Holidaze

So maybe it wasn't the brightest idea to start Weight Watchers a few weeks before Thanksgiving. Between that, and Christmas, and New Years, it's been a tough opening stretch. To add to that, the weather has been totally crazy where I live, and we were snowed in for two weeks. My car is still stuck in our garage, because the lumps of snow still haven't melted. So no meetings for about 3 weeks now.

But enough about the excuses - I laid off the plan for several weeks, but always with the intention that I would get back on track after the holidays. Well, it's officially after the holidays, and yesterday I stepped on the scale, expecting to be horrified.

Yet I wasn't totally horrified. In fact, I was thrilled to see that I had only put back about 1 lbs. And I hadn't been tracking. And I hasn't been exercising. So what was it? I think it was not having "bad" foods in the house. While I did enjoy more Weight Watchers 1-point Giant Fudge popsicles in one sitting than any one FAMILY should consume in a week, they were only 1 point each. And I had pleasurable meals, but often they were REAL meals... not takeout or burritos or ice cream, but chicken, and turkey chili, and home-made black bean tacos made with all-light fixins.

Also, my last Christmas gift came yesterday (all our Xmas presents came really late this year, because of the weather holding up all shipments): Dance Dance Revolution for the XBOX 360. I had asked my boyfriend for this back when I was first starting Weight Watchers... you know, in those first "ideal" days. After time passed I became less-enthused about it. But my boyfriend went and bought it for me anyways, and even when we hooked it up last night, I was worried that it would be too difficult for me. I looked at the dance pad and thought, "How the hell are my legs gonna move from one direction to the other?"

It wasn't until my boyfriend got on it and ran through the beginner levels that I got a real taste for it, and soon after I was on there, beating his scores. :)

So last night I worked up a good sweat on it in about 20 minutes. And today I unlocked the "master" game mode, where I was able to turn on "workout mode". With the workout mode, you enter your weight, and as you play the game, it logs how many steps you've taken, and how many calories you've burned in a day - and logs it for future reference. Now I'm super-excited about it. I'm kind of an Xbox achievement-whore, so the idea of a) working out, and b) getting gamerscore for it is AWESOME.

So yeah, I'm back. And I'm not mad at myself for taking this "time off", because this isn't really a "diet", this is a lifestyle change - and I know that to make it work this time, I need to be flexible, roll with the punches, allow myself to go off track every once in awhile, and soon enough the new lifestyle will be a habit.
So I'm eager to get back to my WW meetings this Saturday.

And Then It All Kind of Fell Apart...

I've had a rough couple of days (we all do, right?), as the Thanksgiving holiday served to be a test of my portion control - and I failed... miserably.

This was the first year my partner, Erik, and I didn't visit our families. We have some extended family in our new city, but we hadn't heard from them in awhile, and weren't expecting an invitation. And most of our immediate family is down in southern California. We didn't really want to treat Thanksgiving like any other day, because we wanted to be festive and all that, but neither of us ever had any hand in the Thanksgiving preparations, food or otherwise, so we had some work ahead of us.

I basically went from knowing NOTHING to: 1) roasting a whole turkey breast, 2) making delicious stuffing with celery and apples, and 3) making candied yams that Erik said were the best ever (I'll have to trust him on that - I never had yams and only had a bite of his this time). I had made the mashed potatoes, green beans, and pumpkin pie before, but those were in the mix as well. (I even liveblogged the entire day with photos on Flickr -- warning, these are of food, mainly!)

It was a HUGE day. I was on my feet, barefoot in the kitchen, all day - and oh, how my feet were sore afterwards!! I was so proud of how the meal took shape - it was just like the food I remember eating growing up, and as food is an emotional, comfort thing for me, I was in heaven...

And I completely ignored any semblance of portion control. I filled a plate with turkey (white meat, of course), large heaps of stuffing and mashed potatoes, green beans, a crescent roll, and about two tablespoons of gravy (not bad on the gravy, actually). And afterwards, I had a slice (okay, maybe two) of pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream. My only saving grace was that I made the pie with nonfat condensed milk, and chose the lite whipped cream.

All in all, not a horrible night. All the work I had done, toiling in the kitchen, helped to offset the gluttony. The problem is, the gluttony didn't stop when the clock struck midnight. No, on Friday I had pumpkin pie for breakfast, and an insanely yummy turkey sandwich at lunch (with whole grain bread and lite mayo, sure, but I went and screwed it up with stuffing on the side!), and then dinner was MORE turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy... and then I had another go around with the pie. And another.

I was feeling pretty bad by Friday night. My weekly Weigh-in is early on Saturday morning, and I was dreading it. A little after 1am, I decided I was not going to go - a mixture of embarrassment with just not wanting to go in that early. But I tempered that with a resolve to put the last two days behind me, and keep on trudging. So Saturday, I was back with a vengeance - counting my points, drinking my water, making Erik eat the last of the turkey, stuffing and pie.

I have no idea where my weight is in relation to last week. Am I up? Am I down? Well, my curiosity will have to wait until next Saturday. All I can do now is take each day until then, one day at a time.

The Year Without Thanksgiving

This year, my boyfriend and I will not be traveling anywhere for Thanksgiving festivities, nor will we be hosting any festivities of our own. Nope - it's just him and me this year. We joked about having burgers for Thanksgiving, but I know we're both a little bummed about not being able to partake in traditional Thanksgiving Day fare.

So my question is: What meal-items do you suggest for TWO people on Thanksgiving? Other than mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, we've never prepared any of the traditional items: turkey, stuffing, gravy, etc. We really don't want to have a bunch of leftovers, and we certainly don't want to roast an entire turkey... but we do LIKE turkey breast... a lot.

Any suggestions? Also, if there are Points-conscious choices out there, I'd love to hear them!

Disappointed, But Not Too Depressed

So at the end of my second week, my weigh-in revealed a gain of 0.4 lbs. It wasn't a total shock, I mean, I knew a gain was a possibility - but I had hoped it was a small one. When the "weigher-inner" told me that this week I was "at 0.4", I thought it was a loss of 0.4, and nodded my head - thinking "Whew! I dodged a bullet there!"

I didn't dodge the bullet. When I sat down and looked at my booklet, I was informed that the 0.4 was a GAIN. I was bummed, but I thought "I deserved it." Not the most encouraging thought-process, I know.

But what's interested is I came out of the meeting with a resolve that I haven't felt at all this week. My first week's drastic loss of 5.2 lbs. left me sort of cocky for the week. I thought that because I only really spent half that first week officially "on program", that I could splurge a little more than I should have this week. Those thoughts crawled up and I caved very easily to cravings.

This week, I plan to resist those urges to overeat as much as I can. I'm not going to beat myself up too badly for my weight gain this week. Because this week is over, and a new one has officially begun.

Teeny Tiny Hiccup

If I thought this was going to be an easy task and that my eating habits were easily retrainable, I was wrong. Yesterday was a prime example that THIS IS A STRUGGLE. A struggle with my own lack of discipline (dot com).

I wouldn't necessarily call what I did binge eating... wait - yes, that's exactly what it was, and denying that fact just makes it "okay" to do it again. It starts out of sheer laziness on my part: around lunchtime, I wanted to eat, but I didn't want to spend the FOUR MINUTES it takes to heat up a Smart Ones frozen meal, or spend maybe all of SEVEN WHOLE MINUTES making myself a 7-point sandwich.

No, it was much easier for me to grab a 3-point Skinny Cow Cookies 'n Cream Ice Cream Sandwich (notice how I give it a certain gravitas by capitalizing each word??) out of the freezer and eat that. But of course, when I'm really hungry, one just won't do. So I had another... aaaaaand another. 9-points, gone. 9 points for hardly any nutritional value.

So of course, about three hours before dinner time, I was famished, and I was tired, and I was shaky from lack of nutrition (dot com - sorry, that's a lame joke and I'll stop now). All of that combined led me to make a bad decision: Let's order pizza for dinner! I could get away with it, right? As long as I tracked everything (see here and here), I was good, right?

Well, four slices of that pizza did me in for the day. And I could feel it. No longer was I "famished" (what a lame word to use when there is real famine out in the world), no, I was STUFFED. To the gills. And I totally didn't need that fourth piece. By the end of the third piece I was like "Now that was filling!", but no - there was that last piece of pizza on my plate. There was some semblance of self-control, however. I didn't eat a FIFTH piece.

Gah. So yesterday was bad. And why? Couple things: 1) I didn't drink water. Not until after four slices of pizza, anyways. And by the time I did, I was clearly dehydrated. Water would have helped stave off the ravenous sense of hunger which drove me to such bad decisions. 2) I took the easy way out. Had I just GOT OFF THE FRICKIN' COUCH for ten minutes I would have spent the necessary time to prepare a proper lunch. I let my quickie-meal of Skinny Cows set me up for failure for the rest of the day. Because I figured, heck, if I'm gonna blow it, why not blow it big-time, right? It's only ONE DAY, I can "make it up" for the rest of the week.

I can't think like that anymore. Or at least, that sort of thinking should be harshly discouraged. But if I learned anything from last week's Weight Watchers meeting topic, it's that success comes from when you re-focus and get back on track when you've fallen. I'm lucky, I haven't fallen hard at this point. I had an embarrassing screw-up (an even more embarrassing one if this yields no weight loss this week, or even worse, a gain). But I can't let screw-ups get in the way of my long-term goal. I need to move on, move forward - I need to just keep effing MOVING.

Speaking of moving, I'm off to grab some water.