One thing at a time, Self.

I had several breakdowns related to Mom over the weekend. Like sobbing uncontrollably breakdowns. I think that I really needed to get that out, and had been holding the sadness inside. Thankfully Stacey was there for me during these breakdowns. Most of the time when I bawl my eyes out over Mom, I'm alone, because I feel weird doing it in front of others. It's important that I let my loved ones comfort me.

Two of my favorite loved ones:  Stacey and Joel

I am still working on getting there with my family members... I struggle being weak in front of them, don't know why.

Anyway, after those cleansing tears, I felt better. Especially about my weight loss journey.

I had so many thoughts on Saturday, between sobs, that I should just give up on this weight loss stuff. At least postpone it until the worst of my grief is over.

But I had a moment of clarity: Mom would not want me to put my health on hold. She especially would hate it if SHE was the reason that I gained all the weight back. She knew how important this was to me, and was my biggest cheerleader for everything, weight loss included. (Though she also would start saying "You look too thin!" when I get down to about 175 pounds, which is still 20 pounds overweight, LOL)

"Leah, are you getting TOO THIN????" - Mom

So instead of giving up, I'm going to be kind to myself and take this stuff in baby steps.

I was getting angry with myself for not cooking enough, for not exercising enough, for eating too much processed stuff, and for not eating enough of the healthy stuff in general.

One thing at a time, Self.

This week, my focus will be to track everything on Weight Watchers and to not go into the hole. Stacey's birthday is on Wednesday, and there will be eating out and drinking going on, so I need to save some points for that. And I will.

If I'm still eating processed stuff, not cooking much, not exercising as much as I did before, and not eating tons of fresh produce... that's okay for now. This is not an all-or-nothing journey.

I will get back to where I was a year ago, Weight Watchers-wise. It will take some time. It will take some therapy. And it will take me being gentle with myself.

where I was a year ago... (144 pounds in late May 2011)

But I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the future of my weight loss and health, for the first time in a long while. So I thought that I would share.

I'm still writing that new challenge that I spoke of last post!  It is in fact a "calendar goal" but it's a pretty realistic one, and I promise to not be too hard on myself while I reach it.

The wonders of makeup...

The face that I've been wearing since Mom died... no makeup...  I am so sick of being told "You look so tired" that I have decided to start wearing makeup again.  I bought all new stuff, just because.

Here I am with just foundation and concealer.  I bought some special "dark circle remover" concealer that I used for... my dark circles.  I think it worked pretty well!

And here I am with EVERYTHING!  I don't like to wear too much stuff, usually sticking to neutral eyes and lips.

And there you have it.  Probably way too up close and personal, but that's my face.

I'm glad to be back in makeup and feeling pretty!

I miss my cheerleader!

Mom was not just a mom to me.  She was also my best friend!  Despite the facts that she wasn't single, and that I wasn't an only child, and she waited until she was married and already had a two year old boy and was in fact a woman in her mid-twenties before she carefully planned my existence, Mom and I were very much like the Gilmore Girls. 

We could (and would) talk about ANYTHING.  There were a couple of limits to this rule, which I'll let you guess, but for the most part we were quite candid about every little details of our lives to each other.

This was usually a great thing, because I had a mom who was so freakin' cool.  She just understood me, and really took the time to listen to my problems and share in my joys. 

Sometimes it was a bad thing, because I would confide things to her, like a fight I had with my boyfriend, and then would forgive the boyfriend, only to have Mom NEVER forget what the fight was about.  ("Are you sure about this guy, Leah?  Remember when he...")

And in return, I would share in her problems and joys, too.  But to be honest, usually it was me doing the talking and Mom hanging on to every word as if I were the most interesting person on the planet.

She made me feel like I was the center of her universe.

And her family really WAS the center of her world!  She loved us so incredibly much.

Dad, Mom, me and Joel - 1984

And something that I hope she knew:  She was the center of my world, too. 

I am still struggling every day to accept this terrible loss.  I may be a 27-yr-old now, but my life still very much revolved around my mom.  And I'm trying to figure stuff out. 

What does this mean for this blog?

Well, there may be more "dear diary" type entries sometimes, like this one.

Because sometimes I just need to vent.  And sometimes I just need to talk about Mom.

It also means that I need to start another weight loss challenge for myself, to help motivate me.

My biggest cheerleader is gone, and now I have to find the inner strength to keep going.

I will be back soon with the details of my new challenge, which I'm still working on...

Getting out of my weight gain comfort zone...

As much as I want to regain control over my eating and my weight, I am having the hardest time sticking to Weight Watchers.

I remember WW being easy. I remember being able to lose a pound a week by just tracking my food and never going "in the red". I remember loving to eat healthy meals like a big bowl of brown rice with beans, EVOO, and tons of veggies. And mostly, I remember all of these things coming to me naturally, and never feeling deprived.

Yeah... this was EASY-PEASey...not.

Ummm.....yeah.... I'm pretty sure that my memories of being on WW in the past are a bit romanticized and not actually what I experienced.

I'm pretty sure that when I first started WW, I felt hungry a lot of the time, and that I missed being "allowed" to eat ANYTHING and EVERYTHING with the wild abandon that I give into during stages of weight gain...

I'm also sure that once I forced myself to break out of my comfort zone, I was able to embrace WW and it began to feel routine. Like, how I was supposed to eat. Getting used to the WW way of eating didn't happen overnight for me last time, so I don't know why I'm expecting it to happen overnight this time.

I need to give myself a break.

Sure, I keep on diving into bad habits (not tracking, giving up on the day, eating a bowlful of peanut butter with several pieces of bread, etc.).

But it's because I have gotten used to overeating on things like bread and peanut butter... chips... chocolate... etc... and that is what I like to eat right now. It's comforting to me. It's comfortable for me. It feels like it's how I'm supposed to eat, because that's how and what I've been eating since Mom went into the hospital on May 22.

That mindset about comfort eating did not just go away because I joined Weight Watchers Online.

I need to stop giving into that kind of eating, need to force myself to really give Weight Watchers a try again, because I know that it works.

And I know that it's not a miserable way to eat. Memory tells me that it was actually kind of easy and delicious once I got used to it.

So that's my plan now, to just really give WW a chance. It will probably feel uncomfortable at first, but it will be worth it soon.

Here I go.

2 pounds in 2 weeks... a note on calendar goals

Today I'm having one of those WW highs... I feel like telling the world that I'm on WW, and praising the plan.

I've been back on for 2 weeks and am down 2.2 pounds so far.

That may not sound like a lot, but for me that's the pace that I like. And, to be honest, the first two weeks back were not perfectly OP weeks for me. There were times that I didn't track (I did a lot of what I call assumptive tracking... "I'm just going to assume that the rest of my dailies are now gone...) and I didn't pay too much attention to the GHGs.

So to follow the plan not 100% and to still lose at least a pound a week is amazing.

I'm going to try really hard to follow the plan as written for week three and see how the scale responds.

Though I'm pretty content to keep on losing about a pound a week. That's how I lost 50 pounds in 2010... (seems like such a long time ago, doesn't it?)

I am trying so very hard to not set any calendar goals for my weight loss this time around (the LAST time,  dammit).

My brain automatically goes to "Oooh, two pounds in two weeks? I guess that means that I'll be done losing weight in about a year!" but that is just not going to be true.

I know that it becomes harder to lose weight as I get smaller. And I'm prepared for this to take as long as... two years. LOL Oh well, baby steps!

My three angels - Mom, Rose, and Stuffy
Together again!

Weight Watchers: The Good, The Bad, and The Plan!

I am back on the Weight Watchers wagon, and I'm loving it... for the most part.

There are so many good habits to embrace about Weight Watchers.

So far back on plan, I've noticed that PointsPlus has helped me in some ways and hurt me in others.

Here's the good, the bad, and the plan for week two back on WW.


The good:

(MOST) Fruits and vegetables are "free". This has encouraged me to eat lots of both. And I do. Eat lots. Of both. Which is a good thing! Vegetables and fruits are healthy and keep me full.

Activity Points make me want to exercise a lot! So I do. Since being back OP, I've exercised almost every day, and usually for about an hour. Exercise is a great endorphin-booster and so it has helped me not just with staying OP, but also with busting some stress.

All foods are allowed. No restriction of specificity, just quantity. So I am eating things like pizza and chips alongside my healthy Power Foods, because it's okay to eat these things in moderation.


The bad:

Weekly and Activity Points can be eaten at any time. And I'm sure this isn't how the plan is meant to be followed, but I kind of use those "extra" points on overeating and NOT listening to my hunger signals. I use them as permission to emotionally eat. 

I guess that's it. But that's a pretty big bad in my book. I need to stop overeating, and realize that I don't have to eat those points if I am not hungry. When I do eat them,  I should be using them for extra fuel, not extra junk.


The plan:

My plan is to start trying to listen to those pesky hunger signals again. If I'm hungry and out of dailies, drink water and eat fruits and veggies and low point Power Foods instead of saying "screw it" and overeating on junk food, thus making a huge dent in the WP/AP.

For now, it's Wednesday and I've used 70 "extra" points already. That's out of my WP and AP, and I still have a few left (this has been a heavy exercise week for me). I will be working on the hunger issue, and of course I get a clean slate on Monday...
It's good to be back.  :-)

Back to WW - Week One!

Monday, June 25
Official weigh in: 190.4

Day one back on track.  I considered waiting until Wednesday when I woke up, because that's when my brother goes back to NYC (where he lives) and it would be easier to just postpone this again.  But I went with my gut, which told me to start NOW.  Today went pretty well.  I ended up eating half of my weeklies, and that's okay for day one back.  Got on my bike, trampoline, and Nordic Track for an hour of cardio in the afternoon.

Tuesday, June 26

Day two! Because of more family drama, I was back in MO all day (middle of nowhere, no internet access) and ate fast food twice and didn't track.  Dinner was no better.  I ended up just calling the day 70 Points Plus even though I didn't actually track...

Wednesday, June 27

Day three... So far so good.  I did get on the scale again, just to see, and I'm still at 190.4 which kind of figures since I ate a lot of salty and fatty foods yesterday and have not been on top of ANY of the healthy checks for WW.  Today I'm determined to work on all of the healthy checks.  I'm even going to try to get in two servings of soy milk in daily, because I just noticed that there is 50% of required B12 in every cup of light originial Silk soy milk, and that's a very important nutrient!!!  My brother went home today, and it sucks to not have him  here anymore.  It's time to go WW grocery shopping, which means taking a copy of the Power Foods list with me! 

uh-oh.  Somehow got ahold of Stacey's little debbies and totally RUINED my WW week.  However, I'm going to start over tomorrow and not beat myself up over this, because I am being kind to myself now.  :-)

Thursday and Friday

I did pretty well with tracking, and tried to not let the negative numbers get in my way.  I still ended up overeating on Thursday. 

The Weekend

Sporadic tracking, but still WAY better than the last several weekends.

Weigh-in after my 50% OP first week back:
189.2 (-1.2)

YAY!