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.