Weighty Matters

A loss again this week --- 1.2, so almost all of the gain from last week. It happened to a couple of other people too --- an unexplained gain, and a good loss this week. That makes 225.6 GONE, and just 2.4 to go. HOLY MACKEREL! Almost there --- so nothing else to do but keep on truckin'!!!!!!!!

In my last post, I spoke of having a "blowout meal" -- just for fun and to try to find a way to kickstart some weight loss. I went for BBQ, sweet potato crunch and green beans. YUM! Until an hour later.......... oh my. My favorite meal decided to come back with a vengeance. And this wasn't a situation where I ate until I was stuffed and unable to move. It was normal portions of foods I have eaten before. I'm not sure what happened that my body said, "WHOA! Who sent this junk here? I'm getting rid of it!" But it was great-tasting........ Le sigh.

You ever have one of those weeks where you do everything right? You eat right, you work out daily or nearly daily, and you do everything you are supposed to.......... and still gain? Yep. I gained 1.4 pounds this week, which set me back to 3.6 pounds to go for goal (224.4 gone). AARGH!!!!!!!! 24 ounces (give or take). 24 ounces are NOT going to beat me. This bump in the road is just that: a blip on the screen -- nothing to fret over, nothing to overanalyze. It happened to several of us this week, and so I know I'm not alone. I'm not worrying about anything except following the program, and enjoying the ride along the way. Still, a blowout meal may do the trick. I may just have to give in to my barbeque jones..... it ain't Maurice's but Mutt's BBQ (and their heavenly Sweet Potato Crunch) may just do the trick. Slurp!

I took part in this morning's 5K as part of the Azalea Festival. I walked it and was just hoping for a time of under an hour. See, I found out last night that the course was pretty challenging -- even hillier than the RFTC course at CU-ICAR, and I kind of got a little nervous. I wondered how well my "record" time of 56:26 would hold I crossed the finish line this morning. 48:21 I. Am. So. So. So. STOKED!!!! Now, besides the obvious, why I am so completely flippin' stoked about this? Well, yesterday at lunch, I sat down with my WW storyboard. Weight Watchers is partnering with Active.com for the Millennium Walk-Up Challenge to get us all moving and grooving more. So I sat there with my storyboard, planning to see if I could increase my average speed/time per mile. I figured a reasonable estimate was to average 3.6 MPH (for an average minutes-per-mile time of 16:40) I managed to shave 8:05 off my best time ever. In a race that I planned to use as a gauge for the future ...

Last week, I needed just 0.2 to hit 225 gone...... and I lost a pound this week, for a total of 225.8 gone! WAHOO!!!!! It's my next-to-last major milestone. 45 5-pound stars. 9 magnets now. I'm in the homestretch for real. I can't believe I'm here. Truly. I hoped, I dreamed, I planned, I wished (and all those other hopeful verbs) for this moment to come ...... but like so many things in life, all the planning and preparation cannot begin to compare to the actual moment. I'll keep everyone posted. If I work REALLY really hard, I want to be at goal by my 3rd anniversary (May 11). 2.2 pounds to go..... 2.2 to go...... 2.2 to go. 36 ounces. 36 ounces to go. OMG. WOW!!!

A few entries ago, I talked about a concept of chucking the calendar. One of our leaders-in-training mentioned this when telling her story and it resonated with me. We often talk of "SMART goals" -- with the T usually standing for "time-based." In most goal-setting situations, that's a good thing, because you don't want to belabor a project forever. You want to see measurable progress within a certain timeframe. And in some cases, it can apply to weight loss. When I was first starting WW, I did little time-based goals -- "30 by the 31st" and "Laboring for 40" come to mind. Those were things I needed to do to stay motivated, knowing that I had a very long way to go. However, if you don't have such a long road ahead, or if you are nearing the end of the journey, is it really worth the frustration to set a time-based goal? For example, my original plan was to hit goal by December 31, 2008. It obviously didn't happen, but it also didn...

I weighed in last night with a loss of 2.4 (YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), so that leaves just 3.2 to go. OMG. I can hardly believe it! I mentioned in an earlier post a book on optimism called Breaking Murphy's Law. My copy just arrived, but I have been so swamped this week that I had time to open the envelope to get it out. And it's Holy Week/Easter weekend -- so my time is going to be busy with church activities. I do promise to write some additional thoughts I have sometime tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, while at Easter we do "feast with joy in the Lord," the good Lord also expects us to not neglect ourselves either. In my own faith tradition, we have the Triduum -- the three days -- from Holy Thursday evening through Easter Sunday afternoon. They are considered one event that cannot be pulled apart section by section to determine which is most important. They're all so intricately linked that they become one event. There is no Easter without Good Friday an...

I gained 1.6 this week. I don't know how and frankly, I'm not as upset about it as I probably should be. One, I'm too drained to even begin to think about it right now, and two, I know I was on program all week and I know that I did have some non-scale victories. My pants are getting looser still, and I did some great exercising this week as well. So there, silly scale, take that! Myeh! :-p One thing that I did think about during tonight's meeting was that I didn't eat as much protein as I had the week before. That week, I did a lot of omelets or had a 3 oz portion of lean meat at a time. This week, lots more salad greens (very filling, but not a lot of protein) and usually no more than 2 oz of lean meat. So I guess that hurt more than I thought. And I've been experimenting with the 35 extra points by eating 2-3 points extra each night. What I'm finding is that I'm better off NOT doing that, but instead using a larger portion of them them as one-fell-swo...