Back to reality

I've been back from Chicago for 5 days now, but I still haven't been able to get out of my "vacation" mindset, especially with eating.  Although I didn't stuff myself silly last weekend, I did allow myself to eat what I wanted, including deep dish pizza, Garrett's popcorn, and a fair share of alcohol.  Which, despite the 3 pound gain it yielded on the scale this past Tuesday, was OK with me- it was a wedding, a long weekend trip, a reunion with friends I hadn't seen in awhile, and I wanted to indulge.  Now why can't I tell my brain (and my mouth) that I'm back in New Jersey and I can't keep eating like I'm still on vacation?

after a tasty pizza dinner at Giordano's in Chicago

I've tracked everything since Tuesday morning and I still have a few weeklies left, so it's not THAT bad.  But my WLJ seems to live and die with my momentum, good and bad.  When I start eating crap, I want to keep eating crap, and I start to lose focus on my goals.  I'm happy with how far I've come, but I need to keep reminding myself of where I ultimately want to be- closer to the Giselle end of the body spectrum.

On the positive side, it was really nice to see everyone this past weekend and my inner attention-whore enjoyed getting compliments on my weight loss from people I hadn't seen in awhile.  I've mentioned before that I haven't been at my current weight since junior year of college; it's weird to think that my friends from law school had never seen me even within 30 pounds of this weight.  There's always a part of me that tries to rationalize that I wasn't THAT heavy for THAT long, but in reality it took me 7 years of gaining and yo-yo-ing to get my shit in gear.  Better late than never?

I'm pledging to have a solid, OP weekend.  Yesterday was of questionable quality- I had to go to court in PA and, as is too often the case when I'm cranky about waking up early to drive, I allowed myself McDonalds breakfast.  Which wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't follow that with a french vanilla cappuccino on the drive back, a lunch of soft pretzels and a giant cupcake, and a bunch of randomass candy sprinkled throughout the day.  My GHGs were mostly a failure and my stomach was telling me to go eff myself by the end of the day.  BUT.. I went to the gym this morning for Body Sculpt and Zumba and have some healthy meals planned for today and tomorrow.  Hopefully I can finally tell myself that I'm not on vacation anymore and that my thighs would appreciate it if I stopped eating like I am.

First sightings of Cadbury Creme Eggs

Holy crap, it's mid-February already!  I don't know why this is such a startling revelation seeing as how I write the date at least 700 times a day.  But this week it really started becoming obvious that the winter is progressing quickly when I realized that it's no longer pitch-black at 5:00, and I haven't worn gloves in at least 3 days.  I'm really starting to get pumped for spring now.  I love winter (at first) and I definitely adore the change of seasons, in large part because of how excited I get at the end of winter when it starts to warm up again.  Now I just need to finally take the Christmas lights down...

I lost 1.8 at WI yesterday which is exactly what I gained last week.  So that's good- I hate when I lose small chunks of a gain at a time and it feels like it takes week to dig myself out of a hole.  On the other hand, I'm leaving for Chicago tomorrow night and will probably be eating as much deep dish pizza as I can get my paws on, as well as delicious wedding food (CAAAAKE!), so I'm already predicting a possible gain next week.  Whatevs.  I'll see how it goes but certainly not losing sleep over an indulgent vacation weekend.  I'm also packing gym clothes, which will probably remain in my suitcase the entire weekend, but I like pretending I might work out at the hotel at some point.

Nothing much else new this week.  I feel like I pull a new muscle every single time I work out, which leads me to believe that despite working out regularly for a couple years now, I'm not actually getting in any better shape and my muscles are little punkass bitches.  On the eating front, I've mostly planned out my meals and snacks for the day and in an effort to stick to that rather than making a break for Mickey D's at lunch, I'm going to post it here so I can check back later and see how well I stick to it.

Breakfast (already ate it so I can't mess this one up):
- 1/2 cup egg whites w/ 2 tbsp cheese and 1/4 cup sausage crumbles in a multigrain tortilla
- light OJ
- coffee (like I'd even be here right now if I hadn't had coffee)

Snack 1:
- carrots with lemon hummus

Snack 2 (I like to snack):
- either an apple with peanut butter OR almonds OR cheese stick

Lunch:
- can of chicken noodle soup with oyster crackers OR Lean Cuisine Mac and Cheese (I know my lunches are a little processed.. I tend to be lazy here)

Dinner:
- Perdue Perfect Portions pre-seasoned chicken breast
- cous cous
- corn OR edamame
- milk

It looks like my GHGs are lagging a bit (what a friggen surprise) but it seems mostly well-roundedishkindof.  My 2 challenges for the day are to not eat from the candy bowl on my desk (an easy solution, you might think, would be to not have a candy bowl, but I prefer to torture myself) and to not snack after dinner.  We'll see how it goes. 

Snapped my losing streak

Forget all the nice things I've previously said about my scale.  That mo-fo gave me a 1.8 pound gain this week.

I'm actually not mad at the scale and I knew that my recent streak of losses had to end sometime.  I used all of my weekly points and about 2/3 of my APs this week, and a large chunk were used Sunday night during the Super Bowl.  So maybe it was water retention, maybe it wasn't.  Who knows.. as long as the scale goes in an overall downward direction, I don't want to be obsessed with the week-to-week changes or overanalyzing every single movement of the scale.  The gain has definitely been testing my willpower to stay off the scale during the week, but so far so good!

On another note, last night I got a parking ticket at the gym.  Really, Mount Laurel PD, how much time do you have on your hands?  Sure, I was parked in the fire zone, but I always park there along with many other people so I don't know what provoked the sudden crackdown.  It's a pretty good indicator of how lazy I am that I can't even be bothered, at the gym, to park in a legal spot which would require more walking.  But just like with taking the elevator to my 2nd floor office everysingleday, my thoughts are that I get my exercise in during that hour at the gym and I'm not looking to exert myself anymore than necessary the other 23 hours of the day.  This parking ticket also leads me to believe that the suburbs have officially lost the only good thing they had going for them.  I didn't even know they issued parking tickets in the 'burbs.  Time to crank up my efforts to get a place in Philly, asap.

I have a pretty healthy menu planned out for today, at least until dinner.  I'm going out to a new Irish pub nearby.  I found a few decent meal options, but the beers always rape my points under the new plan.  5 points for a regular beer is just crazy talk.  My plan (in theory) is to substitute in a few glasses of water (it sounds lame but really I just like having something to sip on) and minimize my weekly point usage.  Now that the weather will be warming up soon and my upper arms will be exposed to the world again, I need to up my game a bit.  Hopefully I'll have good things to report after next WI.

Big week

I'm a little slow on the draw this week, but it's been a big one.  I hit the -75 pounds mark AND my 2 year WW anniversary.  Holy crap.

First let's discuss the weight.  I lost 2.2 more for 75.8 total and I want to procreate with my scale I love it so much lately.  So that's that.  Yay!

I've said this before, but I think I am prouder of the amount of time I've been on WW (and doing it for rillz rather than just paying for the account) than of the weight I've lost.  It's funny that I remember the date I "recommitted" in February 2009 since it wasn't exactly a memorable event.  It's not like I kicked open the doors of my local Weight Watchers center and announced my weight loss visions.  It's not even like I busted out my credit card and signed up for an online account.  No, I'd been paying for eTools for nearly a year before that day and paying for a Monthly Pass for a good 6 months before that.  So that glorious day was really more like "hmm maybe I'll actually track my shit for a change today and hop on the scale while I'm at it".  I re-set my weight, started tracking, and for the most part haven't looked back.  And on the topic of using stuff I'd already been paying for anyway, I started going to the gym again.  I don't know where the sudden motivation came from, other than the usual cliche fatass pictures on Facebook, but I'm glad it finally clicked.

Anyway, in honor of the big 2 year mark (and as it happens, the 75 pound mark as well) I decided to put together a "before-during" pic.  Not at my "after" yet but it's still fun to look at the progress.  Sometimes you don't appreciate how far you've come until you look at how bad your before pictures are.  Unfortunately my photography skillz leave much to be desired and the current pic is a blurry disaster, but hopefully you can make out the general outline of a person.

Earlier in the week I had big dreams about posting some glorious photo montage of my weight loss progression but then I got lazy, couldn't find my camera, and realized I could barely use my computer's Paint application let alone anything that appears to have been created after 1994.  So that's as good as it gets for now.

This week has been busy and I may or may not have undertaken some all-you-can-eat sushi last night, which may or may not have been followed by a gangbang of Girl Scout cookies.  But I'm still tracking and I'm motivated by the fact that I've been hanging on for over two years now so there's no reason to stop now.  Sometimes I lose and sometimes I gain, and sometimes it feels like it takes forever to notice results, but I will try my hardest to keep doing it no matter what.