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!