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?