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Pendulum

Originally uploaded by Peter-snottycat

I have the tendency, I’ve noticed, to behave like a pendulum. My arc used to be very very long – ie, I’d go a YEAR without exercising at all, and I’d eat with abandon and gain weight like crazy. Then I’d do something like sign up for a marathon, and join Weight Watchers (temporarily) and lose weight. For a little while. Then, I’d swing back again.

I think I’m just not one for super consistency. How then, have I managed to literally stay within a 4-pound range since July of 2009? (I know, I can’t believe it either!)

I still act like a pendulum. But I am realizing now, the arc of my swing is really small, compared to what it used to be years ago.

I’ll have a really monster workout day. Then I’ll have a zero-exercise day. Then I’ll work out again. I’m realizing that it’s been easier, psychically, for me to recognize and accept this pendulum. And for me, a do-able arc for going in either direction is about 3 or 4 days. There are days when I eat barely more than tomatoes and plums. And I’ll burn lots and lots of calories. But these periods don’t last even a full week. Some “special occasion” or eating out or whatEVER will come along, and, well, it will even out.

Same thing in the other way. This week I had one big restaurant meal, and then I did a ton of baking in preparation for my Weight Watchers chocolate event, (including lots of BLTs – bites, licks and tastes!) and then I decided to follow my cravings around for a few days. These cravings included Mexican food, a pumpkin cupcake from the cupcake truck, and a big honkin’ bowl of hummus.

This morning I woke up and said, “I don’t feel like doing that anymore.” (um, for right now) I got up and did a beastly workout. It was fantastic. I felt like a furnace. Then I came home and I really, really wanted vegetables. I roasted a beautiful pan of vegetables and ate them for lunch.

I don’t have a regular workout program that I follow every day. Or a meal plan (other than trying to stay in my WW points). I follow my cravings, and my body around and ask it what it wants to do.

I think if I were to swing too far for a whole week, it would be worrisome. But so far, in 15 months of maintenance, that has not happened. I weigh myself every day (I know, I KNOW, you don’t all go for that) and I am fascinated by the graph on LoseIt. It’s a jagged up and down mountain range, and it goes up and down, up and down. I don’t think I’ve gained more than 3 days in a row, nor have I lost. But it never stays the same. It’s always fluctuating: one up, one more up, four-tenths down. Two up. Half up. Like that. And there is a 5-pound spread that I have not broken in a year.

I don’t really have a brilliant conclusion to all this musing. It’s just something I noticed, big time, this week. I think it works for me. But it’s also interesting to see it’s the same exact pattern I followed in my heavier days, just scrunched down.

One of the key “Helpful Habits” in Weight Watchers is “Learn from experience.” I think this is so true. I learned something about myself this week.

What patterns have you noticed in your own journey?

Pinocchio and the Magic Nose

Originally uploaded by moonjazz

Lying to oneself, that is. Telling yourself, “I’m getting lots of activity!” or “This can’t be too many points,” or whatever the thing is that one wants to believe.

I think that a combination of dishonesty and just plain denial contributed to my recent meltdown. And the only thing that could get me out of it was facing up to stuff with myself and then with some supportive others.

Tonight I noticed Geneen (Women Food and God) Roth’s status update on Facebook: “A last thought for the night: Truth, not force, does the work of ending compulsive eating.”

How true is that! Today I realized how “fuzzy” I had become in my thinking about all sorts of things: my exercise levels, my eating habits, and my thoughts. It was great to sit down last night and write out a list of what my WW BFF and I call “Our Unhelpful Habits” (as opposed to Weight Watchers’ HELPFUL Habits which we are constantly preaching!). It was a funny, painful, illuminating and humbling exercise.

Today I vowed to be more honest. I returned to REAL tracking of my food (as opposed to “quasi” tracking). I returned to multiple-times a day blood glucose monitoring. Now THAT was sobering. I knew that my fasting BGs had been creeping up but now I realize that so have my post-food ones. That was not happy news. But I am going to see my doctor next week and I will deal with it. What else can I do? I hope that I can just increase my oral medication a bit and not make the leap to insulin. Cross fingers, people! (for those of you who have seen my show you know this is the moment for AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION!)

My little Philips DirectLife has also been very interesting in the honesty department. It definitely lets me know (with extra commentary from my DL coach!) what I’m doing vs what I *think* or *wish* I was doing. So, my daily calorie target (based on my weight, age, goals etc) is 741 cals burned. I’ve been wearing this thing a while and have NEVER gotten to that number. So today, on top of my morning walk/run, I also: USED THE STAIRS to get to my 9th floor office; had a very active WW meeting, and THEN went for ANOTHER walk before dinner! I mean come on. I got home and the graph said I’d burned 734. OMG. I put it back on, did 30 jumping jacks, and voila! 743!!! FINALLY!

But there have been days, a lot of them, when I felt like, “I’ve done enough,” and really it wasn’t.

Hopefully this will be my 2nd wind, my round two towards better health. And I do believe that being honest about things is THE ONLY WAY.

typewriter

Originally uploaded by the8rgrl

… and I can feel them piling up inside me. But I have had no time! I just now finished (11pm) a 2 hour online training module in preparation for a full day WW training tomorrow. Which I am excited about, but… TIME!

So much I want to blog about. Blog posts in the works:

1. Who is Jean Nidetch and why do I think she is a rock star?
2. Reportback from my celebratory dinners last weekend
3. Preparation for celebratory dinners this COMING weekend
4. How’s that old 10K/marathon training going? Are my feet still attached?
5. Some absolutely awesome WW training I received last week, and More To Come tomorrow
6. a couple shout-outs to Bloggers Whom I Love
7. Foodie McBody, the solo performance show! YIKES!

Tell me which one(s) YOU’d most like to read about.

It’s been a strange week. Interestingly, the week in which I pigged out on macaroni and cheese AND brownies, was the week that I also had one of the biggest weigh-in losses ever (4.3 lbs) AND reached my current all-time low weight. What do I attribute this to? Well, I got back on the exercise wagon. AND… (duh) I didn’t eat very much. I really do think the medication I’m taking has done funny, paradoxical things to my appetite. So if I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t eat. Which boiled down pretty much to dinners only for the past 3 days, and not a lot of dinner.

For a while, I’ve been toying with the idea of trying out this “system” I found on Twitter, called EatStopEat, which was put together by this guy named Brad. The basic idea is to do intermittent fasting for like one day out of a week. I’ve pretty much been doing a version of this, this week. I don’t think I could ever do a long (like more than 24 hours!) fast, or a “cleanse” as they call them. I’m just not into it. But I think I could get behind the idea of just not eating for one day out of a week. I’m going to think about it.  I haven’t bought the guy’s E-book but I think I pretty much get the picture. It’s pretty simple. Don’t eat one day out of a week, and exercise. I think I can do that. Of course, this might not be so easy once I get my APPETITE back, but how hard could it be? Is there a point to it? I actually enjoyed not having to eat or think about food this week.  So, I don’t know. I’m going to consider trying this out for the rest of the summer and see how it goes.

So this morning I went to a weigh-in, had a nice big number, a nice low all-time weight, AND a 21 lb reward (which translates into 31 lbs of actual weight, since I rejoined WW after losing my first 10). Yay! Then later in the afternoon I attended a 3 hour training session for their brand new all-computerized system.

I am so excited about this. The pencil-and-paper-and-calculator method that receptionists have to deal with has been terrifying me. I hate it. It takes me forever and I am just feeling like this is way beyond me. So I’m tickled to death that now EVERYthing is going to be on this system and I think is going to make this job 100x more pleasant and easy. They will still use the paper method at “at work” meetings but I think I can deal. Anyway, I felt very geeky and excited about this new change. And it all starts next week! YAY.

So it’s official. I now have a regular meeting where I am officially working as a receptionist for WW. My mentoring period is ‘officially’ over! I have to say that the amount of paperwork and MATH (gulp) is super daunting. But each time I learn something and I am hoping it will become easier and more automatic over time. And in a few weeks the whole system is moving to computer-only which I think (hope) will be easier. But still, there is a LOT to keep track of behind the scenes which of course I never had any clue about. Last night was a pretty big crowd and I felt like I was juggling eggs AND chickens. But I survived, and I think it all went well.

I like my leader very much. He’s (yes it’s a he!) very inspiring, upbeat, FUNNY and uses the word “mindful” a lot. Which I love.

I was so tempted to hop on the scale last night “just to see” but I didn’t.

I feel lucky and glad that I was offered a regular position the day after I became “official.” Many people have to spend a long time just working as vacation fillers or substitutes. It will be good to have a regular place and time, and to get to know people who are regulars. I will probably be going for Leader training sometime in the fall but at this point I am not in any huge hurry. I feel like I still have a lot to learn. Anyway, if any of y’all are loooking for a great meeting, come on over to Oakland 6pm Monday eves. Here I go!

I went to get weighed in today, and I didn’t take my usual “precautions” – ie., I wore more clothing than usual. I didn’t go in empty – ie without breakfast. It’s a hormonal time. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to go this week, so I thought, I might as well.

Up 2.7.

WOW. I haven’t been up that much since before I began. THAT was sort of alarming. There are all sorts of explanations. If I hadn’t had breakfast, had worn my usual WI outfit, I’d probably be within the 2 lb range. My leader’s face was like, “Whoa.”

I’m not completely freaked or anything, but that was… not fun.

Yesterday I had an all-day training for this big work event. I was in a big rush. I’d ordered bagels and coffee and sandwiches for them. I didn’t bring my Own Food, I just ate what everyone else did. Including the cookie. (OOPS)

So. There IS an explanation.

Minor pity party as I once again mourn the fact that I can’t just eat what “everyone else” is eating.  Ah well.

Second lesson of the week! (#1 was the rice) I think I can safely say I am ready to be done with these Lessons.

For a while there I was afraid that my new employment with Big Weightloss Corporation (hereby known as BWC) would mean that I would have to stop blogging. Which threw me into a total panic because I truly do think that this blog has so much to do with my health/weightloss/fitness success this year. In so many ways.

But I have found a way to make it work, I think.  The thing you’re not allowed to do is give away any BWC secrets that are not public knowledge, ie things that people have to pay for to learn. That makes sense. It is a for-profit company. But I do think that I can blog about certain aspects of my own personal response to this job, without giving away stuff that isn’t kosher.

Last night was the first training meeting. I was surprised that I really enjoyed it. The other new hires were a diverse (yay) bunch of people (all women) whom I liked a lot.

We learned some stuff about the history of BWC that I didn’t know. One, that it was begun by a housewife in 1963, who was trying to lose weight on various diets like Cabbage Diet, Egg diet and others, but could not do it. So she invited her friends and neighbors to her house to come over and discuss their various struggles with weight loss. I wonder if she was the one who made these original bizzaro menu cards! Anyway, she and her buddies started making small weekly goals for themselves. I like that it started as a place of community, honesty and support, which is totally what I think is working for me in the blog and Twitter (and RL!) world. I wish I could say that I felt a great sense of community in my own BWC meetings, but so far that has not been the case. People drift in and out and don’t seem to be very bonded. But it is one of the stated goals of what we are supposed to do: to make people feel like they are part of a group. I think this probably happens much more naturally at the At Work meetings, where it’s the same people week after week, and they already know each other. But I really want to try and develop this more when I have my own group(s). I think it’s really important.

I was nervous about coming to this training. So much that I lost my appetite pretty much all day yesterday. I was worried that because my goal is near the top of my Healthy Range, that I wouldn’t really be able to inspire anybody.  I’ve said this before, but I know that plenty of people who are at my current weight are VERY dissatisified and come in wanting to lose 20 more. But I didn’t feel bad or freakishly huge in this group and everyone oohed and ahhed when they saw my Before pics. So that was a relief.

When I went through the materials, I found them very reassuring and inspiring. I can get behind this program. So, this week I begin working with a mentor receptionist, and we’ll see how it goes. So far, so good.