Daily Wahnsinn

I think I need a new scale. Or, you know, throw out the one I have and forget to replace it. My weight has been all over the place, thanks to bloating, water retention, etc. But still, it told me that I’ve “lost’ 10 lbs in the last 2 weeks. Yeah, that sounds right.

Since re-starting Weight Watchers, I’ve moved my weigh in day to Sundays so yesterday I weighed in for the first time. I was really happy with my weight dropping down to 149.5 lbs, which meant a 7.5 lbs “loss” from where I first re-started. As I mentioned in a previous post, a few factors (my period, a late dinner the night before) contributed to higher-than-expected starting weigh, so the majority of the 7.5 lbs is most likely just water. Either way, it feels good to be less bloated and just feel thinner again. I did stick to my daily and earned activity points, so there should be some fat loss in there too.

Things that worked for me this week:

• Reduce processed carbs. I think I had one or two slices of pumpernickel bread and a clif/luna bar. That was the worst carbs I got. Otherwise it was whole grains, mostly whole cooked barley and fruits and vegetables for carbs.
• Drink water, drink water, drink even more water. And then some more water.
• Cut out diet soda.
• Get back into an exercise habit after my break.

 Speaking of exercise, I’ve done a lot of upper body training in the last two days. Especially this morning, Bishop seemed to be on a mission during bootcamp. It was a small class with only 8 people and he had us grab those stackable step up benches and then went on to torturing us for 60 minutes. Each us of had to go 5 boxes high and then he had us do elevated pushups (feet on the box, hands on the ground), some sort of burpee variation where you start in a plank, then jump your feet up, do a pushup and jump back down to plank. Another exercise he had us do was starting on the right side of the box in plank, do a push-up, walk your hands (still in plank) up the box and over to the left, pushup and back over to the right. I nearly died during this one. Of course in between he chased us up 6 flights of stairs twice, having us do super-jumps (2 steps at a time). We finished off by stacking more boxes, putting a bar on top and then doing pull-ups. I hate pull-ups. So much.

I can feel myself getting sore already. I can barely lift my arms. Yoga’s going to be interesting tonight. The only good thing is that a sore back/arms/shoulders makes me forget that yesterday my legs were sore. Maybe I can even head out for a job tomorrow.

After March’s WIT being a bit of a bummer, I was ecstatic to step on the scale today as part of my monthly weigh in. I had a really good feeling about it, judging from how my clothes fit and how I generally felt. My guess was that I was bloated and retaining water in March, so I had hopes for the April weigh in. Not to spoil the April goal reflection, but I failed on the Do not step on the scale part of the plan. I did weigh in a couple of times on my bathroom scale. The results had been great though fluctuating so I knew whatever the scale would say at my Weight Watchers meeting, I was fine.

Anyway. I was shocked when I stepped on the scale and it gave me 137.6 lbs. That’s A) a lot less (weight & more weight loss) than I had anticipated and B) it’s fucking fantastic. I expected to see maybe 139 – 138.5 if I was going for it. I was ecstatic! I lie. I still AM ecstatic. I lost 4.2 lbs in April, which is huge, given how close to goal I am. Everybody who’s ever tried (or is currently trying) to lose the last couple of pounds, knows how hard it is. If you have a lot of pounds to lose, they tend to come off quickly at first, especially if you move from a poor diet and inactive lifestyle to a good diet and at least some exercise. Mine certainly did. The closer to goal you are and the more your body is accustomed to good habits, the harder your body seems to make you work for it.

This result excites me for a couple of reasons:

• April hasn’t been a good month for me. My job was crazy, I was injured and my eating left a lot of room for improvement. While these are not things I plan on making a habit, it’s reassuring that I can through tough times and come out just fine. A crazy period in my job – they’re unfortunately unavoidable – does not equal putting the weight back on. It doesn’t mean that once I maintain and I get busy again, I will undo all the work I’ve done. I got this.
• For the first time ever in my life, I’m within the BMI range I’m supposed to be. I know that BMI is an imperfect metric and that you can be within your suggested range and be unhealthy. You can also be outside your suggested range and be healthy. I know that. Still, I do believe that the BMI is a general guideline that helps you assess where you should approximately be. When I first started losing weight, I was at a BMI of 34.7. I am now officially at 24.4. I never thought I’d ever get there. I worked so hard for this and taking this milestone feels amazing and rewarding and fuck yeah, I’m proud of myself. My total weight loss is now 58.2 lbs. Only a couple more to go.

I guess my true highlight of the day was something else though. For those not familiar with Weight Watchers meetings, at the end of each meeting, the meeting leader will call out celebrations, where members are encouraged to speak up about their scale and non-scale victories. Today, this one woman in my group reached goal. She lost 60 lbs in total and when she originally started losing weight, it was due to her doctor giving her the choice to either lose weight or take all these pills to fight her obesity-related diseases. She didn’t want to take the pills and instead worked on losing weight. When she spoke about her journey today, she was close to tears because she was so relieved. She’s a regular at the meeting I go to and I know how hard the last couple of pounds have been for her. It was beautiful to see she finally got to where she wanted to be.

A few more cool things:

• I finally signed up as a volunteer for an upcoming race to get my 9 + 1 volunteer credit. I’ll be a course marshal at the UAE Healthy Kidney 10k in May. Fun, right?
• Tomorrow’s the draw for the non-guaranteed entry to the 2012 NY Marathon. I don’t have any hopes to get in, but we’ll know about that tomorrow.
• I ordered something from Etsy the other day and because the USPS are idiots, they kept trying to deliver to the wrong building, even though I confirmed multiple times that the address was accurate. I finally called their customer service last night and got very upset with them over the phone – after it took a small miracle until I was even able to speak to a person. But apparently that helped. Package is waiting for me at home. YAY!
• I also worked out this morning, even though Tuesdays is my rest day and I almost did not. I have friends coming to town this weekend and I don’t know how that’ll affect my workout schedule. I didn’t want to take any chances and since I didn’t really need a rest day (I hadn’t worked out for 6 days in a row, so I was fine). I almost skipped the workout because I had a hard time getting up this morning, telling myself I was going to do it tonight. At one point, I actually said out loud to myself, “You know yourself, you’re not gonna do it.” Then I got up and was awesome.

My day in le forme du bullets:

• Went to my Weight Watchers meeting this morning and I’m really starting to enjoy the monthly weigh ins. Not seeing the weekly, instant feedback on the scale doesn’t make me feel any less accountable for my actions and my decisions. It doesn’t make me try any less hard to lose the last couple of pounds. But it does take away a lot of the stress and heartache bad or mediocre weigh ins have caused me in the past.
• We talked about negative talk in the meetings today and everybody who knows me will confirm that I’m the Queen of Beating Myself Up. If that were a kingdom. If I have one talent, then it’s being hard on myself and beating myself up over my “faults”, “weaknesses” and “mistakes”. It was interesting to see that, obviously, I’m not the only one, but that a lot of other people are hard on themselves for the same reason I am: it protects you in a way.
• After the meeting, Steve, my meeting leader, approached me and Emily, another girl in our Tuesdays group, and asked whether we’d be okay with leaving our email addresses because he’d like to nominate us for the Weight Watchers Success Stories. If we get picked, someone from WW will come talk to us, get our story, they’ll do an official photo shoot and feature us in the magazine/weekly booklet they give out. How cool would that be?
• Throughout the day I struggled to meet yet more deadlines and work on yet more client-fire drills. At one point I snapped at my supervisor (I apologized later), but her hovering over me did not make me complete my tasks faster. 
• After work, we got taken out by a publisher for an event. As stupid, stressful, awful, inhumane, boring, every-other-negative-word-you-can-think-of my job can be, it definitely has also its perks and fun sides. Being treated to fancy restaurants is something we’re used to by now. Sporting events or shows somewhat too. Tonight a publisher that we’ve already spent significant amounts of money with this year took us to Earnest Sewn in NY’s Meatpacking District to buy us new jeans. I ended up with a black pair of their Decca style (I think, they kept it to have it tailored) and holy, I’d never in my life spend that much on a pair of jeans, but hey, they’re free!
• I also drank a small glass of wine and ate two gigantic slices of pizza. I do feel a little bad about it, but I started making up for it by walking home instead of taking the subway.
• The weather is gorgeous in NY today. It’s warm and it feels like spring. It’s beautiful. That walk was needed for more than one reason.
• When trying on jeans, I felt super conscious about my body. I tried them on in a size 27 and they were too small, so I sized up to a 28. They still sit tightly and I don’t know, working with so many skinny girl and me with my big runner’s thighs just made me feel very self-conscious. I kept scrutinizing my body in the mirror. Meh. I also realized today that my shoulders that have always been broad, started looking even bigger. I also have a gigantic rip cage. I still have quite a bit of softness around the belly, but my rips already poke out. My imperfections, perfectly aware of them today.
• My kitchen scale died and me being as obsessed with numbers as I am, I was totally freaked out. I realized that it was only the batteries and indeed, after buying new ones, my scale has come back to life. Phew. I also bought a card that I’ll send to my parents some time this week to just generally say thank you and that they haven’t put me up for adoption when I went through puberty. I was a bratty teenager. And I have wonderful parents. I figured it doesn’t hurt to let them know. 
• I realized I have a lot of clothes but I don’t have a lot of clothes that actually fit me very well. Maybe it’s time to go through my wardrobe, get rid of the things I never ever want to fit in again (apart from a few items of “memorabilia”) and generally make room for new things that I will fee good in.
• I’ve been somewhat awful when it comes to exercising during the last week. I took two rest days last week and also didn’t work out yesterday. This morning I didn’t either, so though you could count tonight’s walk as a workout. I have to run tomorrow.

A while ago I made a pact with myself: no scale until 2/28.

I have to admit that at first, not stepping on a scale has been hard for me - someone who is obsessed with numbers. After a few days, while the urge to weigh in still was there, it actually felt liberating and I felt like a giant weight had been taken off my shoulders. No pun intended. Now as 2/28 is coming closer and closer, I feel the pressure build up again and it’s quite honestly freaking me out a little.

I’m not gonna lie. If I put on weight, I’ll be devastated.

The idea behind this whole exercise was to prove to myself that I could live happy and healthy (physically and mentally) while listening to my body and its needs and yet still lose weight. The idea that the scale might say next week that I gained is making me anxious. I’ve been thinking about breaking my No Scale promise for a quick snapshot during the weekend. If I stepped on the scale tomorrow and on Sunday, it’d give me a general feeling of where I am, two days to take fluctuations into account as opposed to having to live with whatever the official weigh in says on Tuesday.

I’m just not sure whether it’s a good idea.