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!