It’s Friday! That means it’s time for a weigh in check in. It’s time for the weekly wrap up. And of course it’s time to share any great deep thoughts or discoveries that I had made this week. This week I had some success with the sweet treats at night. I also had a few pretty big discoveries in regards to my weigh ins and sharing my journey.
First I will say that I did manage to walk most days this week on my breaks and lunches at work. I missed one or two due to rain, but I’m still walking away! I need to get my ‘formal exercise’ game on though! I swore I would run three times...I only made it two times. But that’s better than none!!!
For a long time I have talked about how I like to weigh in every day. I know that this doesn’t work for some people. But for me it does tend to work. It keeps me on task and on target. Like I’ve said many many times this is an individual journey and we have to do what works best for us. So I weigh myself every day. Early on though, I realized that I needed to have one specific day for an official way in. On Wednesdays I report my weight to my friend Julie. She weighs in at her weight watchers meeting that day, so it’s an accountability thing for both of us. For the longest time I used Wednesdays as my way day…my official weigh in day. A few weeks ago I decided to change my day for the official weight results to be Friday. And I was happy with that decision and everything went fine. This week however on Wednesday I weighed myself and looked at the numbers and I realized that I was drowning in all of the numbers. I didn’t see any kind of success because my weight does fluctuate a bit and I don’t quickly know what previous weight I should be stacking my current weight agains. So, I went to my weight tracker where I enter my weight. I enter it most days, or at least a couple times a week trying always to hit Wednesday and Friday for sure. I just looked at my Wednesday weigh ins. I ignored all of the other days. I was shocked! Here I was drowning in the numbers thinking I wasn’t doing anything and making no progress. Two weeks ago on Wednesday I was 254.6 pounds. Last week I reported my weight to Julie but didn’t really look at it as any kind of success… Because I was fluctuating from the weekend lack of water whatever. So two weeks ago I was 254.6 pounds. Wednesday of this week I was 247.2 pounds. That is a 7.4 pound loss in two weeks. Why in the world had I not been jumping for joy last Wednesday when I lost 4 pounds? I reported my weight to Julie… But where was the celebration for those first four pounds? That’s when I realized that I was drowning in the numbers. I was doing really good with weighing every day, but I wasn’t actually paying attention to the weeks losses. I missed out on the celebration.
So my official weigh-in was today. The 254.6 was my highest weight in the last couple months and it coincided with when everything just clicked for me and I was ready to do this. (I have been gearing up for the last month, but was still resistant to a couple different aspects of this journey, maybe seeing 254.6 was my wake up call.) So today, my official weigh-in was 246.8 That is a loss of 7.8 pounds, just since my eyes were opened two weeks back. If I want to be technical when I take from my highest weight of roughly 330 pounds, that means I have lost 83.2 pounds.
Let’s celebrate! (So do I get to re-celebrate 100 pounds gone when I get to 230 pounds?)
I was very resistant to giving up my sweet treats at night. I want to live life! I don’t want to live a life deprivation and restriction. I knew that there had to be a happy medium I just had to find it. I’m not saying that I have found the magic solution, but the last week or two I haven’t been as drawn to the sweet treats. Last week we had rice crispy treats that I had made. I’m not going to say that I didn’t have any. I had one or two small pieces. On the weekend I made a cake and I did have a piece every night. This past week I made cookies. I ate one. One cookie. (It helped that it was one of my least favorite cookies!) I have indulged the sweet tooth almost every night this week though. Every night, I have eaten a banana… With leftover chocolate icing on top. I think I just heard the gasp from people reading this post. Yes, I actually ate sugar and sugar is bad people will say. But remember, I’m not aiming for the perfect diet with no sugar, or no fat, or no carb, or high-protein or whatever whatever the perfect diet may be. I am aiming for balance. I am aiming for choices that I can live with. I am aiming for choices that I can be happy with for long-term. Balance for me this week was eating something healthy like a banana instead of the cake. A banana and icing was a much healthier choice that cake with icing. Balance while living life. That sounds like a victory to me!
Last Friday I talked about the drama surrounding my work luncheon that I was choosing to not participating. Once a few people figured out that the drama that was created by some people, was in actuality the exact opposite of what my intentions were some people changed and tried to get me to participate. I was question pretty heavily on Friday about why I wasn’t participating. OK, They were grilling me about why I was not participating. They were friendly about it, But they would not accept my simple answer of I just am choosing to not participate. So, I admitted to my team…or at least to the four people that were present, that I’m not happy with my weight and I am really working on it and that I did not want all of the excess calories that a catered luncheon would carry. They question me a little bit more about my newfound efforts and where I’ve been and where I’m going. They were trying to pass out sweet treats on Tuesday and when one of the girls came to my desk to give me something. I said no thanks… She laughed and said oh that’s right I forgot, I’m sorry! So number one, it is good because some of the people will stop pushing food on me. But even more importantly, I have people watching now. My first response last weekend when I thought about how I admitted where I’m at and what I’m doing what is that, “holy moly… they know now and if I don’t lose the weight the whole world will know that I failed.” I couldn’t take back the words of course but in a way, having that fear and not wanting to fail has made me redouble my efforts and keep me focused. Sometimes it’s so hard to admit to people that we want to lose weight and that we want to change. So we keep it a secret because it safe. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but maybe, just maybe sharing the journey will help keep us on track. (And let’s be honest, I don’t know one person that is overweight, obese really, that wants to be that way. So sharing the desire shouldn’t be scary. Anyone that looks at me can see the overweight girl and can already see that I failed… )
A few weeks back when I was revamping a couple things on this site, I took off the weight-loss progress page. Honestly, I hadn’t updated it in a long time. And furthermore it’s embarrassing. In recent years there’s a lot of attempts and a lot of failures and that’s embarrasseing. However, with the epiphanies I had this week… Drowning in the numbers of my daily weigh ins, and see how the open honesty and accountability helped me, I decided to put it back on the site. I had a momentary thought of going back through my Weight tracking apps and trying to re-create the last 2 years since I last updated that page. Instead, I decided to put a few highlight weigh ins. For most of the time, I stayed relatively close in my weight… Fluctuating maybe 5 pounds. So, I basically just notated that, and I did put in one or two events or weights that I specifically recall or saw my weight change drastically. One of those was in November when my dad died I gained 20 pounds in two weeks… If I want to be honest I gained it in one week. And since that time, I have been fluctuating within 5 pounds of that higher weight. (Until this week… I actually have started to move lower… Hip hip hooray.) So I have kind of updated the last two years, but I’m not going to go into depth on the actual nitty-gritty week to week weigh in results. While I do weigh in every day, the page will only be updated once...maybe twice a week (most likely for the official weigh in and the unofficial official Wednesday weigh in.). I am working to go back through my files and find pictures of myself to place within the page showing myself at the various weights. I may also work on some graph...but that’s all yet still to come.
I’m feeling very strong and powerful in my emotions about this journey. I’m feeling very strong about my effort from the past two or three weeks and Strong in regards to my future weight-loss efforts.