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.

Birthday Week

Well, last week’s freakyass loss stayed off somehow.  I don’t know in what crazy universe 90+++ points in the red equals one of the biggest losses I’ve ever had, but maybe the alcohol did a number on my digestive system and my body couldn’t hold on to nutrients or something ridonk like that.  I don’t do science so I could just as easily contribute it to global warming.

Since I didn’t “officially” WI last week (i.e. track my weight), I ended up with a 4.6 pound loss over 2 weeks.  I peeked at the scale last Thursday to see if the 3.6 was still gone and much to my delighted horror, I was down another pound as well.  I didn’t check again after that, but all 4.6 stayed off.  I will say that I had a pretty nice little WW week this past week in which I got back to my gym routine and even left a few weeklies on the table.  It still remains to be seen whether the loss stays off in coming weeks, but the best thing I can do is try to not screw up too badly and stop making beer a food group.  I’m too old for that shit.

Fortunately/unfortunately, my birthday is tomorrow.  I’m going to eat a quantity of cake in the next few days that could probably feed a third world country for a year, but it’s just gotta happen.  I love cake.  I love birthday cake.  I love the yellow cake with buttercream frosting from my favorite bakery that my parents are getting for my bday.  I love the Funfetti cake with pink frosting I’m bringing in to work tomorrow.  I love any other cake anyone decides to regal me with in the next week.  I just cannot say no to cake on or around my birthday.  So, between the cake consumption, the birthday dinner and celebratory drinks tomorrow night, and Friday’s bigger bday celebration, I know I’m looking at a shitty WW week ahead.  I know I just said I would stop making beer a food group, but birthday weeks are obviously the exception.  Beer and cake lie ahead for me and, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, birthday week gains are pretty inevitable in my book.

Scale Issues

I had a craptastic WW week (which, as usual, meant a fantastic real-life week) and now I’ve having scale drama.  My week consisted of all you can eat sushi (which I definitely took as far as I could handle), too much wine and cheesecake on Thursday, a weekend in NYC in which I ate and drank more than I have in months, and then a Monday night during which my dinner was 3 shots of vodka, four beers, and wine chugged straight from the bottle.  Oh, and did I mention that I only went to the gym once?  My health and lifestyle over the past week have been questionable at best, though “disgraceful” would be a more appropriate adjective.

I woke up hungover on 4ish hours of sleep yesterday morning, normal WI day.  Just for the record, I do not drink to excess during the week pretty much ever.  I don’t go to work with hangovers.  I don’t make a habit of getting less than 7-8 hours of sleep.  As I read over this post and realize how trashtacular I sound, I want it to be known that Monday night was a disaster, but not a typical one.  Anyway, totally forgot to WI on Tuesday, nor would I have cared to anyway, and figured I might get an artificially low number due to my severe dehydration.  I also question whether I could have stood upright long enough to get a reading on the scale, but that’s a whole other ballgame.  So I weighed this morning to get it out of the way, record that shit, and move on.  And naturally, the scale is totally trying to mindfuck me by showing a 3.6 pound loss.

I loved the number I saw this morning, but it is completely impossible to be happy with it knowing it is artificial in one way or another.  I don’t know if the scale is messed up, if I’m still dehydrated from the massive alcohol consumption, if I have some life-threatening disease which will emaciate me over time, or what else.  I like the fact that my scale is usually pretty reliable and indicative of my progress on a week to week basis, so I’m naturally irritated with this confusion.  Out of curiosity, I went back and attempted a half-ass tracking of what I ate from Thursday through Monday since it was mostly untracked.  I’m looking at roughly 90 in the red, just from what I could remember consuming.  So it’s not like one of those dainty little weeks where I didn’t do as badly as I thought.  Shit was bad.  I tend to see false gains more than false losses, so it’s harder to conceive the reasons for it.

Anyway.  I’m not tracking that weight.  I will probably break my 7 month streak of no mid-week scale peeking and check tomorrow to see what’s going on, but I feel like it’s kind of justified here since the scale is either broken or fucking with me.  It’s less than a year old so I wasn’t expecting this kind of shenanigans from it so soon.  I might track tomorrow’s weight; I might just wait until next Tuesday.

Enough whining.  Regardless of whether I lost 3 pounds or gained 12, I am getting my shit in gear today.  Yesterday was mostly in gear but a little overly processed and I bailed on the gym again.  Today has been on the ball so far, and I’m going to the gym after work and making Emily Bites lasagna rolls for dinner.  I’ve been trying to rock the Lasagna Cupcakes but Wegman’s is being a dick with their wonton wrapper supply.  I’ve got a plan, I’ll stick with it, and I’ll update on what the scale spits out the next time around.

WW would be easier if I didn't eat peanut butter straight from the jar

I never got back to the blog with my lemon chicken pics, but you can just take my word that it was pretty and picturesque and, most importantly, delicious.  I also made the Soy Ginger Fried Couscous recipe last week (from emilybites.com and canyoustayfordinner.com) and added steak and crabmeat to it and that shit was orgasmic.  And no, that’s not TMI, just the truth!

I lost 1.4 at WI yesterday, which is a net loss of 0.6 from before my previous week’s gain.  I hate constantly talking in terms of “net loss” but when you yo-yo back and forth for weeks and weeks at a time, it’s the best way to express where I’m actually at.  That results in a net loss of 1 pound over the past 4 weeks which is frustratingly slow, but at the same time there’s another part of me that is happy that I can still continue to lose even when I’m not as on the ball as I should be.  I had set out to leave a few (5-10ish) weekly points on the table this past week, but Saturday night my dinner consisted of chicken wings, cheese fries and cheesesteak nachos, so I had no business having any points left or seeing a bigger gain than I did.  I think my frustration is more with my inability to be a tad more disciplined than I’ve been in recent weeks.  I think I’d feel better about things if I could just string together two solid weeks where I eat well and use plenty of WPs but don’t go overboard.  But, maybe that’s just not in the cards for the summer.  Which brings me back to the thinking that I’m letting myself indulge in all kinds of tasty shit and I’m still lighter today than I was four weeks ago, so I should shut the fuck up with the whining, right?!

Anyway, any particularly diligent eating I’d like to implement will have to hold off for at least one more week because I’m going to NYC this weekend and have no plans of staying within my points.  It’s kind of sad that I go in planning that in advance, but I think the drinks will do me in more than anything and I’m not looking to have a healthy, moderate weekend.  With days/weekends like this, I figure I will just try to make small improvements where I can (don’t go too overboard with my meals, maybe drink some light beer instead of all regular, etc.) but I’m going to be realistic and know that I’ll probably hammer through my points and then some and a gain is a high probability.  I also have my birthday coming up in a few weeks and that’s another week I stubbornly refuse to make wise decisions.  So it’s going to be difficult to gain any traction with healthy eating right now, but I will try to do some damage control and hopefully not go too insanely overboard.