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!

Requisite Emo New Year's Resolution Post

As I continue to hover within a couple pounds of the same weight I’ve been at for roughly five months now, I wonder if I’ve become too content with my current weight.  And more importantly, I can’t help but wonder if that’s such a bad thing.

I’m still anywhere between 25-40 pounds from my goal weight and I’m not set on any particular number- anywhere in that range would tuck me into the healthy weight bracket.  Although I feel like I’m pretty healthy at my current weight and I’m in as good of shape as I’ve been in since early college, I know I could be a bit healthier at goal, and I know I’d be happier with the way I look at goal.  I’m a vain bitch by nature.  But at the same time, I don’t have a lot of serious complaints where I’m at now.  Maybe that provides me with a bit less motivation to keep plugging away at WW, but maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world either.

In fairness, I should mention that I am very fortunate to never have been truly miserable with respect to my weight, even at my heaviest.  I was definitely less pleased with that aspect of my life 100 pounds ago, I didn’t like the way I looked or felt, and pictures became an increasing disaster.  But I still enjoyed my life and my weight didn’t severely take away from that.  However, looking back to my starting weight this time around, I also realized that my reasons for wanting and needing to lose weight were less superficial than they normally have been in the past, and definitely less superficial than they are now. 

Although I wasn’t experiencing any major health problems or at imminent risk of anything awful, I have to call a spade a spade and acknowledge the fact that I gained 114 pounds in 6 years and that is not healthy any way you slice it.  I was wearing sizes I had never seen before and my shopping options were becoming limited.  I remember sitting on a plane and realizing that there was not much seatbelt left and that if I gained more weight I’d need an extender.  I rarely worked out and walking multiple flights of stairs at a time was a chore.  I was increasingly experiencing acid reflux and indigestion symptoms and I had a solid year or so where I had this nagging cough and chest congestion with no particular cause that I imagine was at least somewhat weight/fitness-related.  That’s not to say that vanity wasn’t still a huge factor in wanting to lose weight.  There was no “lightbulb moment”, so to speak, but some unflattering pictures of me were at the forefront of my mind when I re-joined/re-committed to WW in February 2009. 

My point is that, silly as it sounds, I feel extremely lucky to be back to a point where my weight is mostly just a vanity issue once again.  My weight has always been up and down but up until 2005 or so it had never really been a major problem so much as a vanity-based annoyance.  Yet back in high school and early college I sometimes let my dissatisfaction with my appearance snowball my weight into more drama and irritation than it probably required.  It’s unfortunate that it took SO much weight gain to put things into perspective for me as far as what is truly important, but from here on out I will try not to take things for granted with my weight.  In other words, embracing the fact that vanity and wanting to look hotter in a bathing suit are pretty good fuckin problems to have in the scheme of things!

Anyway, I don’t know why I’ve been feeling so introspective about things lately- maybe it’s somewhat New Years resolution-related.  I hate resolutions and I sure-as-shit am not going to plan my year around losing x number of pounds, because that’s just inane.  But I’d like to continue losing weight while also continuing to develop a healthy outlook towards weight and life.  Last year I stopped weighing myself mid-week and have pretty much stuck to that faithfully for a year now.  I would like to take more steps in the direction of making my weight and health a priority while also NOT making it a major focus in my life.  I don’t want to know what I weigh on a daily basis just like I don’t want to spend a great deal of emotional energy based on where I’m at in my weight loss.  I like writing this blog and I want to continue living a (usually) healthy lifestyle, but I also don’t want WW and weight loss to be such a huge part of my life- surely my life is more interesting than that!

I hope to re-read this post periodically throughout the year to see how I’m doing.  I want to keep following WW but I hope to reach a point where I spend fewer hours a day thinking about it, and I will try to update about my mindset from here on out as much as I do about my weight and other shenanigans.  Reaching my goal weight without being where I want to be about it mentally first is just going to spiral me through ongoing dissatisfaction that won’t change no matter how low the scale gets.  So with that said, hope everyone has a wonderful New Year in which we can all achieve the resolutions we set out to accomplish.

Quick Pre-Holiday Check-In

Here I go again being the shittiest blogger ever!  I'm also still not doing much on the WW front, and my last 800 WIs have basically been: up, down, up, down, up, down. And so on.  All things considered I'm not terribly unhappy to only be a shade over my lowest weight as I haven't exactly been knocking shit out of the park this month, but hopefully in January we'll have some more downwardly progress.  My sister and I are going to Indianapolis for Super Bowl week so I need to be a flyass bitch for those parties!

I don't have much to report otherwise, but I am enjoying the crap out of the holiday season thus far and I hope everyone else is as well!  My roommates and I threw what I can only describe as a fabulously bangin holiday party a couple weeks ago, and since I'm really lazy about posting pictures I'm including a pic of me in my party dress here.  Yes, I exist in black and white.

my sister and I and some really freaky lighting

Anyway, I'll try to update a little more regularly but hopefully there will be some more regular weight loss to report as well.  Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!