Fit & Fab; My first Weight Watchers meeting

The next couple posts are going to be ones that I wrote this past winter and never got around to publishing. This is another post I wrote in January/February but never got around to publishing.

I went to my first weight watchers meeting in late January.  I stayed at work a little later than usual so that I could go straight to the meeting and not be at home in-between.  Once I get home after work I like to stay there and it’s supremely hard to motivate myself to go back out, especially into the nasty arctic cold.

I ended up walking into the little Weight Watchers store just on time (6pm) and was a bit confused at first because the set-up was odd. There were a few shelves with products and some motivational posters but it was mostly taken up by computer terminals and large blue screens in semi-circles around scales on the floor. I passed about four of these terminals and walked towards the sound of a woman’s voice, then I encountered another woman who greeted me cheerfully.

I gave her my pre-registration printout and looked around dazedly. Then she asked me if I had ever been in a computer before.

??? what? I stood there looking at her, trying to figure out if she was really so condescending to ask if I’d ever used a computer before, while she asked the question several more times as if repeating it would make it any easier to understand for me.

I told her I had been using the online tools for a few weeks but this was my first meeting.

‘oh, so you’ve never been in a weight watchers computer before?’

I’m still confused, are there special computers for weight watchers? Does she mean the online tools? Perhaps she’s wondering if I’m in their system, but I should be because I pre-registered and have been using WW online. So I’m still trying to think up a proper response when she hands me a clipboard and cheerfully tells me to go on in, and we’ll register after the meeting.

After this confusing experience, I shyly sneak into the back row of the meeting, excusing myself as I try to fit past people in between the chairs. I find a seat and put my stuff down, trying to get the crazy lady out of my mind and listen to the woman speaking.

The woman did most of the talking, but she also asked for others in the meeting to speak about what they’ve been going through. She changed her slide presentation with a little silver clicker in her hand.  They talked about portion sizes and tricks that people have been using, also how people’s lives have changed while using weight watchers. There were some interesting things said. There were many different people there, one woman smaller than me, most a little larger.  One husband and wife came together, saying it was not their first time restarting weight watchers. They have tried many times and had little successes and here they are trying again. The husband said it’s most important to keep trying. I heard the ‘it didn’t get put on in a day, it’s not going to come off in a day.’ One woman said she has started putting her salad on her dinner plates and the ‘main’ entrée in a smaller plate or bowl. ‘It takes a long time to eat salad,’ she said.

It was very interesting and a very relaxed atmosphere. After the meeting, I stayed back to fill out my form and talk to the leader. There were a few other newbies as well and the leader gave us a little orientation to weight watchers and told us about her personal story. She gave us little folders with WW tools and tracking books. She lost weight on WW as well, she said all the leaders have done this. She seemed very nice, although slim, she talked with us about her own struggles with eating too much. We newbies each said a little about ourselves. I said that I had trouble with binge eating and my doctor had told me I was gaining weight too fast, but still I had trouble not gaining. I finally started maintaining my weight in 2012 and then beginning to lose in 2013. But I had only lost 10lbs last year and was having trouble losing any more without gaining it back. We discussed simple start and I said I had tried it but had moved on to tracking for more flexibility. We also talked about weighing ourselves and I explained that I only weigh myself twice a month and not around my time of the month in order to keep myself sane. She said it was a good way to go about it but pointed out that as long as I weigh myself at the same time each day, I will still see my weight loss. So weighing in on Wednesday at 6pm is not a bad thing. It won’t be the same weight that I would get if I weigh myself in the morning, naked, before eating anything, which is what I normally do.

After the meeting, the leader scanned my pre-registration sheet and took my weight. They gave me a little sticker for the tracking book with my weight on it. It was 6lbs heavier than when I had weighed myself naked, in the morning before eating, but she said you have to take clothes and the time of day into account. But just judge that number by the number next week to see the change.

Anyway, it was a good experience and I look forward to going back this Wednesday. I expected it to be longer than half an hour, though.

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FF: A winter binge

The next couple posts are going to be ones that I wrote this past winter and never got around to publishing. This one is a post I wrote in January/February;

So; I believe I’ve mentioned how cold it’s been, every time the temperature dips back down, I have felt an uncontrollable need to rush to dunkin donuts and get half a dozen delicious, chocolate-covered or sugar-coated or crème-filled deliciousness. I didn’t see the pattern at first, but after the third time I realized it. When it gets cold, I crave baked, sugary goods. Filling, fatty stuff. And, since it’s been too cold to be in my living room or bedroom, I haven’t been cooking or doing my Yoga challenge like I had planned. I did my best so far on weight watchers when I was making every meal from their recipes. But, I got hibernatory and started ordering out a lot instead. Or just making a PBJ. Once, I did have a can of soup but it was disgusting…

Yup, so two weeks after I had lost 3llbs, I gained 2.8 of it back. From pizza, Chinese food, PBJ’s and oh so many donuts. I think part of the problem was that I had gotten a bit cocky. I had done well, and then I guess I thought I was good… well, it doesn’t work like that. Once it comes off, it can go right back on again.

That, and I was having a lot of ruminating thoughts (thanks, Depression!) about my father and how he had treated me as a child.

Honestly, I don’t want to go into it much for this post. Just know that he was hard on me, there was a lot of yelling, and it’s where I learned many of my irrational thinking patterns.

So having ruminating (repeated, hard to control thoughts?) thoughts about this was not good. Whenever I am upset I tend to turn to food. It’s always been that way. When I was younger, I had a kick-ass metabolism, and it was probably also curbed since other people ate that food too while I was living in my parent’s house. My sister seemed to notice every missing morsel and was vocal about it. (it’s not fair to me, waaa) So I probably ate a little less, I definitely tried to hide how much I ate from them. But, it didn’t show, I stayed skinny until the tail-end of college when I finally started gaining due to ‘cookie dinners’ and ‘vending machine breakfasts, lunches and dinners.” I will NEVER eat a frozen meal again. Not because I’m choosing to be healthy, blab la bla, but because I can’t even stomach looking at them anymore. They all look and taste like cat food to me now (how I assume cat food tastes, come on now, I’m not that crazy).

Anyway, one thing that made me successful on simple start was the fact that I was able to have dessert every day. I bought cookies and put fat free ice cream between them and stuck them in the freezer. Ice cream sandwiches with my favorite Kroger bakery cookies!! And cold, so that you know they’ll stay fresh after a few days and don’t feel pressure to eat them all at once before they go bad.

So I’ve decided to have dessert every day. The past two days it’s been donuts. Oh, I love donuts way too much. I can almost taste them now…

But knowing I WILL have dessert each day and being able to think about what I want so that I can have the thing I want most that day, and being able to look forward to it helps me to not snack throughout the day, and gives me a little bit of that feel-good, bingey feeling without going overboard. Because that’s the other rule: buy only single servings. So yes, I have to go out every day to buy dessert, but if I bought more than one, they’d both get eaten in one sitting. I just can’t control myself. It’ll sit there in my mind, I won’t even be able to push it to the back, I’ll think about it until I finally give in and eat and it will feel SO amazing!

But the new rule is; One single-serving dessert a day, eaten with full attention and pleasure after dinner and logged appropriately in weight watchers. I’ll try to keep my points low enough during the day that there will be some extra for this snack, but I won’t worry about it too much because of the weekly allowance. And even if I go over, oh well. With a single serving it’s not likely to be by much and it’s keeping me in control so it’s worth it.

I feel like I’m really treating myself well, giving myself this daily dessert. It’s a self-hug (don’t make this sexual, guys).

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Fit & Fabulous: I Lost 3lbs!

     Hooray!! I lost 3lbs already!! I’ve been on Weight Watchers for almost three weeks now, but at my last weigh-in (last Friday) I lost 3lbs!!

     So exciting!!!

     I’ve officially retired my largest belt since it does no good for me anymore and I’m on the second to last hole of my second-largest belt. 

     So what have I been doing? Well, I haven't been doing much exercise although I did get these two in (from my Yoga Challenge);

      #betterthannothing?

     I haven’t gone to any meetings yet because the ‘Arctic Chill’ snowed me in for about a week. (Also, my apartment flooded AGAIN but that’s another story). I followed the Simple Start plan for a week to the best of my ability and then switched to the full plan because I got tired of eating the same thing over and over. It’s really my own fault; I just chose a few recipes from their list and only ate those for the whole week. Unfortunately, I can’t really afford to make a bunch of their meals at the same time so I’m not sure how I’m going to conquer this hurdle but I’m working on it.

     So the Simple Start plan is this; they have a list of recipes to choose from and each meal you eat from one of the recipes on the list without worrying about or even recording portion sizes. It’s similar to their Simply Filling plan which is an alternative to tracking points. I did enjoy not having to count points and such but the tracking app for simple start was very simplistic. There’s no way to record if you don’t follow the meal and there’s zero flexibility for eating recipes not on their list.

The regular plan is a little challenging for me because it’s not like 1pt= a certain number of calories. Their points are based on the assumption that not all calories are alike and it is more difficult for your body to process some foods than others. I admit I don’t really understand it very well. So there’s been a few times when I’ve gone to eat a meal that I would usually think of as a good choice and I calculate the points later and find out that they are WAY too high for me to eat on a regular basis while on weight watchers. Such as; peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or this pesto pasta dish I get at the cafeteria at work (turned out to be a whopping 24 points!). 

     It would be really helpful for me to get to a meeting and find out what other people are eating, hopefully I will be able to make it this Wednesday!

Jane










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Fit & Fabulous: Weight Watchers and the Yoga Challenge

       I started Weight Watchers on Monday. While I was staying with my parents to get away from my flooded apartment, I came across this coupon in the mail for a free Weight Watchers meeting with purchase of a monthly pass. I didn't think much of it at first, but it kind of stuck in the back of my mind. I've never done the popular diets; no South Beach, no Atkins, mostly because I think cutting one thing out of your diet is not really the answer. Plus, I know that I would never completely cut out sugar or carbs, and once you start eating those things again, the weight will come back. 95% of diets fail*. Which is why I've tried going the route of lifestyle change.

       But lifestyle change has not been working very well for me because I just haven't really succeeded in making enough changes. Last year I lost 10 pounds using my serving size diet and jogging, but since then I've fluctuated within about 4 pounds and just lately coming back up to 171lbs. I had some real success dealing with my binge eating and I cut that down significantly. I have real meals now (whereas at my worst I would have 'cookie dinners').

       But I still want more. I can still eat half a dozen donuts in a sitting without blinking an eye and that is actually something I tend to do when I feel low or when I have cravings that I just can't forget about or control. I'm still not great at dieting more than 3 days in a row and exercise has gone down the toilet since it got too cold to swim.

        My habits are still not going to get me to my goals of getting back down to a normal BMI, not having my thighs rub together and being able to dress how I want. 

       So I'm trying something new. I'm not totally sure about their points system, to me it seems needlessly complicated, however i do like that there are 0 pt foods (bananas, mandarin oranges) so even if I hit my point limit for the day hopefully I'll still have something I can munch on if hungry. I like the idea of social dieting; having the weekly meetings and the support of a leader. I haven't gone to any meetings yet, but I've scheduled one for next Wednesday. Hopefully with some regular, positive social support I'll be able to further cut out binge eating and get more motivation for keeping up with exercise.

   So keeping this all in mind, I am also restarting my 28 day yoga fitness book^, I've done 3 days so far and I've made this thing on my wall, not sure what you would call it:

    Each circle is a day of exercise and it goes through all the 28 days of my yoga book with a cardio session every third day. I'll pull them down every day that I complete one.

    More updates on Weight Watchers to come; hopefully it will be what I need to finally reach my goals.

Jane






*The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Weight Management: A Step-by-Step Program by Michele Laliberte, Randi E. McCabe and Valerie Taylor

^Richard Hittleman's Yoga 28 Day Exercise Plan by Richard Hittleman. Note: if any of you look up this book and read it, YES, I know it's VERY sexist. But it was a gift and it's the book I used to start yoga, it also has a lot of wisdom despite the fact that it was written for 1950's-style housewives.









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Fit & Fabulous: November update

Let me take a minute to acknowledge all my accomplishments these last couple weeks. I ran outside guys! It was more of a jog, but I didn’t get a migraine afterwards!

I actually dieted for two days! I don’t care what anyone says (mostly talking to the voices in my head here), this is an accomplishment and I’m going to be proud of it. Anyone who says differently can kiss my ass.

Last time I blogged was 11/14 so here are the badges I’ve earned since then;

Swim badge!

Yoga badge!

Ran outside badge!

3 Walking badges!   

2 Healthy Eating badges! 

Go me!! I’m making progress on being productive, although it hasn’t been quite enough to meet my goals.

 (Note: I wrote this post on Wednesday morning)            

I had a weigh-in this morning and I’m at 172lbs. So, it’s not my highest weight but I’m definitely still stalled. I haven’t been waking up early enough to go to the gym and swim (except that one day). This might be due to the fact that I’ve also been staying up pretty late. I guess I’m trying to make myself happy in one way or another and I’m just not really succeeding. Or perhaps I like watching TV so much that I just have no interest in going to bed because bed means I’ll have to get up for work where my soul dies each day.

When I get home from work I feel like a dead slug and all I want to do is sit in front of the TV and try to forget that I’m dead inside, so I haven’t been doing my physical therapy at home. I haven’t really been doing p.t. at work, either, because we haven’t had work to do. This means I feel just good enough not to do my stretches but it doesn’t mean I won’t be feeling that awful weird painful/stiff feeling in a couple of hours because I’m still spending the day sitting like a lump at a computer. I haven’t been recording my meals faithfully, either.

It could be because my routine has changed lately; I’m doing all that extra volunteering outside of work. It always takes me a few weeks (read months) to adjust when there’s a change like this

I don’t know what the solution is but I’ve got to keep tweaking my plan until I find it. I need to get out of this damn rut.

So I’ve had this yoga book forever, it’s called ‘Richard Hittleman’s Yoga: 28 day exercise plan.” It was my first yoga book. I’ve never done the whole 28 days before; I always get stuck after day 3. But this time I’m going to do it. I’m going to do the full 28 days and then I’m going to do this ‘getting your body back’ workout in my Women’s Health “Big Book of Exercises”. I’m also going to still do cardio; I just wanted to find a way to do something like physical therapy but not physical therapy because obviously I’m not motivated to do those exercises at all. So here’s this week (I’ve already done day 1 of the yoga book)

Wed (11/27)	Thur (11/28)	Fri (11/29)	Sat (11/30)	Sun (12/1)	Mon (12/2)	Tues (12/3)
cardio	Day 2 yoga	cardio	Day 3 yoga	cardio	Day 4 yoga	Day 5 yoga

So, what am I going to do to solve the ‘I haven’t been doing cardio’ obstacle? Well, first I need to be doing things during the day that will make me feel good and not dreading the morning. 

…

Shit. 

Maybe I’ll just focus on feeling better during the day. What will make me feel like a real person?

•  Getting work done at work/ being responsible and professional
• Looking good
• Getting some personal stuff done/ being organized and on top of my personal finances, the RA thing, blogging, housework, cat stuff, etc.
• Knowing I have friends out there to talk to and hang out with
• Doing something really fun.
• Record your meals. Just do it!!!
• Make sure you get your p.t. in during the day. Unless you want to be in pain. Prevention is worth a million cures (or however that saying goes). 

OK, so I’ll make a master list of all the things I need to do to accomplish those 5 things and put them in my calendar.

Master List:

1.       Check to see if I have work to do on all of my three projects and then do it.

2.       Since I’m already at work today there’s not much I can do to look better. And, since it’s a short week there’s no one here anyway so I’ll just leave that alone. Once I get home I can shower, put on some nice clothes and some makeup since I’ll be heading to see family for thanksgiving.

3.       I need to pack some stuff to take with me when I see my family, pay my rent, do laundry and iron my clothes, renew my library books and put flea treatment on my cats. I need to get Cleo a new collar and clean the litter box. I need to get that box of my old books and try to sell them to half-price books, and take that box of old, ugly jewelry to the pawn shop so hopefully I can get some money to buy Christmas presents for my family.

4.       For RA, they didn’t ask me to do anything so I’m good on that, but I could take a few articles with me for when stuff gets boring or my family starts talking politics.

5.       I’d like to write a draft for each of my blog series’, edit this one today and post it later tonight.

6.       Housework; I should probably straighten my apt and do the dishes before I head out. Maybe make my bed. And vacuum. I dusted and scrubbed last week so no need for that again.

7.       I talked to a friend today already but I’m going to put on my list to contact someone tonight as well. Even if it’s just a text.

8.       Something really fun? I’ll pick something from my fun list to do, maybe I will play piano.

9.       And of course, I need to go running again

         That’s a lot of stuff. Some of it may have to wait for Friday. I’m not really counting Thursday because it’s Thanksgiving and I’ll probably be with family most of the day.

So that’s the plan, I’m glad I’m able to end this post on a hopeful note. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Jane







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