Revolutionary!

For the past week, I have been doing my new method of starting my Weight Watchers “day” with dinner the night before. So this means that whatever I eat for dinner is subtracted from my daily points plus total for the next day, and then everything I eat in the morning right up until dinner time comes out of the remaining points. It has really cut down on my night time snacking (as in, I have done NO night time snacking), and it has also kept me on track through a Thirty-One Gifts party (No wine! No desserts! No wheat!), as well as a formula company rep lunch at work (Lots of fruit! No wheat! Salad! My own balsamic as dressing, instead of the creamy Caesar dressing! No cannolis!). My cravings, thanks to my wheat-free eating, are practically zero, and I have not binged on food in over a week.

Last night, I went to Weight Watchers for my usual Tuesday night meeting. I weighed in with my leader Melissa, and I found out that I lost the four pounds that I had been up on the scale the previous week. She praised me for having a good week, and I immediately told her that it was just the four pounds I had been up the week before. Why must women invalidate themselves when faced with a compliment? I should have just said thank you. However, in the next breath, I told her how I had switched things up into something that was really working for me. I told her about how I was now tracking my points and how I had decided to do this based on some information in the Weekly from last week. Once the meeting started, she invited me to share this with the group, which I did gladly because I really think this could work for a lot of people. I am excited to see where this new way of tracking takes me. For the first time in a LONG time, I tracked faithfully all week, and I even ended the week with about 15 of my weekly points allowance left over. Usually, instead of that, I have one (or two!) days that I don’t track at all, and I assume that my weekly points are used on those days. However, not tracking means that I am certainly eating more than those weekly points on those days, and that is what leads to weight gain. I certainly prefer to see the scale move in the other direction.

And now I continue on my journey to 200 pounds. My weight the past several weeks has been as follows:

• 1/17/12 – 204.2 pounds
• 1/24/12 – 202.2 pounds
• 1/31/12 – 204.2 pounds
• 2/10/12 – 203 pounds
• 2/14/12 – 203 pounds
• 2/21/12 – no weigh in
• 2/28/12 – no weigh in
• 3/6/12 – 205.2 pounds
• 3/13/12 – 203 pounds
• 3/20/12 – 207 pounds
• 3/27/12 – 203 pounds

So, as you can see, that is basically 11 weeks of no progress at all. I had a brief shining moment 10 weeks ago when I was less than what I weigh now, and it did not last. I have hit 203 pounds three other times, and still I have not been able to make it consistently below that number. And my goal is to weight less than 200 pounds in time for my 36th birthday, which is coming up on April 29. I have four more weigh-ins before my birthday, and it should not be a problem to take off three pounds in four weeks. However, back on 1/24/12, when I weighed in at 202.2 pounds, I certainly didn’t think I would still be at this point ten weeks later.

Honestly, looking at the numbers laid out like that is kind of sobering. I have lost 72 pounds since January 2010, which is HUGE! However, we are facing the end of March here, and I can only claim 1.2 pounds of weight lost in the last two months. And I can really only blame myself for this fact. I know what the guidelines of the Weight Watchers program are. I know how to follow them. And I know that the plan works if I work the plan. However, I have clearly been off track for most of 2012, and that is why I don’t have much to show for my efforts. Yes, I have managed to maintain within a couple of pounds, but this is not my “happy place” weight-wise, and this is not a weight I want to maintain.

I am trying to keep myself in a mindful place, as I mentioned when I last wrote. I find myself thinking about my food as I am eating it, and I am trying not to multi-task all the time when I am eating. I don’t know that I have been successful on that frontier because I do still find myself eating in front of the TV or the computer or with my iPhone in my hand. Why is it so hard just to quiet my mind and concentrate on my meal? I would say that I am not doing the zombie-like eating that I have in the past as often, but I do still find my hand-to-mouth-with-no-real-thought-behind-it thing going on at times. I guess it is important just to recenter at those times and bring my thoughts back to the present and to what I am doing. I am planning to do some more reading surrounding this idea…just as soon as I finish the Nora Roberts trilogy that I am in the midst of!

Make it a great day, everyone!

Getting Started

Tonight, I had my Weight Watchers meeting, and I was surrounded by people who had milestones to celebrate. All I had to celebrate was a four-pound weight gain…ouch. Now, to be fair to myself, I am guessing I did not actually pack on four pounds of fat this week, as I would have had to eat 14,000 extra calories, and I was on track for five of the last seven days. But for whatever reason, the number on the scale tonight was four pounds higher than the number on the scale last week.

Tonight, I stayed after the meeting with all the new people who had just joined for the “Getting Started” session. In the course of the meeting, I started thinking that Weight Watchers would work a lot better for me if I would just do it. If, instead of following the program five days each week and then not tracking on the other two days, I would be honest with myself those other two days and actually write down what I eat and take ownership of it. Therefore, I decided to stay after for the Getting Started session and the Power Session to get recharged and recommitted to “working the program.”

I definitely think I have fallen into the rut of thinking that I can be “good” most of the time and still meet with “some” success at my meetings. Perhaps I am not taking the weight off as quickly as some people, but I am making it “livable” and making “lifestyle changes” and realizing that a slow steady weight loss is better than a crash weight loss. However, I am also realizing that going down two pounds, then up four, then down three, then up one, just to end up back at the same point I was at four weeks ago does not a weight loss plan make. At best, that is maintenance, but my plan isn’t really to maintain my weight at 45ish pounds higher than my goal weight. My plan is continuing to lose weight and getting to my goal.

I am switching it up this week, based on something I read in this week’s Weekly, to see if I can set myself up for more success. I find myself, recently, hoarding points throughout the day to use for dinner. I sometimes finish lunch and find myself with 14-16 points left over, and I save them for dinner. Well, a dinner of 14-16 points is completely unnecessary on a day-to-day basis, and it’s difficult to fit that many points into a meal at home, so that leads to some snacking. Starting tonight, I am going to start my new day with dinner. I ate nine points for dinner tonight, and I have that as my first meal. I now have 23 points left to use before dinner tomorrow night. I tend to eat six to eight points for breakfast, which will leave me 15 to 17 points for lunch and two snacks throughout the day. This is TOTALLY doable. And I have no desire to snack after dinner tonight because I don’t want to use up any of tomorrow’s points before tomorrow even gets here! I have committed to trying it this way for the next week and seeing how I feel at that point. If it does not make an appreciable difference, I will potentially switch back to the “normal” way. But if it works well, perhaps this will be the shot in the arm I need to get and stay on track.

I have also been thinking about mindfulness lately, on the heels on a conversation I was a part of recently. And I think that mindfulness is something I struggle with in a lot of areas but especially with food. I often eat without thinking about what is going on in my mind and what I am shoveling into my mouth. This has been a big theme when I am eating in the car on the way home from work. I have mentioned before stopping for fast food on the way home from work after a 12-hour shift and not even making it back onto the highway before the food is gone. At work, I have a 30-minute lunch break, and eating lunch in that short amount of time does not always allow for mindfulness. And when I have something in the house that is a special treat (like the flourless peanut butter cookies that I made last week and must never make again because I ate the entire batch in two days), it is not unusual for me to find myself mindlessly shoveling them in. I know I don’t need to eat them all. And the fourth (fifth, sixth, etc.) never tastes as good as the first one or two. But it is almost like I go into this fugue state and just keep eating. I would love to work on this and am thinking about things I can do to make myself more mindful of what I am eating as I am eating it. I guess awareness is the first step, and I have not achieved awareness in all circumstances as of yet. But I am motivated to get there!

Make it a great day, everyone!

Food. It’s always about the food.

Recently, I have strayed from the path of Weight Watchers-related righteousness. In fact, the past week or two have been like one long binge, with small pockets of on plan eating shining through the haze very occasionally. After two years of keeping my eating relatively under control, I have slipped, and I am having trouble getting back on track. My size 14 jeans are feeling tight, but the good news is that I got rid of the size 16 and size 18 pants in my wardrobe, so I don’t have anything to grow into (save a few pair of corduroys that are going out in my next Goodwill bag). Therefore, I have no other option than to pull myself up by my bootstraps and get back with the program.

Now, I am kind of an à la carte Weight Watchers member, in that there are things in the program that I very definitely put my own spin on. First of all, I almost always go over on my weekly points. On whatever happens to be my “cheat day,” I tend to overeat to the point that there is no way to count how many points I have consumed, OR the number of points I have consumed are much more than whatever I have left over from the weekly 49. I also don’t drink plain water ever, although this is less of a thing on the new plan (it calls for six glasses of nonalcoholic liquids each day, which I definitely do consume). I also don’t do a great job of tracking the good health guidelines (and often don’t fulfill them all…especially the healthy oils one), and I rarely get specific physical activity in (although I keep meaning just to get out and start walking a couple of miles each day… especially as the weather has gotten nicer). However, I do use the points plus structure to track my eating on most days, and I do attend (and love) meetings (most weeks…not these last two) because I love the community feeling and the support I get.

I have tried many, many diets, and Weight Watchers is the one I have stuck with the longest and the one I know works for me. However, my info ho’ nature means that I continue reading about nutrition and how different foods work with the body, and this has brought me to where I am today, which is on day one of a wheat-free way of eating. And I reached this place while reading the new book Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis. Dr. Davis is  a cardiologist who reports in his book that he has seen a wheat-free diet “cure” his patients of such ailments as colitis, type II diabetes, obesity, arthritis, and a variety of other ailments that are either caused by inflammation in the body or an autoimmune condition. I use the term cure loosely because obviously these underlying conditions do not go away totally, but they do control the symptoms to the point that some of his patients enjoy a complete “remission” of these conditions when they give up wheat.

Back when I was in my late 20s and early 30s, I had some pretty severe inflammatory symptoms, including heart burn, stress-induced irritable bowel issues, and severe arthritic pain in my knees to the point that I could not just stand up under my own power from the couch or from the front seat of the car. Instead, I had to either pull myself to a standing position or push up on the back of my seat to stand up. It was around this time that I tried the Atkins diet for the first time, and I found it to be revolutionary for me. First of all, the science behind it made sense to the nerd in me. Of course, if I stopped eating carbs, my body would become a more efficient machine. I enjoyed moderate success on Atkins, but the low carb lifestyle was not easily sustainable for me, so I eventually strayed. And I don’t believe that such a fad way of eating is really good for most people in the long run. However, when I was following Atkins, some interesting things happened. First of all, my irritable bowel symptoms got better. Secondly, my heart burn went away. And third (and best) of all, my knee pain got almost 100% better. I still found myself with some pain if I spent too much time in one position (like on a long car trip sitting in the back seat), but over a couple of months I started to be able to get up under my own steam, without having to come up with a plan concerning what fixed object I was going to use to catapult myself into a standing position. And it was at this point that I started to think about the inflammatory effects of food on the body.

Fast forward to January 2010, when I hit rock bottom as far as my weight was concerned. I started counting calories and paying attention to what I was eating. Eleven months later, after a long plateau, I joined Weight Watchers and started losing again. And fifteen months after that, I found myself having achieved 72 pounds of weight loss and feeling (not including the last two weeks) pretty great about myself. For the most part, I have been in control of my eating and have been following Weight Watchers (or at least my version), and I am healthier than I have been in a long time. I have done this my eating a wide array of foods, but I have still noticed that eating some carbs (bread, cookies, cake, crackers, etc.) makes me crave those carbs and all their cousins. And this is where Wheat Belly comes in.

Over the past two weeks, most of my binge-y foods have been in the forms of carbs. There have been cans of Pringles, bags of Chex mix, boxes of Life cereal, plates of homemade cookies, slices of cake, baskets of pita chips, and many other carb-y, wheat-based foods standing in the way of me and control over my eating. I stood in the break room at work the other day and ate what probably amounted to ten cookies that a sweet NICU family had left for us to thank us for caring for their twins. I tasted the first cookie, and it was really yummy. I don’t know that I completely tasted or appreciated the following nine as they made their way past my lips. I was not eating mindfully. I was just shoveling the food in.

I find myself this morning feeling sluggish, with some very definite heartburn and an ache in my knees. I don’t want to go back down that path of not being able to spring up from a chair under my own power and feeling always like there is a burning lump in my throat. Therefore, I am going to see if Dr. Davis is onto something. I am not giving up all carbs because, again, that is not sustainable. And I am not jumping on the gluten-free bandwagon (while I know that many people truly do have a gluten intolerance or celiac disease, I don’t believe I have such an issue, and I think that the current trend of gluten-free products is partly a marketing gimmick). Instead, I am giving up wheat. This means that I will have to be more mindful of what I put in my body, which is a good thing, and most of the processed foods that are my nemesis will no longer find their way into my house.

On the scale this morning, I was up nine pounds (some of it, I am sure, water weight) from my lowest weight on this journey. I am looking forward to saying goodbye to those pounds and more of their friends. There is plenty of fresh, whole, healthy food out there waiting for me, and I can’t wait to get started on it!

Make it a great day, everyone!

Ch-ch-changes…

Those people who follow the current Weight Watchers program know that there were some changes introduced this week, and the Points Plus program has been renamed Points Plus 2012. I went last night to a Weight Watchers meeting that is not at my usual location but is run by my usual (awesome) leader, as my usual location is closed for two weeks, and I got my new materials and heard a little bit about what was going on. Honestly, for me, things didn’t change much. Because I was not yet at the lowest level of daily P+, my daily goal stayed the same at 32 P+. The 49 weekly P+ stayed the same, and the values for the different foods didn’t change. There were some people who “lost” Points on the new program, as the minimum number daily went down from 29 to 26. Therefore, those people who are close to their goal, at goal, or on maintenance were probably affected. However, I am still at least 30 pounds (and maybe even up to 45 pounds) away from goal, so I stayed the same.

Something interesting to me that we didn’t really address much last night (although I am sure it is a future topic) is the Activity Points “requirement” that has been introduced. I am an eTools subscriber, so I got a little sneak peek of the new information before I made it to a meeting, and I was able to take a little quiz that told me that I should be aiming for at least 14 AP+ each week. At my current weight, I get about 1 AP+ for every ten minutes of moderate exercise I do. Therefore, this means that I should be aiming for, at minimum, 140 minutes of moderate exercise each week. I was easily able to do this already this week by using the elliptical at the gym for 40 minutes on Tuesday, 50 minutes on Wednesday, and 50 minutes today. I am reading Stephen King’s new book 11/22/63, and I am TOTALLY OBSESSED with it (and I am not traditionally a SK fan), so that time has been flying by. I am reading it on my Nook, and it’s a free copy I got as a Klout Perk, so that right there is full of WIN!

Once you reach your goal weight and head into maintenance (and eventually to lifetime status), the AP+ requirement increases pretty dramatically. Melissa mentioned, as an example of what the number for such a person might be, 25 AP+, which is a good amount of physical activity. Now, as I head more into the world of running, I expect to be completing more intense workouts (for example, I would not call my exertion when running “moderate,” so I would expect to earn more like 2 AP+ for every 10-15 minutes of intense activity), which will make it easier once I get there, but it still is going to be a lot of time spent exercising!

Of course, you can earn AP+ for things other than organized exercise. There are values assigned to everything from housecleaning to wandering the mall to doing household projects to playing active video games. However, I prefer not to count on everyday activities like that to meet my activity goals, so I will be ramping up the exercise!

All in all, I am excited about the changes I am seeing because it lends even more to Weight Watchers status as an A+ eating plan for living healthy, losing weight, and maintaining a healthy weight. I do believe that the majority of weight loss is what you eat, but it’s important for health to be physically active as well. I look forward to seeing where Points Plus 2012 takes me!

Make it a great day, everyone!

Switching things up…

At my new Weight Watchers meeting last night (more about that in a bit), the topic for the week was getting back on track now that summer is over. My leader, Melissa, asked us who had not been on track for the summer, and of its own accord, my hand shot up into the air. She expressed a little bit of surprise, as she has seen me at meetings, but I had to confess that I have missed several weeks of meetings this summer, which is disappointing to me because one of my New Year’s resolutions was to attend a WW meeting every week. However, I have let a variety of things get in my way this summer, and the one excuse I most often had for skipping a meeting was that I knew I had gained weight, so I would just get back on track for the week and weigh in the next week. However, when you aren’t going to your meetings, it is really easy to stay off track, so I have been doing a lot of yoyo-ing this summer in the weight loss department.

I decided to start going to a new meeting because there is one in a location that is only five minutes from my house. I used to go to the main center for our area, which is about twenty minutes away, where they have meetings several times each week, but the local meeting, which is at a firehouse, meets just once a week, on Tuesday evenings. I was initially resistant to the idea of going to this one for a couple of reasons. First of all, the meeting is at night, and any woman out there knows that we weigh the least in the morning. Depending on what time of month it is, I can fluctuate up to five pounds between when I wake up in the morning and when I go to bed at night. Secondly, I have always had my WW week start on Sunday, which allowed me to save up my weekly points allowance and “blow it” (and some of its friends, quite honestly) on Friday and Saturday, with a new start on Sunday. I could squeak that plan in when I weighed in on Friday mornings, but knowing that it will work better for me for my week to go from weigh-in to weigh-in (so Tuesday to Tuesday) means I will have to switch things up a bit and give up my Sunday restart. As a matter of fact, this will probably work better for me, as it will take away that weekend-funtime-SQUEEEEEEEE! attitude I have had going on, but it’s still hard to make that change in my mind. However, I decided to follow another piece of advice I have heard out there, which is to start changing things up when the program becomes too routine for you. And I have to admit that when I started WW last November, I had some major enthusiasm for the program that has been lacking as of late. And in the words of many of my leaders, if you kind of do it, it kind of works, but if you really do it, it really works. I decided making this change was just what I needed to start really doing it again so it can really work.

Anyone who has spent a long time going to WW meetings will tell you that the leader and the group can really make or break the meeting. I am fortunate that at the main center, I have never attended a meeting with a leader that I did not find to be excellent. I have heard of centers where people don’t have leaders that they really click with, but at the center I go to, they are all awesome. The level of enthusiasm they have, their sense of humor, their ability to lead a great discussion, and their real-world experience with WW (and willingness to share their stories over and over again) means that every meeting I have attended has been a good one. I am fortunate that the meeting so close to my house is led by one of these amazing women because it makes it much easier to head out on a rainy (RAINY! SO RAINY that I had to carry an UMBRELLA, which I just don’t do) Tuesday night to a location that I had never been before (I arrived early to scope out the people arriving to see what entrance they would use) for a weigh in. As we head into the bad weather, I expect to have more success getting to this location each week than to the big one, and I am able to schedule my work week so I don’t ever work Tuesdays, so this change for me will be a good one.

Anyway, I am going to treat my WW journey as if it has just started, regaining my enthusiasm, following the program, and looking forward to great results. I have been kind of doing it, and it’s kind of been working, but I know that if I really do it, it will really work. Make it a great day, everyone!

Girl in progress…

I decided to add some progress photos to my sidebar as a way of tracking this journey. I didn’t take a true “before” picture, but I did take some progress pictures for an online challenge I entered back in April 2010, and I continued to sporadically take photos (all in a very dirty mirror until the latest one), so I thought I would throw them up there. The most obvious difference (obviously) is between the first photo, which was less than four months into my new lifestyle, and the latest one, which I took today. The middle two don’t seem to show a huge difference to me, but I know that there were plenty of pounds and inches lost in that interim. It helps me to look at that first picture and this last one and see how far I have really come. And there is quite a variety in my hair styles as well! I like to change things up a lot.

Make it a great day, everyone!

On and off…and on again…

My Dashboard tells me that I last posted to this here blog back at the beginning of February.  So…oops?  The good news is that this lack of posting does not mean that I have fallen off that proverbial diet wagon and undone all the good work I have done.  If you look at that ticker at the top of my page, you will see that I am currently at 62 pounds lost, which had my weight at my Weight Watchers weigh-in today at an even 213 pounds.  The lowest I have been recently was 212.2 pounds, which was at the weigh-in four weeks ago, but the Easter/Vacay/Birthday Debacle of 2011 occurred a week later, so I am still getting back on track from that.

Easter was on April 24th this year, and I was, as usual, working.  However, my sister was in town for the weekend, and my family was kind enough to have dinner Saturday night so that I could join in.  We had ham and wine…at least, that’s what I remember.  I got out of work a few hours early, and we had a nice family night together (although my husband was only able to make it briefly, due to his family plans).  And that Easter dinner (EXCESS!) was just a harbinger of things to come as the week went on.

I left that Tuesday to head up to West Hartford to spend a couple of days with my sister.  We had an awesome time, as we always do when we are together, and a lot of the trip revolved around food in some form.  We went the first night I was there to a wine bar, where I enjoyed, um, wine, along with some yummy food.  We started off with an olive plate, sopressata, and La Tur cheese, which I followed with a baby spinach salad, and my entree was Cider-Braised Berkshire Pork that was AMAZING.  The second night I was there, we went to a local restaurant that my sister loves, where I had more wine (SHOCKER!), along with a fun version of a bleu cheese wedge salad, roasted free-range chicken, and a dessert called Lemon Trio that involved Meyer lemon cheesecake, a lemon pudding cake, and lemon curd ice cream.  We also did some grocery shopping while I was there so that I could hit up Stew Leonard’s and Whole Foods, which are two grocery stores that I LOVE that I don’t have near me.  And in keeping with the fitness theme, we worked out!  My sister works out with a trainer a couple of times per week at a gym near her house, and she was able to bring me along for a workout, which was awesome!  I had never really worked out with a trainer before (except for the free training sessions that served as introductions to various gyms I have belonged to), and it really kicked my butt!  But it was great to see what I could do, and I really enjoyed it!

So that was the trip to Connecticut, and that all happened before my birthday even got here!  I turned 35 years old on April 29, which was a Friday, and I had a GOOD time!  My mom and I went out to lunch with a few friends, and for dinner, my husband took me out to Emeril’s Chop House, which is located at a casino near where we live.  I had eaten at Emeril’s Orlando once in the past and had one of the best meals I have ever had, so this was such a special treat!  I had the filet mignon “dressed up,” which meant it came with garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus.  As I expected, the meal was amazing.  And for dessert, we had Emeril’s signature banana cream pie, of which nothing bad can be said.  It was the best banana cream pie I have ever had, and I am kind of a connossieur of this particular dessert, so that is saying something!

I went to Weight Watchers that week and found that I had “gained” six pounds.  I put gained in quotes because, although that was a lot of excessive eating, I knew that I probably didn’t really gain back six true pounds of fat.  As any woman reading this knows, we are really good at retaining fluid, so I was pretty sure that my complete and utter ridiculousness of that week had something to do with that weight gain.  And sure enough, a week later, I had lost 3.6 of those pounds, with another two pounds dropping off the following week.  Today, I was up a little bit (0.4 pounds), which I am blaming on the fact that I just weighed in on Friday, and I went to a picnic on Sunday, which involved me eating a bit more (but still within my plan) than I usually would.  I feel really good about where I am and where I am going with Weight Watchers, and more importantly, I am really enjoying the ride!

I am now wearing a size 16, which is three sizes down from my high of 22 (CRINGE!), and I am looking forward to seeing that size continue to drop.  I have gotten rid of every piece of clothing that was a size 20 or above, as well as any shirt that was an XXL, and I am wearing mostly my size 16 pants and size L shirts. However, because getting rid of the XLs and the 18s would shrink my wardrobe down to almost nothing, I am hanging on to some things that I can still wear without looking completely sloppy.  As soon as I hit a true size 12, I am planning to treat myself my first ever pair of “premium” denim jeans.  I never thought I would be someone who would be willing to spend upwards of $150 on a pair of jeans, but as I continue this journey, I really think it will be the perfect celebration of how far I have come.

If you are still reading this, thanks for sticking with me!  And remember to make it a great day, everyone!

So. Randomness…

I have not been the best blogger lately, and I think that the extreme cold and negative driveway conditions have had a lot to do with that.  However, I am DONE harping on the ice slick that leads from our garage down to the street and my car because I am feeling hope that the weather starting Sunday will go a long way toward fixing things a bit.  There are two different days next week and the following week that are expected to have FIFTY DEGREE temperatures!!!  I may cry when that happens from sheer relief!

Anyway, I had some GREAT! NEWS! at my Weight Watchers weigh-in this week.  I lost two pounds, and I reached my 5% goal, which was 11.8 lbs. of weight loss!  And since this was my official ticker weigh-in, my ticker now reflects that I have lost fifty-one pounds officially, for real, amen!  In fact, this morning, my home weight was actually 1.5 lbs. less than that (thanks, clothes that I have to wear to my WW meeting), and I am feeling so thrilled by how well this is going!  As I posted on Twitter (you can follow me @MaryKC), I love the PointsPlus program and am thrilled with my experience as a Weight Watchers member!  This was the first meeting that I got “celebrated” at the meeting, and I am sure that I looked like such a dork because I could not stop grinning!  Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post, I have never successfull lost this much weight (my old high was probably in the neighborhood of 35 pounds), and I feel amazing.  And I feel confident that this downward trend will continue!

One thing that I am really trying to do as I get further into this is to do a better job of “working the program.”  Without going into detail, Weight Watchers has some “good health guidelines” that are supposed to be met everyday by those of us who are truly following the plan.  They include suggested amounts of different food group servings, suggestions of things to limit in your eating, fluid intake, multivitamin use, and other such things that lend themselves to a balanced diet.  I have traditionally been kind of bad at hitting all these guidelines.  I often forget to take my vitamins.  My diet is often deficient in fruits and veggies.  I sometimes have too much sodium.  However, I am now trying to really embrace every part of the PointsPlus program (and not just the PointsPlus values and tracking of food), and I feel like this will help me meet with continued success on the program.

Anyway, on to the next topic, which is oatmeal.  Thanks to some time spent on the Health & Fitness board on The Nest, I discovered a LOVE of steel cut oats sometime last year.  I use my small slow cooker to make four servings of steel cut oats (and I buy any kind from Bob’s Red Mill to McCann’s to bulk from the grocery store) at a time, putting one cup of oats in with three cups of water and letting it cook until most of the water has been absorbed (this takes several hours).  I then put it in a larger-sized plastic container and put it in the fridge to cool.  Once cooled, the oats are actually “slice-able,” so I can cut a serving out of the container and reheat it in the microwave…two minutes gets it nice and warm and softened back up.  I usually eat the oats with a banana mixed in, along with a tablespoon of chia seeds and either brown sugar, maple syrup, or honey mixed in.  However, I am starting to crave some variety in my oats, so I am setting out on a journey to find other ways to enjoy them!

This morning was my first new way to enjoy my oats.  I mixed in with them 2 tablespoons of strawberry jam (from Jordan Pond House in Acadia National Park…it’s THE BEST!!!), along with 1/3 cup of dried cranberries.  YUM!  It was so good!  The tart cranberries and the sweetness of the jam mixed together to create a wonderful taste sensation!  I definitely will have them that way again.  Some of my favorite healthy bloggers share a lot of oatmeal posts, and they often include nut butters in their oats.  I tried this once and was not a fan, but I am planning to give it another try tomorrow.  And since the jelly was so good in my oats this morning, I am going to include jelly in tomorrow’s version!

I was going to go to the gym today, but I just can’t bring myself to scale my way back down the driveway for only that reason.  I have some things to do tomorrow that will get me out of the house, so instead, I am going to enjoy a day at home with my dog, my NOOK, my DVR, my iPad, and the internet.  I have a Yankee candle burning called “Beach Party,” and it smells like sun tan lotion in my kitchen, which is making me very, very happy!  Make it a great day, everyone!

My first WW gain…

Well, I did make it to a Weight Watchers meeting yesterday, but it was not my usual morning meeting. Instead, I attended a meeting at 7PM. Any woman who has ever owned a scale knows that a woman’s weight in the morning is very different from a woman’s weight in the evening, and not in a good way. Therefore, it was not a surprise to me that I had gained…0.6 pounds.

Now, this is NOTHING in the grand scheme of things, and I honestly don’t care much about it. When I go back to my usual morning meeting next week, I am sure I will be pleased with my progress, as long as I work the program correctly. But the interesting thing is where my mind went when I heard that. I immediately thought, “Hmmm…maybe if I go to the bathroom one more time.” I didn’t act on that…I just went and took my seat instead. However, it’s interesting how the mind just “goes there.” It is the same reaction that has people weighing in in the same pants every week of the year, no matter what the weather, changing into shorts in the bathroom before their weigh in, or not eating or drinking anything before they get to their meeting. Obviously, waiting to eat for a 9:30AM weigh in, which is what I usually do, is different from starving yourself all day, and I certainly ate and drank yesterday. But the difference between those two scenarios can easily explain my 0.6 lb. weight gain, and I am reminding myself that the longterm results are more important than one week’s weigh in.

Anyway, just some random thoughts there about the whole weigh in process and how it can kind of mess with your mind, whether you do it at home or in a doctor’s office or in a meeting location…it’s just another example of how learning to be healthy is a struggle against the tendency of some toward disordered eating. Make it a great day, everyone!

– Post From My iPad

Weather

Just today, my street finally cleared up from our last snow storm, just in time for another storm to hit tonight.  As I sit here at my kitchen table, the sky is getting cloudier and cloudier, and the snow is expected to begin at any minute.  I am NOT a fan of winter weather and spend the entire weather in a constant state of heightened anxiety, so I am not a happy girl right now!  Because I am a nurse, I really have no choice but to make it to work when I am scheduled, and since I live on a mountain 40 minutes away from the hospital I work at, this means that winter can be challenging for me.

Right now, I am most upset about this impending storm, however, because it means that I probably won’t be able to make it my usual Weight Watchers meeting tomorrow.  I am hoping that we will be dug out in time for me to make it to tomorrow night’s meeting because if I don’t make it to that one, it’s my last option for the week. I am working Thursday night at the mall and Friday and Saturday at the hospital, so all of the other meetings this week conflict with my schedule.  I briefly thought of trying to get to the one tonight, but the snow is supposed to start by 5 PM, and the meeting isn’t until 7 PM.  I think I will just take my chances with tomorrow night.  Normally, I wouldn’t be all that bent out of shape about missing a week, but one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to attend a meeting every week of 2011, and I would hate to give that up already in the second week of January!

Today, I want to talk a bit about goals.  I have started using the Ultimate 3 Month Tracker put out by Weight Watchers, instead of the weekly meal trackers, to track my eating and exercise.  I really like this tracker because it lists all the important parts of the day in a two-page spread, and it has areas for writing down what time you are eating, how you gauge your hunger level, what you eat, and how many PointsPlus you have left after eating each thing.  It also has some tips on various pages, as well as a place to track your Good Health Guidelines, your Activity PointsPlus values, and any thoughts for the day you might have.  At the beginning of each week, there is a page where you can set some goals for the week, as well as your exercise plan, and this week I decided to fill it out.  Here were my goals for the week:

• track all week
• 4 days of cardio
• 2 yoga classes
• multivitamins!

My exercise plan says this:

• Day 1 – work
• Day 2 – 60 min. cardio, yoga
• Day 3 – 60 min. cardio
• Day 4 – 60 min. cardio, yoga
• Day 5 – 60 min. cardio
• Day 6 – work
• Day 7 – work

It is currently day 3 of my WW week, and I have broken several of these goals.  First of all, I have not taken a multivitamin at any point this week.  I own multivitamins…in fact, there are several different kinds sitting on top of my microwave.  However, not one has passed through my lips this week.  I also skipped both my 60 minutes of cardio and my yoga class yesterday, which means I have no hope of meeting my 4 days of cardio/2 yoga classes goal.  I did go to the gym today, although I didn’t feel like it, and I did 30 minutes on the StairMaster and 30 minutes on the elliptical, followed by a stretch.  I don’t know what the weather will mean for my gym time tomorrow, but I know that attending tomorrow night’s yoga class might not work out with the WW meeting.  Actually, it could work out if I time everything perfectly, but it will take some motivation to do that.  

Moving forward, instead of just jotting down goals in this section of the tracker, I am really going to put some thought into them, and then I am going to put some thought into meeting these goals.  Maybe some weeks, it isn’t realistic to think that I will get to the gym four days for an hour of cardio each day and twice for yoga.  Maybe on yoga days, I will not do as much cardio.  Maybe if I had set my sights a little lower yesterday, I would have made it to them gym for either cardio or yoga, instead of skipping both.  The weather does nothing to motivate me because it seems like such a better option to stay in bed and watch reruns of Grey’s Anatomy on Hulu Plus right now.  One thing I do have to say is that I have been tracking my eating consistently for the last week and a half, and that is something!  Healthy living has such a learning curve, but I will get it!

Stay warm…and make it a great day, everyone!