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.

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.

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?

Sun's Out, Guns Out

Back in the day, circa 2002, I generally used to run and work out in beaters or tank-tops and shorts.  It probably goes back to high school when my sports uniforms were sleeveless and pretty much everyone wore wifebeaters for anything remotely exercise-related.  They’re comfortable and don’t involve a lot of excess material like t-shirts.  At some point around senior year of college, it became clear to me that sleeveless and/or shorts were no longer quite so desirable an option for my arms and thighs at the time.  I’d still wear that stuff in the summer for the beach and what not, but not while doing anything with so much movement.  Then again, I wasn’t doing an overabundance of exercise of any kind at that time. 

I’m a good 25 pounds below what I was junior year of college when I was still rocking beaters with reckless abandon, but this past Saturday was the first time in years that I worked out in one in years.  It’s really not a huge feat and there are plenty of people of all body types that go sleeveless all the time, but it was still sort of a nice feeling to go back to something I hadn’t done since mid-college.  Admittedly, I don’t think my arms are as firm as they were the last time I was at this weight.  Around Memorial Day it occurred to me that some of the arm softness may not be fat but instead a bit of extra skin, which was disconcerting but not entirely unexpected given the amount of weight I gained.  But I still felt totally OK with it and am always happy to overcome any lingering self-consciousness I might have. 

Disclaimer:  I will NOT be rocking bare arms for kickboxing anytime in the immediate future.  These pythons are not quite ready for rapid-fire punching while fully exposed.

I had a pretty decent WW week and have about 7 weeklies left on the table.  I’m getting more antsy to bust past the 100 mark since I’ve been dancing around it forevskis.  Last week I lost back 1.2 of my 3.4 pound gain from the week before, although I didn’t WI until Wednesday since I forgot/purposely avoided the scale Tuesday morning after the holiday weekend.  So I’m not sure that I did fantastically enough this week to get rid of the remaining 2.2 AND lose the extra 0.4 needed to hit a hundy, but we’ll see how it goes.  As usual I have no particular reason to be in a hurry other than sheer impatience.

1 step forward, 3.4 steps back

After losing 3.4 pounds last week, bringing me to -99.6 pounds lost (ohsofuckingclose), I gained 3.4 this past week.  I actually didn't even realize it was the exact same gain/loss until I just checked my tracker, but either way I continue to drift just shy of the one zero zero mark.  Not like I have any real rush to get there, I just want to get past that bitch already.

I have realized way too many times throughout this process/journey/whatever you'd like to call it that I sometimes let one bad week, or even day or weekend, make me feel inadequate and unsuccessful and overall cranky.  The logical part of me knows that one week does not undo 130 other weeks (or whatever it's been now) and that I don't look any different and I haven't unraveled all of the good habits I've acquired and instilled over the past 2.5+ years.  And yet there are moments during the week following a gain, or just following a particularly high point day, when it feels that way and I'm back at square one.

The only positive to this is that I usually get frustrated enough with those silly feelings that I'm more determined the following week to prove to myself that I can still do this, and rock the shit out of WW, and it helps me get back on track.  I'm not an emotional eater so fortunately I don't let that self-pity snowball too badly into more destruction.  And I get my ass to the gym no matter what.  But I wish I didn't have those stupidly negative thoughts in the first place because I don't like letting my WLJ become such a front-and-center part of my life, for good or bad.

I think this past week was more frustrating than usual because I didn't have any exciting events or particularly delicious meals to blame my gain on.  I just sort of overate throughout the week and had already plunged into the red by Thursday.  I feel like once I go down that road so early in the week, it's very difficult to recover from it.  But on the bright side, I did hit the gym for 2 classes on Saturday morning and went to kickboxing on Monday, so I can appreciate the fact that I at least stick with my gym routine no matter.

Enough whining.  A better week ahead hopefully, even with the holiday weekend.  AND it's almost fall which is enough in itself to put a smile on my face.

Same Old Shit

I’m back into the back-and-forth again on the scale.  This seems like my personal theme for the summer, but as usual I will remind myself that if I end the summer lighter than I started it, it doesn’t really matter what transpired in between.  I lost 1.4 last week after gaining 1.8 the week before, then gained 1.2 this week.  It’s definitely a sign that I had a really spectacularly horrible WW week when I actually grinned at the “only” +1.2 on the scale this week.  I was nearing the 80-in-the-red marker so I just wanted to limit the damage.  I was out of town Saturday to Monday and ate every meal out, and made little effort to make good food choices.  Nevertheless, I’m only 1.6 above what I was a couple weeks ago so I’m not really in a bad spot considering my less than fabulous past few weeks.

I am trying to actually put together a solid week, or maybe even 2 weeks if I’m really feeling ambitious.  I’ve been pretty haphazard with my gym-going in the past month, so also trying to get that back on track.  I have actually managed to string together two straight decent days the past two days where I didn’t abuse my WPs and worked out both days, so hoping to keep that streak alive today.  No workout planned, but another non-shitty eating day would be nice.

I’m still hovering a couple pounds away from the -100 mark, but it’s funny how once you get so close and stick around there for a few weeks, the actual milestone sort of starts to lose its luster.  I feel like I’ve been thinking about it for so long now, and rounding up to that number in my head, that I don’t think I’ll be insanely excited to actually hit it.  But I still want to just get there and keep moving forward and there is definitely no lack of incentive on my part to keep losing.

Post-bday and a new Before/During shot

The birthday weekend was fantastic and I'm finally getting used to calling myself 28.  Eventually I finished the last morsel of birthday cake and had no choice but to get somewhat back in the WW game again.  For the first time in several months I didn't track last weekend, and didn't go back-track it afterward.  I feel kinda guilty about it, but I'd rather just move on than dwell over it at this point.  And trying to remember what and how much I imbibed on Friday night would be futile at best.  I had an expectedly overindulgent weekend and the scale is at least finally making sense again, with a 1.8 pound gain this past week.  Part of me was just delighted that the rest of the weird 4.6 pound loss from the previous weeks didn't come back on.

I've been a little sketchy with the gym lately and haven't gotten into my usual rhythm, but have been trying to crank out at least a few workouts here and there.  I went Sunday and Monday and then didn't go again until today, but a twinge of guilt made me stay for a second class.  Exercise for me seems to be something that relies heavily on momentum so I just want to make sure I keep going and hopefully get back to some kind of regularity again.  It's really just too bad that working out isn't nearly as enjoyable as, say, eating pizza or sleeping.  Because I never lose momentum with those choice activities.

I put together another before-during picture comparison, not because I'm really that much lighter than when I did the last one, but because I stumbled across some particularly horrifying "before" pics that I just had to utilize.  They were taken the weekend of my BFF's bridal shower which I might have mentioned before was right before I re-joined/committed to WW.  The pictures were (and still are) sort of eye-opening, because I still can't help but think that I never believed I was THAT big.  I knew I was a good 35 pounds heavier than I had previously ever been, but the pictures really hammered that shit home for me.  And can we also talk about the fact that I just looked like a hot mess in the before shot?  I had dyed my hair brown and the color was fading out, and it looked like I apparently couldn't be bothered to brush that rats nest.  But anyway.  The pic on the right was taken this past Friday during my bday celebration, 97.8 pounds lighter than in the first pic.

The sizing on the pics themselves isn't quite even so as to provide a perfect comparison, but you get the idea.

So 100 is right around the corner, but it could be another couple weeks before I actually hit it.  While I'm excited for it, I'm even more interested in getting to the -114 mark which puts me at my freshmen year of college weight, my lowest adult weight.  It's always in the back of my head, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  Who knows when I'll get there, but I'd just like to keep moving forward and stop dicking around with birthday cake.