What happens in Vegas, I couldn't remember if I wanted to

Posting twice in a month, look at me go.  You’re probably asking yourself, “where DOES she find the time to spew out two underwhelming and inane blog posts in a mere 31 day window??”  I know, I thought it too. 

I technically hit the next 5 pound marker (-115.6) last week after inexplicably losing 3.4 pounds while binge drinking for 3 days in Vegas.  This takes me back to the last time I thought I was dying of organ failure in July 2011 where I experienced similar confusion with a giant loss after drinking myself into a near-coma.  I still don’t really get it, but it stayed off the last time so we’ll see what happens this time around.  WI is tomorrow so I’ll report back in ~7 weeks on what the scale says in the follow up week.

Oh right so, Vegas.  It. Was. AWESOME.  It was my first trip and it couldn’t have been better in any way.  I mean I guess it could have been better if Ryan Gosling was there pouring champagne, cocaine, and 100 dollar bills in my mouth, but short of that it was pretty friggen perfect.  What makes it even more awesome is that I went with 4 other girls I met through Weight Watchers, specifically through the online message boards.  Sounds creepy right?  It was, they’re total weirdos, in the best possible way.  I love them and had an amazing time with them and I love that we all converged from our respective corners of the earth for an insane weekend in Vegas. 

 

 

 

And now Halloween is coming up.  I’ve been trying to stay on the straight and narrow for the week and a half in between Vegas and Halloweening and doing alright with it.  I had a few situations necessitating a bit of drinking but all-in-all I wasn’t too bad and didn’t throw up or lose consciousness so I feel like that is a good sign.  I will have to do another Halloween side-by-side-by-side-by-side and however many sides it takes to equal the bajillion number of years/Halloweens I’ve been losing weight for now.  Looks like I’m down about 17 more pounds from last Halloween.  Slow and steady and all that crap.  Here’s a sneak preview of my really original firefighter costume. 

 

For the record, this is my roommate’s room/mirror. I do NOT have butterflies on my wall, like that needed to be said.

Well hey there

Ughhh it’s been like 1903493 days since I last posted.  I’m the worst.  I really should have at least updated after my 5 weeks without the scale to be all like, I DID IT!!  I’m a rock star!  But I got lazy and forgot.  I’m just going to copy and paste “I got lazy and forgot” and set this blog to auto-post that once a week because that basically sums shit up. 

SO let’s check the old weight tracker… My first WI after my scale-fast was -3.2, which netted out to -1.4 when you factor in my (legit) 1.8 pound gain from the previous week.  Since then I’ve been -1.2, +1.0, and then -1.4 this morning.  Anyway, that puts me at -112.2 as of today.  VERY pleased with that.  I still don’t know, or really care, what goal is.  I want to lose 12 more pounds and then maybe start taking it a few pounds at a time and see how I feel.

I feel good about my eating and exercise in general and have for awhile now.  I guess after 44 months of Weight Watching it should feel like second nature by now, and it does for the most part.  I’ve said this before but I’ve realized that my bad weeks are almost entirely situational.  Meaning that when I have something going on, a lot of dining out, traveling, or celebrations, I don’t do very well.  Not terribly, but I usually go over my points and I end up gaining.  This happens on more occasions than I can really justify, and yet I’m pretty cool with it.  Because the rest of the weeks, when I don’t have as much going on and I eat at home and don’t binge drink 5 nights a week, I do pretty well.  And all of those weeks combine into what ends up netting a slow creep downward on the scale.  For the most part, I don’t really struggle with binge-eating, or drive-thru-ing, or portion control or over-splurging at home.  On the other hand, when I go out to eat I sometimes still pretend it’s the last time I’ll ever eat again and I need to lick that shit clean.  But that balance is one I can live with. 

Annnnyway.  I’m sure I had a lot of deep thoughts to share about the inner reflection I did following my 5 weeks without the scale, but now that’s old news and I don’t really care much.  I definitely enjoyed the scale break and I don’t think it caused me to do any better or worse with my eating, so primarily it was a lovely mental break from the constant up and down which I’m sure my weight did for those 5 weeks.  Seeing one compact number at the end was nice.  Since then I’ve been weighing once a week only so I’ll be happy to stick to that for awhile, but might try another month at some point.

I was going to post a picture but couldn’t think of anything good or relevant so I’ll just do without.  Maybe next time?

Putting the Scale Away... Further Away

I had been toying with the idea of doing a full month sans scale for a little while, but naturally it was one of those things that I liked to talk about without ever actually doing anything about it.  Story of my life, people.  I finally posted about it on the WW message boards last week and was happy to see several others up for the challenge.  And therefore, here I am in the midst of a scale-free month.

I made this decision last Thursday and my last scale-check was last Wednesday for WI.  I initially felt cheated to have made this decision on a whim without sneaking in one last peek before beginning the scale-fast, a “last supper” of weighing if you will.  Then I realized that the very fact that I was scheming in this way and was hesitant about dipping into the no-scale thing cold turkey was all the proof I needed that a month without the scale would do my crazy ass some good.

This is a picture of the scale I use.  It's not my actual scale, nor do I weigh 0.0 pounds, tragically,  This picture really does not add anything to this post other than to be like, yeah, this is a scale.  And to give myself something to lust over.  Scale porn.

I don’t have any major reason in particular for this, but I think it will be beneficial mentally AND I think I just want to prove to myself that I can do it.  The thing with WI-frequency is that it’s kind of like borderline-alcoholism.  You keep saying you don’t NEED it and you’re not obsessed or addicted to it, and yet you still keep doing it, all the time.  I don’t think I’m particularly scale-obsessed, compared to many others at least, and I’m not a daily weigher.  But I need to do it to remind myself that I CAN.  And I am also perpetually jealous of the seemingly “naturally” healthy people that maintain healthy habits and a healthy weight without having to micromanage their diet, workout routine and check the scale on the reg.  I know it’s not that easy but I want to work my way in that direction.

I’m pretty much positive that my willpower-lacking ass could not survive once-monthly weighing every month.  But if it goes OK and I find that I don’t need the scale to keep me motivated and working hard, maybe it is something I can do a few times a year.  Or maybe I’ll find myself totally unraveling and binging on cans of chocolate frosting by the end of the week, who knows.  I do know that it has been years and years since I’ve gone a full month without checking the scale, so if for no other reason than wanting to do it again for the first time in forever, it seems like something to strive for.  I’d love to be down a little bit when I weigh myself again on September 12 (a full 5 weeks) but I think I’ll feel pretty awesome just to do it at all, no matter the result.

Unless, of course, I end up gaining 15 pounds, in which case I’ll whine like a little bitch and weigh myself 14 times a day for the rest of eternity.

Random Shit

I really wish that some doctor would magically come up with some Atkins-like revolution in which it turns out that eating crazy combinations of carbs in massive quantities actually can accelerate weight loss.  Atkins was a nice, albeit insane and generally unsustainable, diet option for those meat-fiends out there and while I love me some steak and cheeseburgers, bread and its spawn have always been my one true love.

Anyway, I realize that I might as well also wish for world peace and a lifetime supply of grilled cheeses to be delivered to my door tomorrow since these events are about as likely.  But a gal can dream, can’t she?  I just don’t see the value of being content with learning how to eat like a normal healthy person when I could hope for miracles. 

I started typing this post circa one week ago and then never finished and here I am finally getting around to it again.  I don’t really have anything new to add.  I lost 0.8 last week which was shockingly awesome after the wedding weekend, and then gained 1.8 this past week after my birthday shenanarama which I was cool with because it seems like a friendly birthday gain.  I’ve been good with working out so far this week which is to say I’ve actually gone the last two days even if there was very little good about it.  The gym is still a giant asshole in my book but we maintain a mutual tolerance for one another.

Not much else cookin in my world.  It seems like I’ve got shit going on every weekend in August which is annoying and counterproductive to my perpetual desire to spend all weekend laying on the couch watching TV, but I’ll get through it I suppose.  I’m not banking on losing anymore before September but if I can drop another 0.8 below my lowest and hit -110 that’d be snazzy.  Still, I’ve scraped off about 6 pounds this summer and that is a fine enough seasonal total for me. 

This blog needs more pictures.

Several more weeks and still at the same weight.  It could be worse- I could be gaining or flying off track or otherwise, but after finally making some forward progress in May and June I’m stuck in place again.  I’ve actually only been in the red once in the past 5 weeks but have only lost a half pound in that time.  However, I haven’t been fantastic either and this past week I used all of my WPs and dipped into a few APs, which usually yields mixed results.  Nevertheless, after maintaining this week I still glared at the scale hoping for magic to happen. 

The one nice thing about plateauing a bit after losing several pounds is that you get to enjoy the delayed loss of inches and clothes fitting better which I find usually doesn’t show up until a few weeks after the scale goes down (and if I’m continually losing, I don’t notice).  I’m squarely in between-sizes territory now in that the smaller size is still a bit on the tight side but the larger size is noticeably too baggy.  It’s an annoyingly awful limbo area where I don’t feel fabulous in anything exactly, but it’s nice to know that I can fit into the smaller stuff without it looking obscene either.  If only I could just push myself 3 more pounds or so I’d be in a very happy place. 

I have been upping my running just a tad lately.  I’m far too lazy and lack the attention span to really do anything major or ambitious, but I’ve done a couple 4ish mile runs in the past two weeks and kept it at a 10 minute pace, so it hasn’t been too painfully eternal-seeming.  I’ve also been keeping my shorter runs at 30 minutes or longer and trying to up my speed with those, so I think I can commit to my pledge to never spend an exorbitant amount of time running but get a decent workout, in which case I might actually stick with it a little longer.  

I’m going to Bar Harbor for a wedding this weekend so I will be out of town Thursday night to Monday morning and I know I will not be a model of Weight Watchers during that time, which is part of why I’m frustrated not to have lost this past week.  Nevertheless, I’ll try to work out and make decently non-shitty eating decisions and hopefully avoid getting black-out drunk, and I can keep the damage manageable.  It will be awesome to see my law school friends all in one spot and I think the wedding will be a great time, so at the end of the day I’ll have a great time regardless of WW or points.

This and That

Well what do you know, I almost let another week slip by without updating.  I like doing it, too, and I’ve started to about 47 times this week.  But yeah.  Lazy.  Etc. 

I lost 0.4 at WI which is unspectacular but since I’ve been going down pretty steadily, albeit slowly, over the past 6ish weeks, I’ve been surprisingly happy just to see new numbers of any kind.  I went out for Mexican last Friday and had obscene quantities of truffle oil guac and nachos and 4ish Dos Equis Ambers and my new favorite, a michelada which is a Bloody-Mary-type situation that has Dos Equis Amber in it and was quite delicious.  And I had Oreo pancakes for brunch on Sunday.  At this point I’m really just laying out the foundation for an actual food-porn, complete with me bathing myself in a tub of cheese whiz, so I’ll put it to rest.  But yum.  And I had 2 WPs left and did a full slate of workouts.  So 0.4 was good enough for me.

What else?  It’s Friday afternoon and clearly I’m work-minded at the moment.  I’m going to the Phillies game in a bit where I will be having crab fries for dinner, a well-balanced meal if ever there was one.  I’m doing a Color Run on Sunday which starts early as shit but I’m trying to cut down on the quantity of bitching I do because it seems to be a lot lately.  I don’t think it’s going to be a fantastic weekend in the WW sphere of life, but as usual if I can keep things relatively under control and I eat somewhere short of 99 million calories, it’s all good.

Slow and whiney

Oh right.  The blog.  I was going to update last week, but genuinely got busy.  But I also was probably annoyed that I maintained at WI even though I had a really unusually awesome WW-week, so I got all pissy and curled up into a ball and whined about it instead of blogging.

I lost 1 pound this week, which is really only 1 pound in the last 2 weeks, which is whiney and complainy and all that, but it’s tough to have 2 solid weeks of staying with my weekly points and *only* average half a pound.  But really, it’s a loss and I’m going in the right direction and in my enormous amount of time spent on WW, I can say I have absolute faith in the program in that I get what I put into it.  It doesn’t always show up on the scale that week, but it shows up somehow, sometime.  My clothes are looser, I feel great, I’m making healthy food choices, and I know I’m doing what I need to do.  So that’s enough for me for now.

You know what is friggen ridiculous?  I went back through my tracker and I have tracked every day since I went to Chicago May 15-18, AND I haven’t gone into the red at all since then.  And I’ve worked out and eaten pretty healthily and all that other good stuff.  I haven’t been perfect – I’ve dipped into my activity points a couple times (which I use after my weeklies and for me often means a gain/maintain) – but I’ve been pretty OK.  I’m not sure why I’ve been more motivated lately, but I’m down 6 pounds in that span.  It’s not crazy-fast, but it’s still coming off.

This shit is happening

I got a new bathing suit recently since it had been a couple of years since my last one and I needed something new to wear in front of no one while laying out on my roof deck acquiring skin cancer.  Anyway, I mostly like it although like any bathing suit, it's quick to point out areas needing improvement.  Accordingly, I decided to be bold and post some bathing suit pics.  Except that it's a tankini and I'm wearing shorts because my thighs are not getting that kind of press, so it's really not exactly the bold move I'd like to pretend.  Even still, it's a nice picture to use in comparison to my older heavier pictures and to feel good about what I've done, but also a reminder that I still have more work to do.

I look awfully smiley for some reason.

Yes, I'm sucking in a smidge. Shut up.

107

Isn’t it funny how I start blogging on the reg once I have a good stretch on the scale? Be warned that this also means I’ll be disappearing shortly once things start to turn to shit again. I shouldn’t say that. It’s not shit. I’ve been very fortunate to have done WW for 175 weeks now (I just randomly decided to calculate that because I’m bored) without having any bad chunks of time, or gains of more than a few pounds. If plateauing, losing slowly, and yoyo-ing a couple pounds are as bad as it gets despite my somewhat recurrent laziness and screwing around with the plan, I have nothing to complain about.

I lost 2.8 this week, which is 5 pounds down in the past 4 weeks, and 107 down total. I realized I hit the 100 mark back in October so it’s been awhile since I got to see a colorful 5-pound star bouncing across my tracker, but it was greatly appreciated. I’m really surprised they haven’t done a reality show about me, because there’s very little as mind-blowingly exciting as watching someone lose weight at an average rate of 0.6 pounds a week for 3 years and 4+ months. Can you imagine if I knew that’s how long this crap would take when I signed up? I’d have just cut off a couple limbs instead and called it a day. But life would have gone on whether or not I was doing WW, so I might as well be losing – however slowly – than gaining over that stretch, as I was for the 7 preceding years.

Even though goal is still 15-30 pounds away (depending on the day), I’ve had my eye on the -114 mark forever since that’s my 18-year old weight and lowest of my adult life. SEVEN MORE POUNDS. I wasn’t totally satisfied then and I’m not totally satisfied now, but I’m at a point where I’m pretty cool with my body. I enjoy more of it than I abhor, and I’m not hateful towards even my least pleasant body parts. I’m on the edge of being content. After gaining as much weight as I did and spending the past three-plus years losing it and still feeling like I had so far to go, I finally feel like I’m close. Close isn’t there but it’s not an awful place to be, especially considering where I was a few years ago.

I’m not happy that I gained the weight, but it’s done wonders for my perspective. I’m exponentially happier at my current weight than I was the last time I was here, because I know how much worse it could be. And the fact that I’m the world’s slowest loser has helped me avoid taking any loss for granted. And I’m sure it has helped me keep going and keep off what I’ve lost. 107 pounds in 175 weeks has been a very good experience.

May 2008  /  June 2012



Summer is hard

I had a mostly good week with a sizeable blemish Saturday night.  I went out to a charity dinner/auction thing and they had 8 dessert stations set up at the after-party with a lot of deliciousness, which is really just unfair.  Food-wise I was on my shit but drink-wise was the usual issue.  Open bars are that way, I suppose.  I actually made a point to stick to drinking wine and light beer most of the night with a few shots when we went out to a couple bars later on.  My only drunk eating was some Goldfish when I got home so it could have been worse. 

It’s not that I have a problem with these occasional nights, but it is frustrating that I make healthy choices all week, prepare a week-full of nutritious lunches and dinners, and then go in the extreme opposite direction.  Based on my very general estimate, I still had about 5 APs left at the end of the week but it was still not a healthy endeavor.  And then Sunday my point usage wasn’t awful but Chinese food, a milkshake and some cream cheese straight from the container probably weren’t the most nutritious way to use them.  Or some might say. 

Anyway, I’m still working towards a good week ahead.  I lost 0.8 at WI yesterday from last Tuesday’s official WI.  It was still up from what I was when I cheat-peeked at Wednesday but I’m cool with it for sure, and it was a solid reminder that I need to stop weighing throughout the week.  My “tightest” pair of pants in my current size are getting loose so I know I’m creeping up on solidly fitting into the next size down.  I’m also happy to say that running has been making my ass look hotter, so at least that’s some incentive to keep doing it on occasion. 

This week is doable.  I’ve got a charity happy hour thing tomorrow night (the points really shouldn’t count when it’s for charity) but I think this weekend will be pretty low-key.  I had been planning on going to the shore Friday night since I didn’t make it last weekend but in addition to WW, my body just needs a chill and relaxing weekend.  So chill and relax, I shall.

Crazy Bitch

Ahh what a surprise.  Allison doesn’t like what the scale says so she avoids blogging for a day.

Anyway, after a mostly awesome WW week (and a very enjoyable Memorial Day weekend) I was up 0.2 yesterday.  However, I only went beyond my weeklies and into my APs by 4 and logged some solid workouts so I felt good about the way the week went.  I can also feel that slight bit of extra bagginess in clothes where my skirts are a tad less clingy on my ass so I’d love it if I can move down another 5-6 pounds and into the next size shortly.  I’ve been angrily holding off on buying new jeans and work pants because I’ve got a good amount of shit in my current size, but I crave new and I want it sooner rather than later.

I’ve been totally failing on the weighing once-per-week front which seems to go hand in hand with being a headcase about WW, so I’m trying to steer that back on the right track.  Nonetheless, I insisted on checking out the scale this morning because of my frustration with yesterday’s WI, and I was back down 1.8 (or a 1.6 loss from last week).  I’m not counting it and I tracked yesterday’s WI, but it was still nice to see the number on the scale this morning.  I haven’t seen a number that low in years and it was less than 9 pounds higher than my 18-year old weight which is always what I’m working toward, even though goal is at least 10-15 pounds beyond that.  Of course, this totally sets me up for a mindfuck next WI because now I’ll stupidly expect to see a number at least as low as this morning’s.  I need to stay off that mofo of a scale.

Aside from that small dose of cray cray, things are good.  It’s been hot as balls out lately so I’ve mostly been sticking to working out and running indoors.  For some reason I haven’t had the hatred towards the treadmill which I usually carry, but it wouldn’t kill me to throw in a few more outdoor runs now and then.  I’ve finally gotten back to running slightly faster than 10 minute mile pace so I decided I might as well set a new goal of 9 minute pace.  I’m not sure I’ll stick with it/care long enough to get back to that, but it’s something to strive for at least.  I’m too lazy to really increase my mileage beyond 3.5 or so, so at least it’s something.

I may head down the shore this weekend which would mean a decent amount of drinking, but beyond that I’m pretty well planned as far as meals this week.  It’s manageable.

MIA

Hmm 2+ months now since I last updated… awesome.  I’m still kickin and my weight loss has been stagnant but nothing bad to report, so as usual it really just boils down to laziness on my part.

Since I never updated about my Lent-shrouded break from liquor, according to my tracker I lost 3 pounds during that time which isn’t bad and it was probably a good exercise overall.  I was reminded that there are definitely other things in my weekly diet that hinder my weight loss besides alcohol, but it was interesting to take a harder look at my tracker and see where my points go and what situations tend to yield shittier results.

Speaking of situations that yield shitty results…

Don't drink and lick your friends, people.

I’ve actually been mostly on the ball for the past few weeks not including Cinco and a detour while in Chicago last week.  I mysteriously lost 1.6 at WI this morning despite living off of Garrett’s popcorn, deep dish and Jameson (don’t ask) for the better part of last week, but I think that’s partly a byproduct of having pretty nominal losses the couple weeks before despite being mostly on my shit with WW.  Or maybe my scale is just being ghetto, hard to say.  Either way, outside of the week I had something resembling the stomach flu and couldn’t eat for like 3 days back in March, today is, allegedly, the lowest I’ve been since 2002ish.

I’ve been pretty good with planning meals out for the week and I don’t have anything awesome, aka unhealthy, planned for Memorial Day so maaaybe I can actually keep going.  I now have it in my head that I want to be down 4 pounds by a wedding at the end of July which is a stupid and pointless goal but overall I’d really just like to be moving in the right direction.  I’ve also been holding off on buying new jeans for pretty much a decade because I want to get down to the next size first, but I can’t hold out forever.  So I’ve got some motivation, I’m just not sure how that will translate into results.

I will try to be a little less crappy with my updating, mostly for my own sake.

Fun while it lasted!

Annnd back up 2.4 el-bees.  I was hoping to keep closer to half of the sick weight off this week but I’m cool with it and hope my body can chill out this week and resume some normalcy.  I left 20 WPs and all 18 APs unused this week which on most weeks would be a good week, but I know after losing 6.8 pounds the last 2 weeks and my eating schedule just being generally haphazard of late, the scale is all over the place.  I’m still pretty pleased to be moving past the sickness drama and to have kept off part of the giant loss and still be in some new territory.  My clothes are also noticeably looser so all-in-all things are good with WW.
 
I’ve probably mentioned before that I love to cook and love spending a few minutes here and there throughout the week planning new dinner ideas to try and making my shopping list for the grocery store.  I’m usually pretty reliable for planning out at least 3 weeknight dinners a week and filling in the gaps with leftovers or quickie meals and generally avoiding the Lean Cuisine route more often that not.  I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a foodie, but I genuinely enjoy food and meals and making sure each one is at least somewhat awesome, whether I cook it myself or go out, so that alone is a huge motivation to plan out some quality dinner ideas.  Even so, I get lazy from time to time so I’m going to try to start posting a few of my dinners for the week as an extra incentive to keep planning and to explore some new recipes more often.

This week, I made Buffalo Chicken Cupcakes for dinner on Sunday night, and last night had Tuna Cous Cous Cakes with a baked sweet potato.  Tonight will be Chicken Marsala with brown rice (based on Emeril’s recipe, lightened up a bit) and then tomorrow or Thursday will be Chicken and Biscuits Casserole.  I’ve also got stuff for tacos or fajitas on hand if I decide to plug that in one night.  I really spend an absurd amount of time and energy thinking about food.

On a less healthy note, I saw a picture the other day for Cadbury Cream Egg cupcakes and I feel that it’s my mission in life to make this dream a reality in my kitchen sometime in the near future.  I’m not a big picture-taker but if I make those bitches I will make a point to photograph my handiwork shortly before inhaling a few.

Hope everyone has a great week!

The easiest way to lose weight...

So much for my hope of getting an accurate picture of how my abstinence from hard alcohol is affecting my weight, at least this week.  I got some random-ass stomach bug starting Thursday night and moving through the weekend to Sunday where I could only eat sporadically when my stomach decided it didn’t want to kill itself.  After being under my points by 5, 20 and 10, respectively, on Thursday through Saturday, I was able to get to within 2 points of my dailies the past two days, and then had a 3.8 pound loss at WI this week.

Ahh the number this morning was so glorious!  It was a number I haven’t seen in ohsolong and after months of mediocrity was starting to wonder when I would see again.  Nevertheless, I am fully planning to resume eating like a normal human being this week and I’m sure my metabolism is ready to tell me to go fuck myself, so whether any of it stays off remains to be seen.  After wanting to curl up into a ball and throw myself off a cliff all day on Friday I can absolutely say that feeling better is the best thing of all and whatever happens with my weight is not my chief concern by any stretch.  But after losing 3 pounds last week to get back to my low point, and then losing the 3.8 this week to enter some crazy new territory, daaaaamnit it’s hard not to dream. 

I was just recently joking with a friend about how the stomach flu would really be the jumpstart my weight loss has been looking for (absolutely said in jest, but with a tinge of hmmm) but we both laughed that even at our sickest we’re both still eaters.  I’m not the gal that simply cannot be bothered with food while feeling ill, I’m usually powering through it with a bowl full of mac and cheese or other comfort food.  So perhaps it was karma biting me in the ass when I actually had to repeatedly sit there staring longingly at meal after lovely meal without being able to eat much of it and surely not enjoy any of it while I struggled to choke down a few bites without wanting to vom.  So, thank you karma, I will certainly not wish for illness or the inability to eat, even laughingly, from here on out.

I dragged my punkass to kickboxing last night and made it through just fine so I think my immune system is mostly back to normal-ish.  I really have no control over how my body and metabolism decide to react this week or how much of that loss will be sustainable, but as usual all I can do is push on and have the best week I can to build from here.  If nothing else, maybe seeing that fabulous number on the scale this morning, however fleetingly, will motivate me to keep my shit in line so I can go back to that glorious feeling of watching the scale go down like I used to before the epic plateau.

When you put your mind to it...

And yet again I am reminded that when I actually make a concerted effort to exercise some willpower, good things can happen.  Down 3 pounds… BOOM.  This puts me back to my lowest (-100.6) which is awesome and as much as I could have possibly hoped for this week.  HOWEVER- I really really really really fucking really want to see some new numerage (spellcheck says that’s not a word, stupid) on the old scale this week.  Like, enter a new pound for the first time since I hit the century mark.  Which would require a 0.6 pound loss this coming week.  I can totally do that, but I know that I tried for the same thing multiple times in the past few months when I was back down to my lowest and instead ran into mostly epic failure.

I’m just tired of bobbling around within the same ~3.5 pound range.  If I could just get down a couple of poundaroos it would at least be refreshing to see different numbers while yo-yoing incessantly, because I’ve been seeing the same GD numbers on the scale for mooooonths now.  Forget hitting the next 5-pound interval, I’d gladly take 2 at this point. 

So back to my 3 pound loss.  Made it another week with no liquor and minimal alcohol.  I went out to a buffet for dinner on Friday night (yes, Friday night at a buffet, please reserve your judgments) and a 3-course, mostly buffet-style endless champagne brunch on Sunday morning and still made it through the week with 14 weekly points and all 22 activity points in tact.  And I didn’t sit there nibbling on lettuce leaves (like I’d ever allow lettuce in my mouth anyway), I just planned ahead and didn’t eat my face off.  It’s almost irritating how easy it can feel some weeks, while others I seem to lack all self-control.  Which will this coming week be?  I know it’s all technically within my control, I just like it when it feels easy.  Is that so wrong?! 

This coming week doesn’t have any obvious challenges lurking so it’s absolutely, totally possible for me to rock the shit out of this WW week.  I’ve gotta go to a Flyers game with clients tonight but the food is significantly easier to avoid when you’re trying to avoid cheese dripping down your chin while talking about foreclosure litigation.  Tomorrow night is sushi but that’s doable as well.  It really just boils down to whether or not I’m going to continue to plan ahead and get my shit in gear or whether I’m going to submit to the (delicious, bakery-fresh, flakey, chocolatey) donuts in the kitchen.  I’ve got my workouts planned for this week and am slowly improving my running speed a tad since a certain whorebag is making me do another 5k on 3/18.  I will report back next week, gain or loss, and see what comes from my third week without hard liquor.

How to not be good at Weight Watchers

After successfully avoiding hard alcohol for a week and drinking less in general, I can officially report that I…. gained a pound.  What a successful experiment!  No, honestly though, I ate poorly pretty much all week and went through my weeklies by Friday, so it’s exactly what I expected and had coming and I don’t think I ate more because of the lack of drinking.  I definitely didn’t think changing the liquor factor would be a cure-all for my weight loss woes, but I also hope this past week was more of an exception with how my eating is going to be.

On Wednesday my sister and I cooked dinner and then decided to do dessert a la McDonalds drive-thru, including a Shamrock Shake, Oreo McFlurry and a Cinnamon Melt (did you even know McDonalds made that?  AWESOME).  I swear we weren’t high, but that shit was delicious.  Things continued on that trend for the next several days, including two point-heavy birthday dinners for my roommate on Friday and Saturday.  Thursday was possibly the best meal I’ve ever had in my life at Morimoto in the form of something like 10 courses of orgasmic Asian cuisine and comped drinks so I don’t regret a single calorie consumed that night.  It just made for a calorie-laden week that didn’t do much in the way of helping my quasiLent-driven weight loss efforts.  Nevertheless, if I’m going to end up in the red and have a gain, I still think it was better to have overconsumed some good quality food than an onslaught of Red Headed Sluts shooters.

I’m really hesitating to do the whole “this week, I’m setting out to eating mindfully and healthily and not going over my points” etc. etc. etc.  What’s the point?  I know what I have to do, what I should do, and I just need to stick to that and not treat every meal like it’s my last opportunity to shove food in my mouth, ever.  I’ve been good with working out and am slowly trying to increase my speed and am thinking about doing another 5k in March.  I feel good and fit and healthy and so I’m not going to beat myself up for not being as on my game with the meal stuff as I could be.  However, at a bare minimum I will make it my goal to not binge on fast food ice cream products (no matter how motherfuckingawesome that shit is!) in the coming week.  That’s a goal I can live with.

Now because I'm bored, here is a brief pictorial look at the reasons I gained a pound this week.  None of these pictures were taken by me as I'll never waste 3 seconds taking pictures of my food when I could be eating it, but the food pics still make me salivate to look at.

Shamrock Shake... mmmmm.  Who neatly sets out their Sham Shake on a nice white plate with a folded green napkin underneath?  Obviously someone who doesn't love Sham Shakes because that shit would be sucked down my throat in the time it took to do this arrangement.

Carvel Ice Cream Cake... this baby speaks for itself

Guacamole.. I ate at least 15 avocados worth on Saturday

Morimoto.. go there, now. Trust me.

And so it begins... Week 1 without hard liquor

I think Lent starts today but seeing as how I’m only half-Catholic aka not Catholic I’m not positive.  Considering I thought Mardi Gras was when the J-man died until I was set straight by some coworkers, I’m probably not the one to ask about anything relating to religion.  But anyway, as of last Sunday I stopped drinking hard liquor until April-ish and/or the end of Lent and/or the next time I have a big enough social event warranting me to end the drought.

So anyway, I felt it was appropriate to check in again- not to brag about not drinking liquor on a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday because if that’s an accomplishment then I have bigger probskis than I thought.  But mainly because yesterday was WI and my first one of my liquorless era so it gives me a baseline to use in comparison with my weight at the end of this jamboree.  I was down 0.8 from last week, probably in part because my 2 pound gain the week before was a tad artificially high, but anyway that puts me back at -98.6 pounds lost (2 pounds above my lowest from a few weeks ago).  If I can lose those 2 pounds and even just 1-2 pounds beyond that over the next 40ish days then I will definitely feel like this whole shebang served some kind of purpose.  Of course, even if I don’t lose that, I can also feel good about giving my liver a bit of a rest for a few weeks.

Should be interesting to see how it goes.

Running and Boozing

I have started to write blog updates about 12 times in the past couple of weeks but, as you can see, none of them ever came to fruition, so might as well not spend any more time talking about how I “almost” updated this mofo.

To address the scale first, still up and down.  I was briefly down to some new territory a couple weeks ago when I got like 0.2 lower than my previous lowest, but have been bobbling around in my usual up/down dance since then.  Although I can definitely say I’m pretty happy with things right now in that neither my weight nor my appearance makes me unhappy and I feel very good physically, I also know that I could be a little happier and a little fitter, so I’m not settling where I’m at.  Since I agree with the notion that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten (or however that shit goes), I’ve done a little evaluating, of myself and my food tracker, and decided I need to make some smallish changes.  I’ll get into that in a bit.

On another note, I ran my first 5k since W’s first term in office last weekend and am very glad I did.  I ran the whole thing, albeit quite slowly, and I’m pleased with myself for at least sticking to running for a whole month prior to the race.  I’ve run a couple times since then so I plan to keep it up but it will definitely be mixed in with other exercise like kickboxing, Zumba and walking.  I briefly thought about upping my mileage and working towards a 10k or 10 miler but that doesn’t sound that appealing at the moment so I think I’ll stick to where I’m at and just try to increase my speed a little.  I ran the 5k in 32:40 which is about a 10:30 mile average and roughly 5 minutes slower than I’ve ever run a 5k before.  I really don’t care about time and I’m just happy I ran it all, but I figure it at least gives me something to work towards that doesn’t involve spending more time on the treadmill or streets.  I’d like to get back under 30 minutes again.  But I’m also going to do whatever type of exercise appeals to me on any given day so if I get sick of running and go back to my usual rotation, so be it.

Anyway, back to the subject of making changes, blah blah blah.  I need to drink less.  Wow, there’s no way to say that without feeling and sounding like a blatant alcoholic, but if only for my weight loss journey it would definitely do me some good.  I’m sure it wouldn’t be the worst thing for my liver, brain cells and Sunday productivity either, if we’re being honest.

Without going into an in-depth psychological self-eval, I’m pretty confident that I don’t have a drinking problem.  I’m not an emotional drinker, I don’t drink alone or unwind with wine or beer after work.  Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those things, but I’m pretty purely a social drinker.  I don’t get drunk that often, but it’s amazing how much the points still add up even when you’re not going all out at the bar.  I looked back at my last few weeks and I used about 60 points on alcohol this past week, about 50 the week before.  The week before that was vacation and I didn’t track but I’m sure the alcohol points were triple digis.  As a specific example, this past Thursday I went out with friends and had 2 beers, 1 mixed drink, and 2 shots over a 3ish hour span.  I had a little buzz but nothing I consider major drinking, yet I used over 20 points on drinks alone that evening.  It’s also no surprise that in examining my past few months on WW, the weeks where I went out and had a decent amount of alcohol at least once were across-the-board worse on the scale and in the red than weeks where I laid low.

It’s not to say that the weight will just melt off if I stop/cut down on drinking, but I don’t find myself eating more to compensate on weeks I don’t go out, so I have to imagine that my weekly points usage will decrease which typically yields better results on the scale.  I spend time and energy carefully planning my meals for the week and, I’ve gotta say, I think I’m pretty good and generally healthy with my food and meals.  So why do I make an exception for alcohol?  It’s points just like anything else.

One of my roommates mentioned that she’s going to give up hard liquor for Lent.  I’m not Christian and am not trying to be spiritual about it, but I decided it was a perfect opportunity for me to do the same.  I can still have beer and wine but I’ll still try to exercise moderation with that as well.  No hard alcohol until Easter.  I’d like to do it partly to remind myself that I’m capable of setting a goal and actually using to willpower to stick to it, but I’d also like to see if it gets the scale moving again.  And that whole “helping my liver” thing probably isn’t so bad either.

Things that I don't like doing: Part 1 of 238439483048

My general rule of thumb is that I dislike running.  I typically do not find it fun or enjoyable and I feel that it serves one purpose: to burn calories, i.e. burn off all the crap I regularly eat.  More often than not, my disdain for running outweighs my interest in burning calories and, alas, I do not run regularly and have not run regularly since college.  There are plenty of types of exercise out there that I don’t loathe.

I have been working out pretty regularly and consistently for 3 years now doing mostly non-running things like kickboxing, zumba, crazy animal-sex, and so on.  I have probably averaged about 3 workouts a week over the past few years which is certainly not blowing shit away on the exercise front, but it’s been sustainable.  Every other month or 3, I go for a run, which I’ve probably previously mentioned is mostly out of laziness because I either a) don’t want to drive to the gym, and/or b) I want to get out of the gym as quickly as possible and I can justify that more easily if I run rather than do something more leisurely.

I always played sports growing up, including basketball and lacrosse in high school, in which running was unfortunately part of the deal.  I despised running more than a mile at a time and sure as shit never did it for fun.  When I graduated high school and started drinking 12 nights a week and gaining weight from it, it dawned on me that now that I wasn’t playing sports anymore I should probably resume some sort of activity, so I started running for shits and giggles.  I started out around 2 miles and worked up to 4-5 and, for a period of time, I didn’t entirely despise it.  Eventually I did come to despise it again and worked my way back down to complete laziness towards the end of college and throughout law school (when I also gained 897,000 pounds) before finally getting back into some milder exercise in 2009. 

Because running burned me out so much and eventually festered into total lack of anything in the exercise family, I’ve always been a bit hesitant to run with any regularity anymore.  I used to do 6 or 7 days a week because I felt like I had to run all the time to keep in good running shape.  Recently, however, I’ve come to enjoy (AKA still dislike but not totally despise) it again in small doses.  It dawned on me that maybe as a once or twice a week thing in conjunction with other more interesting types of exercise, it might not be so bad.  I was also delighted to realize that even not having run regularly in years, doing other forms of exercise has gotten me into good enough shape to at least spit out 20-25 minutes of running at a time, which means that I can run on occasion and not feel like I’m required to do it regularly to stick with it.

Anyway, I’m going nowhere with this post.  There’s a better than even chance that in a few weeks I’ll be totally bored with running again and moving on to Shake Weights.  But since my weight is still plateau’d and I’ve got nothing else interesting to ramble about, figured my new discovery that I can run irregularly and lazily is as good a topic as any.  I signed up for a 5k on February 11 because it’s holiday-themed and some other Philly WW boardies are running it as well and, worst case scenario, I’m cranky and miserable and it’s a half hour of my life wasted.  I’m currently only running a little over two miles a pop right now but in theory if I continue at my once to twice weekly runs plus whatever other rando exercise I crank out for the next few weeks, I will hopefully be able to run it all.  Or I drop out at mile 1 and go eat a cupcake.  Whatevs!

Twenty Twelve

It’s January 10 and I’m finally getting used to the fact that the holidays are over, for better or worse.  It has been nice to actually have free time for a change and to get back into a stable routine, both in terms of exercise, eating, and life in general.  I’m going to Indianapolis for Super Bowl week (not going to the game itself) at the end of the month so it’s nice to have something fun to look forward to after a few boring weeks of stability.
 
In looking at my weight tracker, I was up a total of 5.8 pounds on the WI following Christmas from my pre-Thanksgiving WI.  It was over the course of several weeks in which I went up and down, with more up than down, and that’s the most I’ve been over my “low” weight this time around on WW.  That said, I was still somewhat happy that it wasn’t worse after several weeks of shabby-ass tracking and overindulgence.  I’ve lost back 2.6 of that over the past 2 weeks and can hopefully dispose of the rest of it over the course of January.  I remember saying before Thanksgiving that I’d be happy to finish the year out at the same weight or a hair lighter than I was then, and feeling like that goal was rather unambitious.  In reality, that goal in itself was a lot to handle!

Anyway, despite my crankiness leading in to January, things have been good so far.   There is something enjoyable about going grocery shopping, cooking regularly, and having a routine again that doesn’t involve candy and vodka for dinner.  I don’t know when I’ll resume steady weight loss again, but if I can just get back to pre-Thanksgiving weight and lose a few more pounds here and there after that, I would certainly not complain.  January is when things got moving on the scale last year so hopefully that can hold true, even to a lesser extent, in 2012!