try to update a little more regularly but hopefully there will be some more regular weight loss to report as well.  Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!

Monday, December 5, 2011

December Shenanigans

I meticulously avoided posting after my post-Thanksgiving WI for a few days, but now that it’s been a few days and I’ve gotten my shit mostly back together I figured I’d update.  I gained 4.8 last WI which I *think* has been my highest gain this time around on WW, which is no easy feat as I’m coming up on 3 years on this go-round AND I think I bested my previous highest by a good pound or so.  I didn’t track and enjoyed every morsel of food I could get my paws on so a gain of some magnitude was expected and all I can do is move on to the next week.

So far this week I’ve been good, and I have about 4 WPs left with my next WI tomorrow.  After tonight I’ll have gotten to the gym 4 times and so I think it’s been a good bounce-back week.  I’m not asking to get rid of the whole 4.8 this week but I’m hoping to make a nice dent in it, at least.  This time of year is awesome but a bitch on the diet front, and so I’m cool with seeing minimal results for the next few weeks.

On a more positive note, I did have some good (albeit expensive) non-scale victories over the weekend.  On Saturday I went shoe-shopping with my roommates and I was mainly looking for boots.  I’ve always believed myself to be in possession of big old man calves that do not and will not fit into normal-person boots.  I haven’t boot-shopped in awhile, but I can remember in college when I was at least in the general vicinity of my current weight, knee-high boots would not make their way up my calves.  I don’t have enormous calf muscles but they’re big enough and I’m sure a lot of that has to do with gaining weight over the years and my legs having to work extra hard to carry the added weight.  Anyway, in case it’s not already totally obvious where this going… every pair of regular-sized boots I tried on fit spectacularly, the wide-calf ones I tried on were too big, and so I think my legs might finally have joined the normal-sized population after all.  I ended up buying 2 new pairs including some fabulous knee-high suede boots that I want to sleep with they’re so lovely, and my mood was jovial.

Second expensive NSV:  I went dress-shopping yesterday to find a new dress for our holiday party this weekend.  I wasn’t intending to spend a lot, but it’s funny what your wallet is suddenly inclined to do when you try on a wonderful dress in a size you haven’t seen since you were a freshman in college.  It fit and zipped without a problem, though it hugs the shit out of every inch of my torso and ass so you better believe I’ll be taking it easy on the mint M&Ms this week.  Or, I’ll say I’m going to do that and end up stuffing my face and wearing a tight-ass mothereffing dress on Saturday.  Either way, I was ecstatic, I love the dress, and I feel really good about things in the weight department, even if I did gain the equivalent of a small child last week.

Hopefully I will have some good news at WI tomorrow, though this coming week will be a tougher one so that will

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

One last pre-Thanksgiving update

Quick stop-in before the Thanksgiving food-massacre begins.  I lost 0.4 at WI yesterday which I was very happy with.  Admittedly I’m not always ecstatic over smaller losses, but I was really just hoping to see any loss after the big one the week before, which didn’t feel entirely deserved.  I also ate, literally, a bowl of cookie dough on Monday night which felt like a rock in my stomach, so seeing the scale down to some new territory (-100.4, but still something) was nice.  I’m now 13.6 pounds away from my lowest adult weight and that is definitely a milestone I’m insanely fixated on.  Unfortunately with the holidays coming up it might be a ways off, but it’s still nice to dream about!

My level of excitement for Thanksgiving weekend and, in particular, the food and drink, is really somewhat sickening, but it is what it is.  Some people get excited for Harry Potter movies; I get revved up to binge on carbs with a side of turkey.  And the food is just too good to limit to one day, so I’m sure Friday will involve some continued gluttony.  Saturday is a reminder that I’m old as fuck as it’s my 10-year high school reunion, about which my emotions are rotating between excitement and boredom.  It’s somewhat cliché, but I really do keep in touch with the friends I wanted to keep in touch with, and two of my best friends from high school aren’t going, but I think it will be nice to catch up with some people I haven’t seen in awhile.  From a purely shallow-bitch perspective, I’m 7 pounds lighter than I was senior year of high school and very happy with where I’m at in my life and career, so I feel good about that.

Anyway, I’ll try to post after the long weekend but I may or may not feel like doing so after what which probably be a 32 pound gain on the scale.  Hope everyone has a great holiday!

Monday, November 21, 2011

It's almost time to binge on turkey!

Even though WI isn’t until tomorrow and I have nothing spectacular to discuss today, I’m feeling randomly inspired to post today.  Actually that feeling probably has more to do with my lack of inspiration to do work and my desire to find anything possible to waste time rather than being productive at work, but it all leads to me posting in the end, right?

I’ve been trying to have a decent week in the WW department to counteract this coming week which will be a giant abomination of any attempts at healthy living.  Thanksgiving outranks my birthday and Christmas in terms of my lack of interest in eating even minimally healthy and the entire day generally consists of eating as much as I can physically handle, waiting for my body to digest the bare minimum necessary to give me room to start eating again, and then repeating the cycle.  It would be horrifying if it wasn’t so blissfully awesome.  I would like to try to be decent up until Thanksgiving, but we’ve got a potluck at work on Wednesday and I’m going out for my roommate’s birthday that night, so Wednesday will probably start things moving in a downward spiral that will continue through the weekend.  Nevertheless, I’ll plan some trips to the gym and move on from there.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my 8 trillion years on WW, it’s that a few days can only do so much damage and I can always get back on track.  It’s not the planned failures that derail me- it’s the ones I don’t see coming.

Anyway, now that I’ve written in excruciating detail about how to be the worst Weight Watcher ever this Thanksgiving, I am hopeful for a tiny loss at WI tomorrow.  I had an alright weekend and have a few weeklies left over, but I just have that feeling that I won’t be losing this week, probably since the scale was a little too kind last week.  Either way, I am 36 pounds lighter than I was last Thanksgiving, so that is certainly something to be thankful for!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Hot Mess

Sorry for my continuing laziness with updating, although it’s surely to be expected at this point.  This month, and past few weeks really, have been flying, and since fall and pre-Thanksgiving/Christmas is my favorite time of year, I’ve been trying to enjoy the hell out of it while it’s here.

I’ve had some pretty inconsistent and, at times ,horribly unspectacular WW moments of late, but I’m trying to get things going mostly in the right direction.  I will fully admit right now that I’m going to eat the shit out of some Thanksgiving awesomeness next week and I probably will not track it or really say no to anything, but I figure I can at least try to be kind of a WW non-failure for the next 9 days. 

After maintaining my -100 loss for one week, I had a less than stellar following week involving too much Halloween everything.  For a couple weeks I think I just ate candy at will and pretended it didn’t have points, which is odd since I’m not even much of a sweets person.  I gained 3.6 and then only lost 0.4 last week after having a pretty decent week.  The nice part about that is that it sets you up for a loss even after a shitty following week because the scale sort of owes you, if that makes sense.  This is one of the good and bad things about only weighing once a week.  Anyway… after my meager 0.4 loss, I decided to take control by having absolutely awful-eating days Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday where I blew through all of my WPs and APs on nothing good in particular.  Friday I finally sat myself down and gave myself a good bitchslap and decided that at least for one day, I would not eat a single piece of Halloween candy, soft pretzel, or donut that was brought into the office (and all of that was on Friday.. evil bastards).  And so I didn’t.  But that night was my sister’s birthday so in lieu of dinner I had about 7 gallons of vodka which, for better or worse, all got puked into my bedside trashcan the following morning.  This is the part where I maintain once again that I’m not a raging alco. 

Despite the vodka-infused slip-up (which wasn’t so much a slip-up as a planned hotmess-capade), I did right the ship again on Saturday and have been eating pretty positively since then.  I made a much-needed trip to the grocery store and planned out healthy meals for the week and cooked some healthy crap Sunday and last night, with a turkey burger with avocado slices and a sweet potato on tap for tonight.  Oh, and despite being 30ish points in the red last week I lost 3.2 this past week to put me back at -100 on the dot and feeling much better in general now that I don’t have Snickers and Reese’s pulsing through my veins.  I have big plans to rock this week before eating myself into a mild coma on Thanksgiving.  Whatever, it’s once a year!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Well, I briefly tried to do a cool looking side-by-side picture thing, but my cropping and editing skillz (or lack thereof) on Paint eventually got the best of me and I gave up. The pics I have also didn't really seem to lend themselves to cropping and side-by-side analysis, so I figured I'd just post them in order and you can scroll through them instead.
 
I'm actually disappointed that I don't have any really good (aka bad) pics from Halloween 2008 when I was around my heaviest/starting weight. I would have saved those pictures on my old laptop which I don't want to dig up, so I was left with the pics I had posted to my old-school Webshots account. Naturally, I was pretty judicious with which pictures I posted since I was not particularly happy with my weight at the time and I was unflatteringly stuffed into my flapper costume. The pics I have are mostly group shots where I've carefully wedged myself between other people, hiding my full size. Nevertheless, here I am in all my costumed glory for Halloweens 2008 through 2011.
 
 
Halloween 2008: Flapper... a hair shy of 100 pounds heavier than my current weight (yes, I know I'm sketchy about sharing actual weights!)
 
 
Halloween 2009: Devil... down about 42 lbs from heaviest (+58 from current)
 
 
Halloween 2010: Pilot/"Mile High Captain"... down 65 lbs (+35 from current)
 
Halloween 2011: Bumble Bee... down 100 lbs (current)
 
 
So there you have it.  I wish I had better pics from '08 and '09 but I think the changes are fairly noticeable in my face even if you can't totally see the body.  I'd like to do another before/during pic in 10 more pounds, whenever I get there!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Quick Update

Just wanted to swing by and blow your minds by posting two days in a row, particularly shocking after I posted a pointless questionnaire yesterday to distract you from the fact that I semi-ignored WW for the weekend.

My scale says I maintained this week which was cause for a nice little morning celebration since I was a expecting a small gain.  Not peeking at the scale mid-week really makes WI morning a lot more fun (or sometimes a lot more horrifying.. but usually fun).  I should note that I started this paragraph with "my scale says" because sometimes I'm skeptical when I maintain.  What are the odds that I stayed the exact same weight, to the tenth of a pound, from one week to the next?  I mean I realize there are fluctuations in between, but it always seems unlikely.  Nevertheless, my scale is all I have to go on and I'm not try'na look a gift horse in the mouth.

I feel like a maintain (especially after an eh week) is a nice little opportunity for a "do-over" where I can have a good following week to make some new progress without having to waste a week getting the gain off.  That said, I have another Halloween party this Saturday and a small Halloween get-together on Friday which will still involve pumpkin beer and pizza and such.  Pumpkin beer and pizza is my weakness, people!  I'm also making matters worse for myself by making Halloween Funfetti cupcakes to take into work this week.  The good part is that I can only shovel so many cupcakes into my mouth before the rest of the office gets in on the action.  Still, long story shortish, it's unlikely I'll have a stellar week ahead of me.  But a girl can dream...

Monday, October 24, 2011

Total Non-WW Post

I saw another one of those survey/questionnaire post things on another blog and it made me want to post one.  They're cheesy and remind me of high school email chains, but still fun!  And more importantly, after a pretty unfabulous WW weekend (a rough estimate puts me in the red by about 20, but that might be on the low end), I figured a post to distract from what will probably be a blah WI tomorrow would be more fun.

(I will quickly add that Friday's Halloween party was a lot of fun and I'll post some pics soon).

Four Jobs that you have had:
Attorney
Wawa employee (every summer in college)
Bath & Body Works
Diane’s Water Ice, until they fired me

Four things you wanted to be when you grew up:
Attorney (since 7th grade.. god I’m boring!)
Writer
Professional basketball player
Football blogger (OK that was like 3 years ago)

Four Movies you could watch over and over:
any of the Die Hards
The Hangover
Dirty Dancing
Old School

Four Cities you have lived in:
Philadelphia
Boston
London
State College, PA

Four TV shows you love to watch:
Mad Men

Dexter
The Good Wife
Modern Family

Four Places you've been on Vacay:
Maui

Paris
San Francisco
Caribbean

Four Websites you visit daily:
Weight Watchers (that shit’s addicting)

Facebook (not quite daily)
Weather.com
Pacer (legal professionals know this one)

Four of your favorite foods:
mac and cheese

pizza
fro yo
sushi

Four foods you can't stand:
99% of veggies
mayo
liver
tea – iced or hot (not a food but it came to mind)

Four Schools you've attended:
Boston University

Penn State
AES study abroad in London (is that a school?)
Cherokee High School

Four Places you'd rather be right now:
my bed

George Clooney’s bed
Fogo de Chao
Tokyo

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

One Hundred!

Since I neglected to check in after my last post, I’ll give a recap of how my attempt to finally have a second straight good week went:  I was good through Friday, then went out on Saturday night and got wrecked, then went out to brunch the next morning with my mom and sister and ate somewhere in the vicinity of my entire body weight in pastrami and potato pancakes, and gained 1.2 at WI.  As a quick aside, I will once again reiterate that I am not a raging alcoholic but in an attempt to accurately recap both my best and worst weeks on WW I want to be honest and mention those occasional indiscretions.  They really aren’t that frequent, but they always seem to wind up on my blog suggesting that I do this regularly.  In actuality, not drinking like a 19 year old anymore has been one of the major things that has helped me stick with WW this time around.  But anyway, painfully hungover brunch at Schlesingers (the TK Special happened, and it was fucking awesome) was delicious but also not a regular part of my life, sadly. 

THIS WEEK… I mostly had my shit together, I went out for drinks on Saturday and had 2 Miller Lites (nasty, right? but very point-friendly so I’ll past myself on the back) mixed with a couple glasses of water and, despite a 3 a.m. cheesesteak run, had a pretty good week in WW-world.  In all honesty it wasn’t perfect and I used up all my WPs and just barely dipped into my APs, so I was expecting to maybe lose my 1.2 pound gain and a sliver extra, but it was good enough for a 2.8 pound loss to put me at -100.00 on the dot! 

I’m very excited to hit that milestone and really want to enjoy it, especially since back in August when I got within 0.4 of it I started to get kind of apathetic about it.  I realize that I still need to plug away a little longer to get to goal and that’s always in the back of my mind, but I want to enjoy the ride as well, and I think hitting the 100 pounds mark is really worth taking a moment to savor.  And savor I did, seeing as how some evil skank/wonderful soul brought in both pumpkin cheesecake AND marble cake stuffed with cannoli filling to work today.  Why must such deliciousness exist?!  I had small pieces of both so I’m rumbling through my points today, but it was worth it.  Cannoli-stuffed cake, people, that shit is no joke.

Anyway.  I really hope I have good news to report again next week so I can really keep moving.  I don’t care if it’s slow, I just don’t want to yo yo up and down every other week for the next 3 months.  I have Halloween parties the next 2 weekends but I will remind myself repeatedly that I need not eat every last appetizer and drink every last pumpkin beer that is put in front of me (mmmm Pumpkin Ale…).  My last before/after(during) pic was only a few pounds ago but I’m thinking it’d be cool to do a Halloween costume pic montage thing of the last 3 years as a comparison.  I’ll pretend that this might actually happen and I won’t forget to update again until Christmas.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Midweek Check-In

I am truly shocked that I’m blogging twice in the same damn week, but I feel like I’ve been trying to give WW my A-game this week (and somewhat succeeding) and wanted to force a check-in to maybe keep me on track through the weekend.  I’m also having one of those days where I’m ready to go on a murder spree through my office so I figured taking a quick hiatus to blog might be productive for my mental health.

I’ve used 10 WPs in my first three days this week which is decent.  I use the bulk of my weeklies on the weekends but whenever I start hammering through my weeklies before Friday even hits it’s going to be a bad week, so at least I can say I haven’t done that so far.  It’s really sad that it’s taken me this long to even TRY, really try, to buckle down and string together two straight losses and break into new territory.  But- so far so good.  I also went to the gym three weekdays this week which will make four times since Saturday, which I haven’t done in forevs.  God forbid the hot guy that works at my gym ever finds new employment because then I might need to create a new source of motivation.  Anyway, I am happy with my week so far and I know I’m totally capable of having a solid WW weekend as well.  I JUST WANT TO HIT -100 DAMNIT!

I went to Chipotle for lunch and had 9 points worth of a burrito bowl which isn’t bad, although it doesn’t partner so well with the 6ish Munchkins I’ve had so far today.  I brought them to work myself thinking I possessed more self-control than reality has shown.  I’m also going out to dinner with my parents tonight, probably for BBQ, so I need to buckle my shit down a little if I want to get this weekend off to an OK start.

Sooo I’m rambling and will end things here, but since it’s Yom Kippur and I’m technically Jewish I’ll leave off with a fabulous e-card.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Maddening

I haven’t updated in a few weeks because I’m some combination of forgetful, lazy, and irritated with my lack of progress on the scale.  It’s not that I think I should be seeing/deserving more progress, more just pissy that I keep rotating between good weeks and bad, which, unsurprisingly, keeps rotating me between gains and losses.  I’ve been hovering within the same 2 pounds for a couple months now, and I’m ready to get my shit together! 

But anyway.  Here I am.  I still track every day, still WI every week, and still hit the gym at least 3 times a week, so I just need to buckle down a little more with my eating.  It’s really not complicated- the weeks I stay within my WPs and APs I lose, and the weeks I’m in the red I gain.  Easy peasy.  I’ve just become so predictable with WW.  When I don’t have any major social outings or obstacles, I stay within my points; when I have a few meals out, happy hours, or other drinking occasions, I tend not to.  Which is probably true for almost anyone on WW.  But I need to limit my splurges so that I see more good weeks than bad weeks.  Common sense, really. 

On the bright side, I wore a winter coat for the first time in months today (which is a little ridic since the high is 68 today.. but it was freakin freezing when I left my apartment this morning!) and it was loose.  The change of seasons makes all those NSVs more prominent because you’re putting on stuff you haven’t worn since mid-spring.  It really was just what I needed to counteract my moodiness over not having hit the 100 mark despite being on its doorstep for months.  I bought the coat I wore this morning last year right about this time and it was snug by a pinch.  Definitely wearable without making me look packed into it, but I knew it’d be a little more comfortable after another 5 or 10 pounds came off.  I’ve lost 35 pounds since then, thanks in large part to my burst of WW-awesomeness (yes, I was briefly awesome) from January to May, and the coat is now a bit too big.  Certainly not complaining though!  Hopefully there will be more of these fall-clothes-NSVs ahead.  And even more hopefully, some consistent SVs ahead! 

So, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m currently 1.2 pounds higher than my lowest weight from August 23 when I was a tiny little 0.4 pound sliver away from -100.  It also means I’m only 0.6 lighter at today’s WI than I was at my July 26 WI according to a quick peak at my weight tracker, meaning I’ve been going up and down and up and down a helluva lot in the last 2 months.  This week was a loss of 1.6 after a 1.8 pound gain the week before.  However, I am committing right now to making this coming week a second consecutive loss to break into some new territory for the first time in months.  I am perfectly capable of stringing together multiple weeks of non-shitty eating/drinking, so why not do it now?

Monday, September 12, 2011

Sun's Out, Guns Out

Back in the day, circa 2002, I generally used to run and work out in beaters or tank-tops and shorts.  It probably goes back to high school when my sports uniforms were sleeveless and pretty much everyone wore wifebeaters for anything remotely exercise-related.  They’re comfortable and don’t involve a lot of excess material like t-shirts.  At some point around senior year of college, it became clear to me that sleeveless and/or shorts were no longer quite so desirable an option for my arms and thighs at the time.  I’d still wear that stuff in the summer for the beach and what not, but not while doing anything with so much movement.  Then again, I wasn’t doing an overabundance of exercise of any kind at that time. 

I’m a good 25 pounds below what I was junior year of college when I was still rocking beaters with reckless abandon, but this past Saturday was the first time in years that I worked out in one in years.  It’s really not a huge feat and there are plenty of people of all body types that go sleeveless all the time, but it was still sort of a nice feeling to go back to something I hadn’t done since mid-college.  Admittedly, I don’t think my arms are as firm as they were the last time I was at this weight.  Around Memorial Day it occurred to me that some of the arm softness may not be fat but instead a bit of extra skin, which was disconcerting but not entirely unexpected given the amount of weight I gained.  But I still felt totally OK with it and am always happy to overcome any lingering self-consciousness I might have. 

Disclaimer:  I will NOT be rocking bare arms for kickboxing anytime in the immediate future.  These pythons are not quite ready for rapid-fire punching while fully exposed.

I had a pretty decent WW week and have about 7 weeklies left on the table.  I’m getting more antsy to bust past the 100 mark since I’ve been dancing around it forevskis.  Last week I lost back 1.2 of my 3.4 pound gain from the week before, although I didn’t WI until Wednesday since I forgot/purposely avoided the scale Tuesday morning after the holiday weekend.  So I’m not sure that I did fantastically enough this week to get rid of the remaining 2.2 AND lose the extra 0.4 needed to hit a hundy, but we’ll see how it goes.  As usual I have no particular reason to be in a hurry other than sheer impatience.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

1 step forward, 3.4 steps back

After losing 3.4 pounds last week, bringing me to -99.6 pounds lost (ohsofuckingclose), I gained 3.4 this past week.  I actually didn't even realize it was the exact same gain/loss until I just checked my tracker, but either way I continue to drift just shy of the one zero zero mark.  Not like I have any real rush to get there, I just want to get past that bitch already.

I have realized way too many times throughout this process/journey/whatever you'd like to call it that I sometimes let one bad week, or even day or weekend, make me feel inadequate and unsuccessful and overall cranky.  The logical part of me knows that one week does not undo 130 other weeks (or whatever it's been now) and that I don't look any different and I haven't unraveled all of the good habits I've acquired and instilled over the past 2.5+ years.  And yet there are moments during the week following a gain, or just following a particularly high point day, when it feels that way and I'm back at square one.

The only positive to this is that I usually get frustrated enough with those silly feelings that I'm more determined the following week to prove to myself that I can still do this, and rock the shit out of WW, and it helps me get back on track.  I'm not an emotional eater so fortunately I don't let that self-pity snowball too badly into more destruction.  And I get my ass to the gym no matter what.  But I wish I didn't have those stupidly negative thoughts in the first place because I don't like letting my WLJ become such a front-and-center part of my life, for good or bad.

I think this past week was more frustrating than usual because I didn't have any exciting events or particularly delicious meals to blame my gain on.  I just sort of overate throughout the week and had already plunged into the red by Thursday.  I feel like once I go down that road so early in the week, it's very difficult to recover from it.  But on the bright side, I did hit the gym for 2 classes on Saturday morning and went to kickboxing on Monday, so I can appreciate the fact that I at least stick with my gym routine no matter.

Enough whining.  A better week ahead hopefully, even with the holiday weekend.  AND it's almost fall which is enough in itself to put a smile on my face.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Same Old Shit

I’m back into the back-and-forth again on the scale.  This seems like my personal theme for the summer, but as usual I will remind myself that if I end the summer lighter than I started it, it doesn’t really matter what transpired in between.  I lost 1.4 last week after gaining 1.8 the week before, then gained 1.2 this week.  It’s definitely a sign that I had a really spectacularly horrible WW week when I actually grinned at the “only” +1.2 on the scale this week.  I was nearing the 80-in-the-red marker so I just wanted to limit the damage.  I was out of town Saturday to Monday and ate every meal out, and made little effort to make good food choices.  Nevertheless, I’m only 1.6 above what I was a couple weeks ago so I’m not really in a bad spot considering my less than fabulous past few weeks.

I am trying to actually put together a solid week, or maybe even 2 weeks if I’m really feeling ambitious.  I’ve been pretty haphazard with my gym-going in the past month, so also trying to get that back on track.  I have actually managed to string together two straight decent days the past two days where I didn’t abuse my WPs and worked out both days, so hoping to keep that streak alive today.  No workout planned, but another non-shitty eating day would be nice.

I’m still hovering a couple pounds away from the -100 mark, but it’s funny how once you get so close and stick around there for a few weeks, the actual milestone sort of starts to lose its luster.  I feel like I’ve been thinking about it for so long now, and rounding up to that number in my head, that I don’t think I’ll be insanely excited to actually hit it.  But I still want to just get there and keep moving forward and there is definitely no lack of incentive on my part to keep losing.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Post-bday and a new Before/During shot

The birthday weekend was fantastic and I'm finally getting used to calling myself 28.  Eventually I finished the last morsel of birthday cake and had no choice but to get somewhat back in the WW game again.  For the first time in several months I didn't track last weekend, and didn't go back-track it afterward.  I feel kinda guilty about it, but I'd rather just move on than dwell over it at this point.  And trying to remember what and how much I imbibed on Friday night would be futile at best.  I had an expectedly overindulgent weekend and the scale is at least finally making sense again, with a 1.8 pound gain this past week.  Part of me was just delighted that the rest of the weird 4.6 pound loss from the previous weeks didn't come back on.

I've been a little sketchy with the gym lately and haven't gotten into my usual rhythm, but have been trying to crank out at least a few workouts here and there.  I went Sunday and Monday and then didn't go again until today, but a twinge of guilt made me stay for a second class.  Exercise for me seems to be something that relies heavily on momentum so I just want to make sure I keep going and hopefully get back to some kind of regularity again.  It's really just too bad that working out isn't nearly as enjoyable as, say, eating pizza or sleeping.  Because I never lose momentum with those choice activities.

I put together another before-during picture comparison, not because I'm really that much lighter than when I did the last one, but because I stumbled across some particularly horrifying "before" pics that I just had to utilize.  They were taken the weekend of my BFF's bridal shower which I might have mentioned before was right before I re-joined/committed to WW.  The pictures were (and still are) sort of eye-opening, because I still can't help but think that I never believed I was THAT big.  I knew I was a good 35 pounds heavier than I had previously ever been, but the pictures really hammered that shit home for me.  And can we also talk about the fact that I just looked like a hot mess in the before shot?  I had dyed my hair brown and the color was fading out, and it looked like I apparently couldn't be bothered to brush that rats nest.  But anyway.  The pic on the right was taken this past Friday during my bday celebration, 97.8 pounds lighter than in the first pic.


The sizing on the pics themselves isn't quite even so as to provide a perfect comparison, but you get the idea.

So 100 is right around the corner, but it could be another couple weeks before I actually hit it.  While I'm excited for it, I'm even more interested in getting to the -114 mark which puts me at my freshmen year of college weight, my lowest adult weight.  It's always in the back of my head, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  Who knows when I'll get there, but I'd just like to keep moving forward and stop dicking around with birthday cake.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Birthday Week

Well, last week’s freakyass loss stayed off somehow.  I don’t know in what crazy universe 90+++ points in the red equals one of the biggest losses I’ve ever had, but maybe the alcohol did a number on my digestive system and my body couldn’t hold on to nutrients or something ridonk like that.  I don’t do science so I could just as easily contribute it to global warming.

Since I didn’t “officially” WI last week (i.e. track my weight), I ended up with a 4.6 pound loss over 2 weeks.  I peeked at the scale last Thursday to see if the 3.6 was still gone and much to my delighted horror, I was down another pound as well.  I didn’t check again after that, but all 4.6 stayed off.  I will say that I had a pretty nice little WW week this past week in which I got back to my gym routine and even left a few weeklies on the table.  It still remains to be seen whether the loss stays off in coming weeks, but the best thing I can do is try to not screw up too badly and stop making beer a food group.  I’m too old for that shit.

Fortunately/unfortunately, my birthday is tomorrow.  I’m going to eat a quantity of cake in the next few days that could probably feed a third world country for a year, but it’s just gotta happen.  I love cake.  I love birthday cake.  I love the yellow cake with buttercream frosting from my favorite bakery that my parents are getting for my bday.  I love the Funfetti cake with pink frosting I’m bringing in to work tomorrow.  I love any other cake anyone decides to regal me with in the next week.  I just cannot say no to cake on or around my birthday.  So, between the cake consumption, the birthday dinner and celebratory drinks tomorrow night, and Friday’s bigger bday celebration, I know I’m looking at a shitty WW week ahead.  I know I just said I would stop making beer a food group, but birthday weeks are obviously the exception.  Beer and cake lie ahead for me and, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, birthday week gains are pretty inevitable in my book.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Scale Issues

I had a craptastic WW week (which, as usual, meant a fantastic real-life week) and now I’ve having scale drama.  My week consisted of all you can eat sushi (which I definitely took as far as I could handle), too much wine and cheesecake on Thursday, a weekend in NYC in which I ate and drank more than I have in months, and then a Monday night during which my dinner was 3 shots of vodka, four beers, and wine chugged straight from the bottle.  Oh, and did I mention that I only went to the gym once?  My health and lifestyle over the past week have been questionable at best, though “disgraceful” would be a more appropriate adjective.

I woke up hungover on 4ish hours of sleep yesterday morning, normal WI day.  Just for the record, I do not drink to excess during the week pretty much ever.  I don’t go to work with hangovers.  I don’t make a habit of getting less than 7-8 hours of sleep.  As I read over this post and realize how trashtacular I sound, I want it to be known that Monday night was a disaster, but not a typical one.  Anyway, totally forgot to WI on Tuesday, nor would I have cared to anyway, and figured I might get an artificially low number due to my severe dehydration.  I also question whether I could have stood upright long enough to get a reading on the scale, but that’s a whole other ballgame.  So I weighed this morning to get it out of the way, record that shit, and move on.  And naturally, the scale is totally trying to mindfuck me by showing a 3.6 pound loss.

I loved the number I saw this morning, but it is completely impossible to be happy with it knowing it is artificial in one way or another.  I don’t know if the scale is messed up, if I’m still dehydrated from the massive alcohol consumption, if I have some life-threatening disease which will emaciate me over time, or what else.  I like the fact that my scale is usually pretty reliable and indicative of my progress on a week to week basis, so I’m naturally irritated with this confusion.  Out of curiosity, I went back and attempted a half-ass tracking of what I ate from Thursday through Monday since it was mostly untracked.  I’m looking at roughly 90 in the red, just from what I could remember consuming.  So it’s not like one of those dainty little weeks where I didn’t do as badly as I thought.  Shit was bad.  I tend to see false gains more than false losses, so it’s harder to conceive the reasons for it.

Anyway.  I’m not tracking that weight.  I will probably break my 7 month streak of no mid-week scale peeking and check tomorrow to see what’s going on, but I feel like it’s kind of justified here since the scale is either broken or fucking with me.  It’s less than a year old so I wasn’t expecting this kind of shenanigans from it so soon.  I might track tomorrow’s weight; I might just wait until next Tuesday.

Enough whining.  Regardless of whether I lost 3 pounds or gained 12, I am getting my shit in gear today.  Yesterday was mostly in gear but a little overly processed and I bailed on the gym again.  Today has been on the ball so far, and I’m going to the gym after work and making Emily Bites lasagna rolls for dinner.  I’ve been trying to rock the Lasagna Cupcakes but Wegman’s is being a dick with their wonton wrapper supply.  I’ve got a plan, I’ll stick with it, and I’ll update on what the scale spits out the next time around.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

WW would be easier if I didn't eat peanut butter straight from the jar

I never got back to the blog with my lemon chicken pics, but you can just take my word that it was pretty and picturesque and, most importantly, delicious.  I also made the Soy Ginger Fried Couscous recipe last week (from emilybites.com and canyoustayfordinner.com) and added steak and crabmeat to it and that shit was orgasmic.  And no, that’s not TMI, just the truth!

I lost 1.4 at WI yesterday, which is a net loss of 0.6 from before my previous week’s gain.  I hate constantly talking in terms of “net loss” but when you yo-yo back and forth for weeks and weeks at a time, it’s the best way to express where I’m actually at.  That results in a net loss of 1 pound over the past 4 weeks which is frustratingly slow, but at the same time there’s another part of me that is happy that I can still continue to lose even when I’m not as on the ball as I should be.  I had set out to leave a few (5-10ish) weekly points on the table this past week, but Saturday night my dinner consisted of chicken wings, cheese fries and cheesesteak nachos, so I had no business having any points left or seeing a bigger gain than I did.  I think my frustration is more with my inability to be a tad more disciplined than I’ve been in recent weeks.  I think I’d feel better about things if I could just string together two solid weeks where I eat well and use plenty of WPs but don’t go overboard.  But, maybe that’s just not in the cards for the summer.  Which brings me back to the thinking that I’m letting myself indulge in all kinds of tasty shit and I’m still lighter today than I was four weeks ago, so I should shut the fuck up with the whining, right?!

Anyway, any particularly diligent eating I’d like to implement will have to hold off for at least one more week because I’m going to NYC this weekend and have no plans of staying within my points.  It’s kind of sad that I go in planning that in advance, but I think the drinks will do me in more than anything and I’m not looking to have a healthy, moderate weekend.  With days/weekends like this, I figure I will just try to make small improvements where I can (don’t go too overboard with my meals, maybe drink some light beer instead of all regular, etc.) but I’m going to be realistic and know that I’ll probably hammer through my points and then some and a gain is a high probability.  I also have my birthday coming up in a few weeks and that’s another week I stubbornly refuse to make wise decisions.  So it’s going to be difficult to gain any traction with healthy eating right now, but I will try to do some damage control and hopefully not go too insanely overboard.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Semi-annual Blog Check-In

I am the shittiest blogger ever, for real.  I actually go to my blog page occasionally and think about how I should write something, and then forget or get lazy or accidentally x out of the page.  Being the crazy narcissist that I am, you’d think I would be able to overcome my laziness/inability to work a mouse for 5 minute increments to throw out some kind of updates about myself.  You'd be wrong.

I have definitely been moving slowly on the scale, back to the gain, lose, gain, lose pattern.  Over the course of a few weeks I end up being down a tad more than a few weeks prior, but the back and forth of it gets to me sometimes.  If I could break past 93 pounds and hit -95 (and on to 100!) that might get me a little momentum, but the summer just seems difficult with more plans and crap going on.  I don’t do difficult very well, obviously.

My weekdays are mostly pretty good and I’ve been continuing to cook regularly which has been very helpful in keeping me marginally on track.  I keep meaning to post recipes or pictures of dinners I make, but like every other aspect of this blog, that thought typically goes by the wayside.  Tonight I’m making lemon chicken with cous cous for dinner.  The chicken recipe is adapted slightly from a Rachael Ray recipe, and it’s really good and flavorful for not too many points.  In theory, I will take a shitty picture of it later (you’ve seen my photog skillz) and post it with the recipe.  In actuality, I will not post again for 6-7 weeks and then toss out another lackluster, half-assed blog entry in which I commit to do something and then completely fall through on it.  That’s just how I roll.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with something super happy and visual, which is the fabled Denny’s mozzarella stick grilled cheese sandwich that I’ve been lusting after for months now.  I don’t even know where a Denny’s is, but I assume it’s one of those places that I pass all the time and totally fail to acknowledge somehow.  I also imagine that it’s one of those places where you may or may not leave with some kind of venereal disease, but such is life.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Summer

I always consider last summer to be the "weakest" time during my weight loss journey.  Although I don't think I have had anything I can fairly call a plateau because the scale has always moved generally in the downward direction, I've had large chunks of time made up of yoyo-ing that yieled tiny net losses over a few weeks or months span.  I looked over my weight loss chart and realized that last summer wasn't particularly unique in its slowness (I lost 5 pounds from Memorial Day to Labor Day, a little over 3 months time), as I also only netted a 4 pound loss from Christmas 09 to Memorial Day 2010.

I'm not stating these numbers to complain about weight loss.  I realized at the end of 2010 that I had "only" lost 20 pounds over the course of the year compared to the 50 in the 11 months I did WW in 2009, and was still thrilled to know that I was significantly lighter, average weekly weight loss be damned.  But I think I always viewed last summer as this major obstacle in my progress since things finally accelerated a bit in September.  As this summer approached, I wondered what kind of losses I could expect.  And now, a few weeks into June, I decided I need to stop overanalyzing every aspect of my weight loss.  How I do each week is up to me, not some hypothetical pattern from past years.  And if I do lose slowly, what's the BFD?  I am happy to learn from my progress but not obsess over it either. 

When I first started WW I made an Excel spreadsheet where I would track my WPs and APs used, which GHGs I satisfied and how many days, and then chart my loss for that week.  I'd try to use it to figure out what patterns seemed to help and hurt me and what combination of APs earned and WPs consumed was ideal.  Honestly, looking back, that's way too much energy to spend obsessing over WW and I know how to be successful without nitpicking every minutiae of the plan and what I put in my mouth.  I also realized over the past two weeks, when I was admittedly a tracking slacker, that I have gotten to a point where I more often than not make good decisions with what I eat without keeping a running points tally at the front of my brain.  I'm not going to stop tracking, but I am going to allow myself to acknowledge that I have instilled some good habits into my life and I don't need to constantly check and triple check everything I do.  And I'm not going to analyze the crap out of my weight tracker looking for hidden patterns and secrets to future success.  After all, I'm too lazy to manually change the channel on my TV let alone expend that kind of time and energy on an Excel spreadsheet.

I lost 0.8 this past week after being about 8 points in the red and tracking the weekend a couple days after the fact.  I'm going to try and improve on that this week, but I take some comfort in knowing that even when I'm not perfect, I'm better than I think.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Before/During (-90)

2 posts in one day, when the crap does that happen?!  This is a total attention whore post (OK I guess a blog entirely about myself and my weight loss in which I talk entirely about ME is attentionwhoretastic in general, but alas).  Earlier I was thinking about how I own numerous clothing items that I wore at or around my starting weight and can still wear now, which is absurd.  I think I've lost at least 10 inches on my bust and I'm STILL wearing the same strapless bras.  How in god's name did those badboys even close before?  I also wore a dress in Boston last weekend that I bought around my starting weight.  It's stretchy cotton so it's not that this is physically impossible, but still kind of ridonk, no?  So anyway, I used my work time efficiently to create this before/after of me right around my starting weight, and 90 pounds lighter (both in the same dress):


The angle isn't great in the before pic since I wisely decided to lodge myself behind someone else so that my entire heftiness wasn't photographed, but I can still see a big difference.  I'm also wearing a cardi in the 2nd pic so you can't entirely see the dress, but you get the point.  I think my photoshopping skillz have improved a touch since the last before/during I fuzzily posted.

WI Tuesday

Still rolling along- another week, another WI, and a bit closer to goal.  It is sometimes hard to believe that I've been doing this, weighing in every single Tuesday (minus two missed weeks on cruises), for over 28 months now.  I'm not complaining about the amount of time, it's just weird to think about doing anything for that long.  I like to think that the longer I do it, the more it becomes habit and routine and less likely to crumble to pieces on a whim.  I guess only time will tell, but I am definitely very happy to have stuck with it this long.

I lost 1.6 this week so that nets another 1.2 pounds closer to goal.  I'm glad to see that the mini-gain last week was actually mini and not a fluke, which I tend to wonder about when I presumably go over my points by a bajillion and don't track.  I was a little lackluster with tracking this past weekend as well, but I did go back and track anything I missed yesterday.  It looks like I ended up with about 15 WPs left plus 20 APs earned, so I'm pretty happy to know that even when I'm not tracking diligently right away, I'm still generally making good choices and mostly aware of what goes in my mouth.

I'm slowly creeping towards the -100 mark and still haven't really planned anything for it.  I know it's a big milestone, but I also want to keep going and get into my healthy weight range and closer to what I deem a good stopping point/goal weight for me, whatever number that ends up being.  I also realized that as I get into higher and higher "loss" numbers, I am more hesitant to share that info with other people.  It's not like they didn't know me when I was bigger and know that I had gained a lot of weight, but I'm still not crazy about discussing the fact that I was 90 pounds heavier in the first place.  When I was in Boston, I mentioned to someone that I had about 25 pounds to go to be at my weight from the end of freshmen year of college.  Taken in conjunction with having mentioned that I lost 90, the math becomes pretty obvious for how much I gained from 2002 to 2009.  I almost feel silly celebrating the loss of weight I should never have gained in the first place, but I guess that is the nature of all weight loss.  And regardless, since I went and gained the weight I might as well lose it and be proud of that.  No matter how high my starting weight, it could always have been worse, right?!

Anyway, I am definitely very happy with my progress regardless of how petulant I sounded in the rest of this post.  My grandmother is coming in from Oklahoma on Thursday so there will be a lot of dining out over this weekend, so I need to buckle down and make (mostly) wise choices.  It's like all interest in portion control goes out the window once I step inside a restaurant.  Why does restaurant food have to be so friggen delicious? 

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Junealicious

Ugh once again I suck at blogging.  I'm really too lazy to commit to anything, even to rambling regularly about myself, which happens to be my favorite topic of discussion.  So once again I'll vaguely promise myself that I'll blog more often, etc. etc.  I really do think it helps keep me in line and accountable so I'll try to suck less at this.

I forget where I left off WI-wise (god forbid I hit the "back" button and check) but I hit the -90 mark last week.  This past week I gained 0.4 which I was gleeful about since I was in Boston Friday to Tuesday and ate and drank a lot of junk.  I did walk a ton though which helped and I can honestly say that I was pretty good with keeping my portions in check and not eating in between meals.  I also think I made pretty good choices with what food I ordered.  Even so I was expecting a gain of some magnitude, so having a tiny gain after a more-indulgent-than-usual weekend was very exciting and made me feel like I'm actually capable of not losing all semblance of control and discipline every time there's a bank holiday.

I noticed awhile back that for the first time on any previous WLJ or stint on WW, I have not had a single crazy-big gain.  Like, at all, in nearly 2.5 years.  I think some of that is just that my body is not as awful about retaining water and I WI further from the weekend, but still.  I used to always have the occasional 4-5-6+ pound gain after a bad week (or usually, weeks, since I'd skip WI and then dick around for another week) and feel like I'd spend weeks afterward trying to get it off.  I'm pretty sure this time around I haven't gained more than 3.2 in a single week and it's rarely over 2.4 or so- usually lower.  I have no idea why this is because I still have my shitastic weeks, but it's kind of nice to be less of a yoyo-er than in years past.  I think it also helps that I've finally gotten over my previous tendency to undereat my points following a bad week/weekend which would usually just send my metabolism diving off a cliff and the scale in 15 different directions.  Anyway, just a random observation that I wanted to brag briefly about.

So, Memorial Day weekend was extremely enjoyable and it was great to see my law school pals.  It's become our annual thing to meet up in Boston and we even visited the law school which felt kind of eery but also made me miss those days.  On the other hand, I used to subsist on Thai take-out and assloads of pizza and beer, so being a normal working individual is a lot easier on my weight loss.  It has also been more than 2 months since I moved to Philly and although my weight loss isn't always consistent, the scale is still moving steadily downward.  Maybe I can keep plugging away at this after all!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Lazy Blogger

It looks like I’m sucking once again on blogging more frequently.  Not that I really have anything salient to offer multiple times throughout the week, but I’d still like to prattle on about battling a Boston Cream donut or how much I hate the gym on a more regular basis.

Quick update on the scale:  last week I lost two pounds (the 1.6 gain and a small chunk of extra) and this morning I lost another 1.8.  Finally got those 2 losses in a row that I’ve been stalking for what seemed like a decade (weight tracker says March 22 was the last time I had consecutive losses, so close enough).  Last week I was actually greedily hoping for more than 2, and then this past week’s loss seemed too good considering I went to a Chinese buffet and drank a decent amount of Sangria.  I guess shit evens out in the end.  I’d like to see a third straight loss this week, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.  I’m going to Melting Pot for dinner on Friday for a friend’s bday so I’m going to have to not suck as much as usual the rest of the week if I want that to happen.

I’ve been sick-ish this past week which is annoying, though I’m semi-convinced that the constant coughing spasms I’ve been having burned a bunch of calories and helped contribute to my weight loss this week.  I bailed on kickboxing last night but I’m planning to hit up Zumba tonight.  I’m having one of those days where I can’t seem to shove enough food down my throat, so it should be a challenging day and I’m sure I’ll need the APs tonight.

I’m going to Boston for Memorial Day weekend and I would ideally love to be down another 2 pounds by then so maybe I can channel that into some motivation over the next few weeks.  If not, I’m pretty pleased with where I’m at right now and how much I’ve lost in the past few months.  I’d definitely still like to keep losing and get into my healthy weight range, but it’s a nice feeling to at least be in “this isn’t so bad” territory.  I’m about 25 pounds from 18-year old me weight.  I think that number will always be in the back of my head but the idea that I’m back within 25ish pounds of my freshmen year of college weight is still pretty satisfying in itself.

I just realized I haven't posted a picture of anything in forever and posts without pictures are kind of boring.  I'll try to add some soon to spice this bad boy up a little.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

And it's May

These blog post titles are really clever, eh?  Brilliance doesn't grow on trees, people.

The weekend is winding down and, despite my typical massive wave of Sunday depression, I feel pretty good about the weekend.  It was one of those weekends that was pretty vanilla in terms of excitement or doing anything remotely memorable, but it was good in WW world.  I'm definitely not one of those people that would rather stay in and make healthy decisions all weekend- I firmly believe there's no point in being thin if I'm going to sit around and be boring and sober all the time.  But I think the scale appreciates me mixing in some quiet weekends where I don't go to town on pizza and nachos at 3 a.m.

I used a decent chunk of weeklies on Mexican food for dinner on Friday but then miraculously only used like 3 more Saturday and Sunday.  I can't explain it, but this craziness won't be happening again anytime soon.  I also went to 2 classes at the gym yesterday morning and went for about an hour walk around the city today to eat up the nice weather.  And, much to my ego's enjoyment, I had one of those rare but fantastic shopping trips yesterday where you are literally pissing sunshine in the dressing room.  These beauties can happen at any weight and there's no apparent reason why, but it was just one of those days where everything I tried on looked - for lack of a better term - fucking hot on me.  As you can probably tell I've never been deficient in the self-esteem department.  But it was perfect and I bought a shitload of various clothes, including a pair of jeans in a certain size that I haven't worn since 2003.  According to my estimations I was still a good 9 pounds away from last having comfortably worn that size, and in fairness there was a small amount of muffin top, but they were still surprisingly OK.  That shopping trip single-handedly canceled out any misery surrounding the 1st birthday party I had to attend for my friend's kid later that day.  All in all, a good weekend!

Barring any major Chinese buffet-caliber setbacks tomorrow, I should see a loss on Tuesday.  I don't usually gain 2 weeks in a row and I may or may not shit a brick if I do this week.  Unfortunately, next weekend looks like a big Cinco de Mayo sized minefield of temptation so even with a (hopeful) loss this week, the up-and-down on the scale looks to continue into May.  I'll report back on Tuesday's results sometime soon.