my family exhausts me

it has been quite the weekend. i have spent more time with my family over the last 4 days than i have in a really long time - including the trip we took to austin. there's an added family member though - my great aunt, who is 95 - and while she's the sweetest lady ever, she's managed to make us all a little crazy. she's pretty lonely, and when she's around us, she talks nonstop. she has been going for 3 days now, and the trouble is that she ran out of things to say 2 days ago. so she's repeating. and repeating. and repeating. it's kind of annoying, no matter how sweet and cute she is at 95.

her favorite topic for the weekend? how much weight i've lost and how pretty i am now!! it's not a backhanded compliment, but it pretty much feels like it. as if i wasn't pretty before (i'm not, but that's a self-esteem issue, not a beauty issue). i'm so tired of people talking about my weight. can we please let it go now? a simple "you look great" suffices. the rest of the family managed it.

i know she's just trying to pay me a compliment, but really. i'm done. can we please change the subject now?

the beer diet - i swear it works.

i joke around a lot by nature, but sometimes i forget that not everyone appreciates my sense of humor. i've gotten pretty vocal (and off-topic) recently in my WW meetings - i'm loud and obnoxious when i'm comfortable, and it seems i've finally gotten comfortable in my meetings. and last night i made a joke that i don't think everyone appreciated.

i've seen tremendous losses in the last 2 weeks, and the only thing that i can attribute to changing is that my beer consumption has pretty much tripled since the start of june. so after i stepped off the scale last night with another multi-pound loss (2.5 this week), i joked to my mom that i was going on a beer diet. when we got around to celebrations (i was celebrating 90 lbs lost), my leader asked what i would recommend to the newbies and i said, jokingly, the beer diet. some people laughed, but my leader looked horrified. immediately i said that i was joking, and then made some helpful comments about tracking, etc., and we went on. i made another comment to my mom later about the beer diet, and i got a nasty look from my leader.

i'm joking around! seriously. i'm not condoning consuming massive amounts of alcohol, particularly as a healthy way of living. but i don't think it's a bad thing to show that i can still have fun like any other 25-year-old on the planet and still loose weight. isn't that really what WW's message is - learn to eat what you want while living a healthy lifestyle? maybe i'm wrong, but that mindset is what keeps me focused.

encouraging v. overbearing

i have a friend who did WW a long time ago, and has actually made lifetime twice before, but has gained back the weight again. now she has other health problems (sleep apnea, diabetes, high bp, etc.), and isn't really doing anything about it. she's taken some classes on dealing with her diabetes, and the doctor just keeps telling her that most of her trouble would be solved if she lost some weight - just 10% of her current weight. she tried south beach for about a week, and then gave up. she ate the diet prescribed by the diabetes person for a week, and gave up. she tells me these things constantly, but i don't see any commitment on her part to change.

she's watched my journey thus far, and also comments that she needs to go back to WW. i've never pushed, just encouraged. offered for her to go with my mom and i, so she'd have a buddy to help her on her journey. told her about the program, and why i like it. she finally told me last week that she was going to go to a meeting this past weekend, and when i asked how it went yesterday, she said she didn't go. her excuse was that she forgot to print the meeting schedule, so she didn't know what time to go. and promptly followed it up with a "but I really do need to go."

this frustrates me, because i'm kind of tired of hearing her shoulda/coulda/wouldas. she could do this, if she really wanted to, but i know there's no commitment on her side, and i know from personal experience that you can't make someone be ready to change their life. they have to be ready themselves, or they don't stick to it. it's just the way it is.

how do i stay encouraging without getting overbearing, or worse, just getting fed up at her? i want to print the schedule for her, just so she won't have that excuse, but i won't. i don't really want to talk about my success with her, because it will just inspire another round of "i should..." i feel like i'm in this weird catch-22 - she won't do anything at all if i stop encouraging, but i'm afraid i'll get pushy with her if i have to listen to her do nothing for much longer....

frustrated. agitated. annoyed.

hm. there seems to be an epidemic. a plan canceling epidemic. and it's reaching a new high.

i get really annoyed when people cancel plans on me, especially when they have no real good reason. i do my best to keep plans i make with people, and really only cancel them in dire situations. why can't people have the common courtesy to do the same?

i just got ditched because "8:00 PM is too late to go out." um, seriously? you're 23. 8:00 PM is not too late. in fact, it's early. especially on a saturday. we've had plans to do something this weekend for 3 weeks, and you cancel on me the night before. yes, i know you have to work all day tomorrow, and i don't, but wouldn't it be nice to just go have a nice dinner and maybe go to the movies afterwards? don't feed me lines like "oh it'll be more fun when you can come down for a whole day and we can go to the mountains or something." bullshit. dinner and conversation can be fun too.

what. the. fuck.

so apparently feeling out of control isn't always a bad thing.

i lost 4 lbs this week. what. the. fuck?! i mean, seriously.

since my last weigh-in, i have consumed over 90 ounces of beer, 7 slices of pizza, and an undetermined number of m&ms. i ate all but 10 of my weekly point allowance, and feel like i hardly cooked for myself at all (which is true).

the leader i had for meeting this week (my normal leader is on vacation) said that sometimes our bodies like it when we mix things up - break the routine we get used to - and it kickstarts our metabolism. sounds good to me.

but it's time to get back to the routine - tracking, watching what choices i make, earning APs, etc. i only have 1.6 lbs left to hit my goal for 4th of july. 2 weeks to do it. no problem.

feeling out of control

i hate feeling out of control. yes, i'm a control freak, and a planner, so of course being out of control makes me nuts. and this has been the worst week for feeling out of control.

i know exactly how it started: i weighed in last thursday, went home, and ate 4 slices of pizza and drank 4 beers. bam! out of control. friday and saturday, i wrangled it in, but then sunday came. even though i made weight watchers recipes for dinner (mid-afternoon dinner), i still managed to overeat my daily points. only by a couple (and i had activity points to supplement). last night was dinner at grandma's, and while it was delicious, it was over my points for the day. tonight we're having a dinner party/meeting for one of the groups i'm a part of, and i have NO control over what's being served. knowing the person cooking, it'll be full of fat, but delish. i'll just have to watch my portion size.

it's tuesday. i weigh in again on thursday. i'll be thoroughly surprised if there's a loss this week.

in the meantime, i'm not eating at home tonight, i'm going to the baseball game tomorrow night (woo beer points) and it's our monthly birthday celebration in the office, i have a lunch meeting at the olive garden on thursday (soup, salad and breadsticks, baby), and finally i have a lunch date on friday. saturday, there's a fair chance i'll be eating out twice.

i hate feeling like this, but it's how life moves. how am i supposed to work the program when my life pretty much prevents me from doing it?

oh wow.

so yesterday was a minor victory in the land o'weight loss. i was down .8, which puts me just shy of my 85-pound star, and within 5 lbs of my 4th of july goal. not bad for a week packed with snack attacks.

then it was post-meeting time and i just seemed to forget who i was and what i was doing. 4 beers and half my weekly point allowance later, it's friday morning. i'm surprisingly not running slow this morning (probably a good thing, since i seem to be the only one in the office...), but i am feeling rather guilty about the ridiculous amount of food/alcohol i inhaled yesterday.

granted, i know that my WPA is there for me to use, but i usually use it over the course of saturday and sunday, not all on thursday, right after WI. oh my.

well, this means i'll need to be on my best food behavior the rest of the week. particularly over the weekend. help!

people never cease to amaze me...

...in good and shocking ways.

the fact that i've lost 83 lbs has become quite evident in recent weeks. when i wear a shirt that is too big for me, it's very clearly too big for me (4 sizes, usually). a lot of my pants don't fit right and kind of hang off my legs (it's hott, let me tell you). most people have been doing the rave, "oh gosh! you look amazing!" thanks. i feel amazing. the conversation at work turns to WW more and more frequently, and everyone around here knows i'm doing it. or so i thought.

today, however, something interesting went down. i was standing in the kitchen after finishing my lunch, deciding if i was going to have enough cheese today to count as a dairy serving, or if i should eat the yogurt i brought. of course, i wonder these things out loud. one of my co-workers (of "your hair looks like crap" fame) was in the kitchen and she goes, "are you still doing that program?" i said, yes, of course. her response? "is it working?"

seriously? seriously.

kind of ego deflating (the praise has definitely gotten to me), but i'm really kind of amazed by it. you see me every single day of the work week. you really don't notice that close to 100 lbs of me is gone? i understand when i don't see it, because everyone has a fake image in their heads of what they think they look like. but really? everyone else on the planet can see it, and you want to know if it's working?

sometimes, people really make me wonder...

things i should have addressed yesterday

i consistently write notes on facebook that really have nothing to do with anything specific. sometimes they're about articles i've read, or events in my life, or just random thoughts that have bubbled forth into written form. yesterday i wrote an open letter to my "children," or rather my friends who are not being particularly friend-like as of late. this was all prompted because one of my closest friends canceled plans for the 2nd time in a week, and was putting her EX-boyfriend ahead of us (who, incidentally, dropped everything to take her to dinner on her birthday when the asshole broke up with 2 days prior). granted, there is a lot backstory here that i'm not going to share, but it came down to the fact that she was choosing he who broke her heart over they who helped fix it. anyway, this prompted a nice facebook note about being done - how it was time someone appreciated me and decided that i was most important. even though i wrote it out there, i guess i didn't realize how upset and hurt i really was. not until around 9 when i got around to tracking my dinner points.

my roommate and i made breakfast for dinner - pancakes and bacon and fruit. and i ate 6 slices of bacon (well, 12 half-slices, because i cook bacon only in halves) without even realizing it. i just ate. it was delicious and accessible and damn it, if she wasn't going to be there to eat, i was going to eat it for her just to prove to her that she missed a delicious meal.

one of the big things i've been trying to learn through WW is how to curb emotional and celebratory eating. we all do it. got a promotion - let's go out for a good dinner and drinks! bad day at work - bring on the chocolate and pint of ice cream. lonely - eat a bag of chips. everything is punctuated with food. i was trying to make myself feel better, and make my friend feel guilty (even though she didn't know i was eating the bacon), and i was going to do it with food.

i'm frustrated that i didn't recognize that i was emotionally eating. i need help working on recognizing it before it happens; or at least while it's happening so i can nip it in the bud. hindsight is 20/20, but how can i work on becoming a new me if i just fall into my old habits when i'm tired or upset or lonely? or even happy, for that matter?

work and creepers

when i first started WW, i tried to keep it under wraps at the office. not that it was a big deal, but it sort of was. i did, however, confide in two of my closer friends... bad news, because they're pretty much the office gossips. anyway... lately, it's become a lot more obvious that i've lost a good amount of weight, and people have started commenting on it. there is one lady in particular who makes a really big deal out of it. she works remotely a lot, so she's in the office maybe once a week, unless she's teaching at a client site. she hasn't been to the office in about 3 weeks, and yesterday made a HUGE deal about how i looked. it makes me feel good, but she does it in a way that EVERYONE in the office knows my business (aka, she's really loud). she then proceeded to tell me that when she was in her early 20s, she lost about 80 lbs and the hard part for her was the attention from men. apparently, some guy told her he would drink her bath water. ew. ew. ew.

i'm not quite sure what to take from the conversation yesterday. i definitely don't look forward to creepers hitting on me, if that's what her point was. i'm excited that i've done really well in my journey toward a new me, but it's still weird when people notice. i don't know what to think most of the time, and we all know how horrible i am about receiving compliments. i don't have much practice in this area... the looking cute and flirting part. i guess i'll just have to take it as it comes...

it's the bangs

i have been friends with my best friends for 11 years, since we started high school. 4 of the 5 of us have our birthdays within 30 days of each, and we're well into the heart of birthday season. so the scene: bowling party to celebrate my friend's 25th. a bunch of people who we haven't seen since high school are there, including friend's older sister. my best friend and i were chatting with her, when she looked at my best friend and said "what's your name? i don't think i remember you." my other friend popped off, "well, she did get bangs." my best friend has lost 27 lbs over the course of the last year, and doesn't really look like she did in high school. but no, sis didn't recognize her because of the bangs. not the weight loss.

surprisingly, sis wasn't the only one not to recognize my bff. i thought it was awesome. here is a girl who is at the skinniest she's ever been in her life, and people don't actually recognize her anymore. i hope that day comes for me. it would absolutely be liberating, and feel like i've really made a change in how i live my life.

shoes shoes shoes shoes shoes

i've noticed something lately: i've become the girl that wears heels with her jeans.

i was never the girl that wore heels with her jeans, let alone heels. in fact, i didn't even own a pair of pumps until i started actively job interviewing during my senior year of college. i was the girl with 2 pairs of shoes: flipflops and sneakers. that was it. and that worked for me. besides, heels weren't comfortable shoes, and believe me, life was all about comfort.

i've been working full time for three (gasp!) years now, and have slowly developed this love for heels, but really only over the last year. it started with that first pair of pumps in indiana, and then i found some other cute flippy shoes - though they were all still flats. then i came back to colorado and hit what can only be called my fashion low (well, in terms of work attire - i lie, all over). i was at my heaviest weight, and things didn't fit right. pants, shirts, shoes. flipflops were easier.

as i've lost weight, shopping has become enjoyable again. over the last year, i've bought myself a number of new pairs of shoes, and pretty much the only thing i wear to work is a heel. i have my awesome sparkly shoes, my new birthday sandals, my ankle boots, and my generic black pumps. if i had the money, i'd have a crazy assortment of shoes.

i'm not sure where this girl came from, but i like her. i think i'll keep her. and the shoes.

i did it!

well, it's official. i got my 75 lb magnet last night at meeting - holy moley! i've lost 75 lbs in just about 9 months. that's CRAZY!! i still have over 100 lbs to lose (to be at a healthy BMI), but it feels amazing to know that i've done this much, so a few more won't be that hard. :D

i've been getting some great compliments this past week, and it's nice to hear. one lady at our meeting last night said that she could see a tremendous change, just in the 5 weeks that she's been gone. that made me feel really great, mostly because i still don't see a lot of the change myself. there are little things - smaller pants, shirts that don't gap ridiculously, etc. - but i still have a hard time noticing how big the change really is. but i'm more than pleased, and happy to take the compliments. because maybe now, i can actually believe them. :)

just 4 days until my birthday!

why do you call me skinny?

let's face it. i'm not skinny. i'm still 125 lbs overweight. but lately, this has been the compliment of choice. my cousin, whom i haven't seen since january, came with us to a baseball game the other night, and the first thing she said was "damn, you look really skinny!" which is great, and i said thanks (i'm really trying to get better about taking compliments), but i can't help thinking that it's not true. i'm still fat. i still have to shop in the plus sizes. you can tell me look great, or that you can really tell that i've lost some poundage, but really? skinny? i don't buy it. but you can still keep commenting on it. i'm fine with that.

in other news, i am one pound away from my 75 lb mark. woot! i'm very excited about hitting that, especially right before my birthday. :D

week 32

so i weighed in for the 32nd time at weight watchers last night. i've lost 70 lbs in just about 8 months. that's pretty crazy. and a lot of weight. i mean, that's a big 3rd grader.

i'm really happy that this is working, but i've definitely started to get into the phase where this feels like more work than fun. i don't know if it's just because i'm getting tired of writing down every single thing i eat, or i "miss" being able to lay around on the couch for 8 hours without getting fidgety, or what the cause of this work-like feeling is. it's not like i'm not getting to eat the foods i want (case in point - cheese enchiladas for dinner last night), and i've totally learned how to read a nutritional label and make wiser decisions than just eating any old thing.

this feeling bothers me because it can ultimately lead to laziness and a lack of motivation to stay on track. and i like the track that i'm on. but how do i get past this feeling of drudgery to a place where i'm content again?

man, i blew it.

i was out of control yesterday. my eating, at least. i had a huge point lunch (thanks to the carrot cake and cream cheese frosting that was dessert), and i could not control my snacking. so i ended up eating through more than half of my flex points for the week. i've got to get back in control, and get back on track for eating some healthful, delicious things again. i don't know what exactly my trigger was yesterday on my snacking, but i have a feeling that it had to do with pure boredom. i should have made myself get up and go for a walk, but i didn't. i sat in front of the tv. and i ate. and ate. and ate.

oh well. today's a new day. back on track. exercise. whatever i can do to get this back where it needs to be.

off the topic...

so this has nothing to do with anything i usually write about, but i'm all of a sudden really sad.

one of my friends, that i've been trying to help find a job here for awhile, has made a huge decision in his life: he's moving to chicago, with or without a job. which totally depresses me. i have all these great friends from college, and almost all of them have moved out of colorado. this guy was just about the last of the people i want to hang out with that's left in the CO. i'm really happy that he's made an actual decision about his future; i'm sad that he's leaving me.

because, still, everything is about me.

ups and downs

i've been in this weird up and down pattern lately. i'm still losing good amounts of weight, so i'm not on a plateau. it's just a weird vacillation. i hope this week i don't go back up. i've stuck to the plan, walked a LOT, and haven't gone out of control on my snacking. so... i guess what we'll see what the scale says this week.

in other news, i bought new clothes this weekend, and i'm really happy that i can buy clothes at places other than at lane bryant. i can't wait until i can just go shopping with my friends at any store. :)

photos.

okay. so i have some various pictures to put up, to illustrate how i've changed in the almost 7 months i've been on WW. i don't have any current full body pictures, so i'll try to get one of those, and post before/after in another post. :)

photo from before i started WW, during our trip to Chicago in May 2007.










the brothers and i, in december 2007, after 3 month and about 35 lbs lost. note the long bangs and lack of seeing my hair, which until 2 weeks ago was pulled up in a messy bun constantly.







easter 2008, with my cousin. 65 lbs gone, and a new(er) haircut. it's hard to tell, but it's about shoulder length, with distinctive layers that frame my face.

whoa.

so it's been quite a time since i updated this thing. today is Easter. and i ate a lot. i didn't use the tools that i've learned from my time in WW. i didn't go completely overboard, and i actually ate a LOT of veggies, but i definitely fell victim to the potato chips, and my Easter favorite - sausage pie. it's terrible for you, but tastes so delicious. egg, ricotta cheese, and italian sausage. but i only get it once a year, so i'm allowed to enjoy it. but i wrote down everything i ate, and yes, i went outside my daily points, but heck, it's Easter. and i really enjoyed my day. :)