I need NEW FOOD!

It should start being a pretty good clue that my “healthy eating plan” (a.k.a. DIET) isn’t going well when I haven’t posted here in several weeks. It’s always exciting to come home from WW and post about a loss. It’s embarrassing to have to come back and post a gain. And that’s what I’ve been doing over the last several weeks—gaining weight instead of losing. But I’ve gotten to a point where I’m tired of the whole thing. I’m tired of “healthy” eating. I’m tired of thinking about how I’m going to fix tonight’s portion of lean meat and two veggies with perhaps a piece of fruit for dessert. Oh yay. I’m tired of salads with low-fat or fat-free dressings. I’m tired of the feelings of guilt I get just for watching a commercial about fried chicken on TV and craving it. I’m tired, in short, of not being able to eat anything I want and still have a smokin’ hot body (which I’ve never had, nor probably ever will).

Yes, I’m starting to cycle down into a depression cycle.

Part of this is because I stressed myself out so much in the month of June with trying to get the third contemporary romance novel finished before deadline. I gave myself the excuse of exhaustion to pretty much forget to try to make healthy choices in eating and eat whatever I wanted to. Which reawakened all of my food addictions—especially those to high fat and sugar. And now that I’m trying to get back on the wagon and I’m faced with breaking those addictions again, it isn’t coming easy—because I know the boredom that faces me in the food choices that I have when I’m following program.

I’m not the kind of person who gets excited over spring and summer because of all the fruits and vegetables that are in season. If I were, I wouldn’t be in this predicament to begin with. I have to FORCE myself to usually get at least two or three servings of fruits/veggies every day, much less the five I’m supposed to be eating.

Doing the core program on WW—eating basically a low-carb, low-fat, whole-foods/grains diet—is much easier for me than counting points. I have the list of foods that are “free” to be eaten on the plan, and if I stick to those (in moderate portions, naturally) I know I’ll lose weight. My problem is that I’ve gotten into such a pattern with food—either eggs or cereal for breakfast, soup or sandwich and salad for lunch, and a piece of meat with a couple of veggies for supper—that I’m totally bored with it, and that’s what’s making me fall off the plan with increasing frequency and slowly regaining the weight I’ve lost. Right now, I’m almost right back up to where I was when I went to Minnesota for the ACFW conference LAST SEPTEMBER. That’s right, ten months later and I haven’t netted any weight loss, because even though I’ve been down to 256 as a low at one point, I’ve yoyo’ed myself back up almost fifteen pounds from there.

So I’ve decided to start a new project. And if you read this in addition to being my friend on Facebook, I’m sorry that you’re getting this twice. I want to start a recipe repository here on the blog where I’ll post the healthy-living recipes you love that have helped you in your weight-loss (or just healthy living) journey. I need to add some pizazz to my diet so that I can make it a life-long change instead of just a diet. And I’m sure that’s something we all need help with.

So if you have some healthy recipes you’d be willing to share, send them to me at fabulousby40 (at) kayedacus.com and let’s get this cooking party started!

Weekly Weigh-In 6/7/09

The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.
~English translation of Lao-tzu: The Way of Lao-tzu

When I first set out to find this quotation, I was looking for the one that says it begins with one step. However, I read in several places that the “one step” version of the quote is actually a paraphrase, that what I’ve quoted above is a more literal translation of what Lao-tzu actually wrote.

Rather than emphasizing the first step, Lau Tzu regarded action as something that arises naturally from stillness. Another potential phrasing would be, “Even the longest journey must begin where you stand.”
~Note on www.quotationspage.com

Of course the journey under discussion on this blog is the weight-loss journey—or the journey to become a healthier me, one who will live longer and have fewer health problems in the future, one who will feel more confident and more accomplished the more success I find on the journey.

I started this odyssey almost two years ago, in the summer of 2007, after a visit to my new doctor when the nurse recorded my weight as 315 pounds. That’s permanently on my chart. I can’t pretend that I didn’t weigh that much. Because someone else wrote it down. So I decided I needed to try to lose weight. And then my back went out. Many of you may not know that I had back surgery in 2003 to repair a ruptured disc (L-4 vertebra), after living with excruciating back pain for almost two years. The cause for the ruptured disc? A combination of trying to do too much for myself and carrying more than 100 pounds of extra weight around all the time. Before my surgery, I was able to stick to the Atkins plan for about three or four months and lost almost 40 pounds. Afterward, I was never able to get that momentum back (though now having read some of the long-term effects of sticking to that diet, I’m glad I didn’t get hooked back on it). Over the next four years, I managed to gain back the weight I’d lost plus another fifteen or twenty pounds, even though I tried Atkins and Weight Watchers again a few times during that span. Then, as I mentioned, in the late summer of 2007, I started having back pain again. After a week, it was so excruciating that I could hardly walk the 30 to 40 feet from the parking lot into my office at work. I went to the doctor to see if we could figure out if I’d reinjured it or if it was a flare up of scar tissue impinging on the nerves. She sent me to get an MRI.

But I never got the MRI. Why? Because I didn’t fit into the machine. When the mechanism started sliding me into the tube, it was so tight around me, I couldn’t breathe and I started having a panic attack. (I’m starting to relive it right now!) They took me to another building in the hospital to an older machine that was supposed to be larger, but it was almost as tight, and by that time, I’d entered full-blown manic mode when I felt the tube pressing my arms into my chest and pushing down on me from the top. I’ve had MRIs before. I know I’ve fit into the tube and that I can handle being in there for twenty or thirty minutes, so that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I had gained so much weight that I couldn’t fit into the one instrument that would tell us why I was in so much pain. So the doctor put me on a seven-day steroid treatment (couldn’t give me the good stuff because all prescr*ption pain killers—a.k.a. the ones that are narcot*cs—make me violently ill) and sent me to a physical therapist. This started in late July/early August. By the time I attended the ACFW conference in late September, I was still in constant, nearly excruciating pain. By November, I’d rejoined the YMCA so that I could walk on the treadmill and start swimming again, as the physical therapist had recommended. Slowly, the pain finally went away. (And has not returned, thankfully.)

Then, in January, my dear friend and coworker Georgina and I made a pact that we would start trying to lose weight in 2008, since both of us are the same age and wanted to get healthy by the time we turn forty. We started out by doing our food plans on our own but going to the gym after work together almost every day of the week. Our friend Melinda started going with us. But none of us was losing weight. So we joined Weight Watchers in April 2008. By that time, I’d managed to take off 20 pounds on my own, giving me a starting weight at WW of 295 pounds.

In the fourteen months that I’ve been in WW, I’ve allowed myself to bounce around, up and down, sometimes seeing a loss at the scale week after week, sometimes going consistently up, as I did from mid-March until early May, when I regained almost 10 pounds.

But as that quote from Lao-tzu says, the journey begins under my feet. I took the “first step” almost two years ago, so I can’t look at myself as taking the first step on the journey of a thousand miles. And because I have already lost weight and learned the program and know what I should be doing week in and week out, I’m not “starting over.” The journey to continue losing weight is already under my feet, ready for me to keep going. It may look like it’s 1,000 miles yet to go, but all I have to do is look back to see how far I’ve already come. That’s the stillness from which action springs.

All of that to say I was down 3.2 pounds at my weigh-in today, taking me back within 2 pounds of the lowest I’ve been so far on this journey, and giving me a total overall weight loss of 56.2 pounds.

“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”
~Greg Anderson, The American Wellness Project

Weekly Weigh-In 5/31/09

Getting back to my regular Weight Watchers meeting today could have meant either a disaster for my birthday, or something more to celebrate.

Well, I had something more to celebrate—even with eating out a couple of times (as well as indulging in a venti-sized Caramel Frapuccino from Starbucks Friday night), I was down 0.4 lbs from my weigh-in weight on Thursday. Yep—I managed to lose 1/10 of a pound each day since my last weigh-in! And I wasn’t really trying all that hard.

We got some really good info today on how eating more healthfully can actually help to save money on food, which I’ll blog about later in the week. But right now, I need to go in and make out my meal plan for the rest of the week. My goal is to see if I can get back down to 260 next week. Which means really watching what I eat and getting back to exercising.

Now that it’s almost June, what are your plans to keep yourself on track (or to get back on track) for the summer?

Compare-Contrast

I took new headshot photos today. Thought I’d let y’all see the difference from those I had done in March or April of 2008:

Semi-Weekly Weigh-In 5/28/09

Well . . . obviously, I didn’t weigh in last week when I was in Arkansas. With the way I felt like I’d been eating after the previous weigh in, I was somewhat scared to—after that 3.8 lb. loss the week before, I didn’t want to see that go back up a couple of pounds.

But I decided I needed to go ahead and get officially back on the scale before getting back to my regular WW meeting on Sunday—and before I go do my “big” grocery shop to replenish my very empty kitchen after being away for 17 days.

I fully expected to be up at least a full pound if not a pound and a half (after stepping on my scale here at home yesterday). But I was only up 0.6 lbs.! Woohoo. And I thought that since I allowed myself to “take a vacation” while I was in Arkansas and go ahead and eat barbecue (from McClard’s—the best BBQ in the world!), eat Mexican food, drink wine a couple of times, have ice cream, and eat fast-food on the days when I was traveling, that I had completely blown it. Yet I do remember making conscious decisions to make healthier choices more often than not, too. So the whole idea of “healthy eating” IS sinking in finally!

And I’m pretty sure I can take that 0.6 off before Sunday. Especially since I wore jeans and a sweater (short-sleeved!) to weigh in today.

Weekly Weigh-In 5/13/09

Before leaving Nashville last week, I got online and looked for a Weight Watchers meeting to go to while in Baton Rouge this week. Not having a scale here to stand on every morning to try to see if I’m making progress, I was unsure of how today was going to go—but since I’ve eaten out at least once a day since I’ve been here, I didn’t think it would be too good (trying to keep in mind, of course, that it’s been 10 days since my last weigh-in).

I was down 3.8 pounds today!!!! I can’t update the images on the side of the page until next week (I’m having to use my sister’s computer to post this, so I don’t have my files or my graphics program accessible). But that was a big chunk out of the 8.8 lbs I’d gained over the last two months, so I’m thrilled. And I’m determined to be even more careful about my choices over the next week so that I have another loss to report next week, when I’ll be in Hot Springs . . . which reminds me, I need to look up a meeting to go to next week.

Hold on . . . okay:
Wednesday, May 20 at Noon
Faith United Methodist Church
321 Nash Street
HOT SPRINGS, AR 71913

Weekly Weigh-In 5/3/09

Well . . . I did the Points every day this week, as I posted here. And I gained 3.4 pounds. Yep, that’s right. GAINED. But I knew, both from the number on my scale at home being consistently high as well as the tightness of certain pairs of shorts and jeans I wore this past week that I was going up instead of down. The sad thing is that in the past seven weeks, I’ve managed to gain 8.8 lbs., putting me back in the weight range I was at in January. Looking at it in that perspective, it would be really easy to give up. To look at the goals I set for myself and see that I’m about 15 pounds higher than I wanted to be for the wedding I’m attending on May 16 (though the dress I’m wearing to the wedding is a size 22/24, which did accomplish that part of the goal, even though I’m having to wear a “squishy” under it to keep the fat rolls from being so obvious). I could have decided to keep the “Current Weight” graphic showing where I was back on March 15, when I reached the lowest weight I’ve been at in more than twelve years. I could tell myself that I’ve failed and I might as well give up.

I could.

But I’m not going to. As soon as I post this and get my graphics updated, I’m going to go into the kitchen and make my meal plan for the week (I am going back on Core this week after speaking with my WW leader about my experience doing Points this past week). I’ve made my plan for eating while traveling next weekend. I’ve found a WW meeting to attend in Baton Rouge (on Weds. May 13 at the New Life Church on Staring Lane, if anyone who reads this might attend that meeting, please introduce yourself to me there!). I’m going to find one in Hot Springs to go to the week after that. I’ve planned where and what I’m going to eat while I’m in Alexandria on May 16 and where I’m going to stop and what I’ll eat when I’m driving from there to Hot Springs on the 17th.

And I’m going to focus on the positives:

I’ve lost 49.4 pounds. I started at 315 pounds and today’s weight was 265.6 lbs. That’s a HUGE accomplishment.

I’ve gone down from a size 28 (some things in a 30/32) to a size 22/24—that’s about FOUR sizes!

I no longer have to use a seatbelt extender on airplanes. While the seats on some of the smaller planes are still a little too snug to be comfortable, I can not only buckle the regular seatbelt, I have a little excess belt pulled out to get it tight.

I can walk a mile in 20 minutes—and that’s in my neighborhood which is not flat—without being so winded at the end that I can’t do anything. In fact, it’s probably time to add another half mile to that whenever I go out, just to challenge myself.

I have a much better mindset when it comes to choosing healthy foods. I find myself not ordering certain things when I go out to eat, or bypassing certain aisles at the grocery store because I know they’re not good for me. I’ve also learned the importance and ease of pre-planning my weekly menu, because I have the greatest success when I do that.

I’ve gained self-confidence. I’ve felt it slipping over the past seven weeks as I’ve seen the number at the scale increasing, but I don’t feel quite as awkward and “blobish” when I’m out in public, which is especially good as I go into bookstores to introduce myself and see if they’ll let me sign copies of my books, or at book signing events, or in just talking to random people at the airport or mall.

I’ve got a great support network. Since going public with my weight-loss journey, I’ve gained so many supporters in addition to my two wonderful friends (and former coworkers) that I go to my Weight Watchers meetings with. Between the people who comment on my posts on the blog, who e-mail me privately, and who send me encouragement on Facebook whenever my posts get published in my newsfeed, it makes it much easier for me to pick myself up every time I fall down than it would have been had I kept it under wraps. I’ve also learned to make sure when I go out to eat with someone (or a group) that I mention that I do Weight Watchers, if they don’t already know—because it keeps me honest with myself and forces me to make healthier choices.

I’m stubborn. I won’t allow myself to fail.

Friday 5/1 Food Journal

Thursday 4/30 Food Journal

Wednesday 4/29 Food Journal

I can’t believe I didn’t eat enough today!