Just this Once…

Wow, May already! Today was going well, but I got the munchies, and, well, that wasn’t so good. Calories were 1624.

Well, nothing stellar to report today. I don’t have time to exercise on Wednesdays since I don’t get home until 10:30 or 11pm, and it’s bedtime. I made a couple poor food decisions - I ate those  Quaker Oatmeal breakfast squares for 220 calories each! And they’re really not that big. I’m done with those silly things. Calories eaten today: 1583.

Well, I accomplished three out of my four goals for the day. I am not happy w/ myself for eating the second Weight Watchers frozen dessert. That was not necessary, I did not need it, and I said I wasn’t going to eat it. What more can I say? I will learn from that mistake (I say it as if I hadn’t already made that mistake a thousand times before), and tomorrow is a new day. I barely squeezed in the exercise. I was not feeling motivated to exercise, and even after I started, I never really got into it. It was like I had to force myself the entire time. Yesterday’s exercise was the same way. I need something to help make me enjoy the exercise more.

Alright, as I said yesterday, I’m going to start posting daily goals, and hopefully this will help keep me accountable. Goals for today:

• Log food consumption into CalorieKing first thing after arriving home from work Done!
• Exercise for at least 30 minutes today Done!
• Purchase no extra food today (no fast food, no buying something at the store on my lunch hour) Done!
• Eat no more than one frozen WW dessert Whoops - I ate two.

Alright, it’s been so long most of you probably don’t even remember when I was blogging back in January. And, guess what? I didn’t fare too well these past three months that I haven’t been blogging. This morning, when I stepped on the scale, I was 5.4 lbs higher than my previous high weight. And my size 16 dress pants that I wear to work are definitely getting snug. I could write pages upon pages about what happened (I was doing so well in January), why I gained the weight, the things I need to change to be successful, but I’ve analyzed all those things a thousand times. It would practically be a waste of time to go over all that yet again. The truth is, I am where I am. I wish I had the “weight control secret,” but I don’t, and there is none. Here’s where I feel like listing all the reasons why I need/want to lose weight and all the terrible consequences of being overweight, but that’s all been done. What I will do now is make a plan to go forward. So, I will blog every day with at least my menu for the day. And here’s my plan. I’m going to make my goals one day at a time with perhaps an overall goal for the week. I’ll post my goals for the next day on here at night or first thing in the morning. Then I’ll report on how I did. I think not thinking too far ahead is key … the big picture is overwhelming, and it’s pretty hard for me to know if exercise will fit into my day as some point far out in the future. This may sound strange, but I’m going to model my weight loss plan after one area in my life where I have been fairly successful recently, and that’s budgeting/money spending. I’ve attempted to budget many times in the past (not quite as many times as I’ve tried to lose weight, but a lot) and never kept up with it for more than 2-3 weeks. I’ve been faithfully tracking every single expense and sticking to a budget for the past 12 weeks, without missing a beat. Here’s what I did differently this time:

• First, I didn’t try to plan out the whole year’s budget at once. I take it one month at a time. So I just now made May’s budget. And my budget does vary a lot from month to month because my expenses do. Taking it in very small segments at a time has helped.
• Second, I keep it simple. In the past, I’ve made extremely complicated spreadsheets to track spending and made myself subcategorize nearly every expense, so I might take me several minutes to enter one receipt. And I’d have to agonize over whether or not a roll of paper towels were a “cleaning product” or a “general household item.”
• Third, and I think this is most important: I don’t have the all-or-nothing perfectionist mentality. If I overspend in one category, I don’t throw in the towel and go on a shopping spree. Why is it though, that if I eat one extra cookie or break one little diet rule, I go on a calorie spending spree? Often, I do go overbudget, but I still try to do the best I can, and I don’t feel too guilty about it. I need to employ that attitude to controlling my eating. There really are a lot of similarities with “budgeting” and “dieting.”
• Another random observation I want to throw in here: everyone also talks about how this is a lifestyle change and not a diet, and I agree, it is. I must continue to eat and exercise the way I did when I was losing weight for the rest of my life, if I want to keep the weight off. However, I almost think I sabotaged myself by taking that “I’ll do this for the rest of my life” thinking to the extreme. It made me feel certain that I would fail, because I knew I wouldn’t avoid chocolate for the rest of my life . I’m not sure what the balance is, but for now, I think it’s best for me to take it one day at a time. I need to mentally break everything into days. If I mess up one day, tomorrow is a new day.

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Thursday, Jan 24:

Well, I’m still going strong! It’s been 24 days without sweets. And I guess it hasn’t killed me yet! This mornings weight was good. Down a couple pounds. I have stopped journaling for now (mostly because I was eating food that I didn’t have nutrition info last weekend, I was extra busy this week, and I’ll be having food that’s completely out of my control this weekend), but I’m still eating well and low calorie. I’m using more of the WW core concept. I do plan to journal again when things settle down. I think it’s important to make good food choices both when I am and am not journaling. Exercise has not been going so well and that won’t change until Monday, unfortunately. I have some new plans for that which I’ll post about later. I’m really worried about this weekend. I will be around snacky junk food all weekend and I will have no control whatsoever over what food is served from Friday night until Sunday night. That’s a lot of eating w/o controlling what it is. Therefore my goals for this weekend are:

1. Stick to my no sweets rule…no sweets, at all…if I started, I know I wouldn’t stop. The one possible exception is lunch on Sunday when it might be obvious that I wasn’t eating dessert.
2. Only eat when I’m hungry…no mindless munching.
3. Do NOT under any circumstances get in the “all-or-nothing” mentality. Don’t feel like I can eat whatever I want just because I’m not able to journal or have control over what food is served. Continue to make the best choices possible.
4. I think this is the most important goal: Pick up on Monday with my healthy eating and exercise as if I’d never missed a beat! Don’t let a less than stellar weekend be a discouragement.

I’ll report back on Monday with how I did.

Wednesday, Jan 23:

Well, I had a disappointing weigh-in for the second week in a row. I was down about a pound from last week (where I was up .4, so essentially I lost .6 this week and last combined.) Well,  I know that body weight fluctuates a lot and there are many factors involved, but I’m really ready to see some payoff for all this hard work! I’m continuing to stay strong and hoping for some good numbers at the end of Junk-free January!

Well, Saturday and Sunday did not go quite as well as the rest of the week had gone. I still did not give in to any sweets, but I ate more calories than normal. Not sure how many. Wasn’t able to count. I did not just pig out or anything. I just snacked on too much homemade sourdough bread and ate higher calorie meals. I had company and was eating with them, so it was harder to eat well. Sunday the group I was with went to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. I’m telling you, those Mexican restaurants are the worst for ppl trying to eat well. There is NOTHING really low calorie on the menu. And they bring out all those chips and salsa before your food comes out when you are absolutely hungry.

So this might be a little weird, but I’m going to do it anyway! I haven’t posted in a little over a week. However, believe it or not, that is NOT a sign that I’ve fallen of the wagon. Quite the contrary, I’m still keeping up the no sweets thing or “Junk-free January” as Danielle calls it. I have been so busy and had lots of company so I haven’t been able to post but there were things I really wanted to say, so I’m going to write the posts anyway,

I did AMAZINGLY well Friday. Thus far in the whole junk-free January, this is the moment I’m most proud of! I ate well throughout the day (less than 1000 calories). Friday night I went to a friend’s house who was having a bunch of people over just for DESSERTS! Desserts…nothing else…just desserts. Can you believe it!!?? How can this be? And in Junk-free January, none the less. Well, we arrived and, sure enough, desserts abounded. She had so much! And everything looked so amazing. She had this delicious looking chocolate cake. Oh, chocolate! I haven’t had that in weeks. And I was watching people eat it. There was also ice cream, hot fudge, cookies, cheesecake, etc. The only remotely healthy item was a bowl of only partially thawed frozen fruit. Definitely not as good as that chocolate cake! But, I didn’t give in. I had one little bowl of the fruit, and that was it.