The view from the plateau

Plateau.
I have reached the plateau.
I can see over the edge of the cliff and it looks amazing over there in the land of under 200 pounds.
The path down looks easy enough but my body keeps saying "Nope. I'm happy right here."

At first I increased my exercise and watched what I was eating really closely. And I gained. And I lost. And then I gained. And then I lost. Never actually breaking the 200 mark.
Then I gave up. I basically said "whatever I guess I am stuck here"

And it has been that way for a little over a month, almost two now.

Its driving me freaking crazy!

So weigh in today and yeah I lost a whole pound, but that means I am 201.2 again.
Again! I was there two weeks before for the love of Pete!

A friend told me a while ago about a Ted Talk that discusses the problems of weight loss.
I watched it.

While I agree with a lot of what she says I have a hard time agreeing with everything. Perhaps that is my own confirmation bias since I really want to lose weight. I've seen many people who have successful weight loss and who have kept the weight off.
Also I don't think that the set point is something that you cannot overcome. I think it can be changed.
Unfortunately I think its probably a rather slow process.
I think that weight watchers is a form of mindful eating. I think that is why it has been so successful for so many.

So I have made a decision. I will ride out the plateau for a while longer. I am thinking it will probably last until the current production I am working on is over.
Why? Because I rarely have time to cook and I rarely have time to exercise other than the usual of running around on stage like an idiot.
Once I can start incorporating more exercise then I think I may break the barrier. But I do not expect to lose as fast I was before. Those first 40 pounds came off so quickly. Maybe my set point right now is 200? I honestly cant remember the last time I was under 200. I think it may have been junior year of high school?

I just really, really, really want to be below 200. I wouldn't even mind if I was stuck at 190 for a while just so long as I am below that horrible, least favorite of all, numbers. I would like to some day be the weight I have lied about being on my drivers license for over a decade now.
Wow that just hit me. I have said that I am 175 on my drivers license for OVER A DECADE!
That's almost depressing enough to make me want to sit down and eat a jar of Nutella. Almost.

I think I have finally hit the point in my life, with the help of weight watchers and my amazing support group, where I am ready to change. I am ready AND determined to be healthy. While I would prefer to be 150 pounds and fit into a size 12 jean I don't think that is going to happen. Realistically I want to 175 and wear a size 14.

Mostly though I want to be healthy. I want to not get winded when I bend to tie my shoes. I want to be able to take a couple of loads of laundry up and down the stairs without having to sit down and catch my breath in between. I want to live long enough to see my nieces and nephews grow up and start families of their own. I want outlive all of my damn cats!
I want to see the sun rise from Mount Kilimanjaro, and hike back to Stanley hot springs in a weekend and not feel like I need to cut my legs off by the end of it. In a somewhat sadistic way I want to try to run a half marathon. Okay maybe a not a half marathon. I would settle for a 5k. But I want to be able to say "Yeah I did that, may not have placed by I finished." As opposed to "I cant do that. It would kill me."

So I guess this has been a little rambly but basically I am trying not to get discouraged by the plateau. I am trying to work through it and let it run its course. After losing 40 pounds in 4 months it has felt like the most discouraging thing ever. I just have to get through it though. Ride it out. Its like I am on a drive from Genesee to SLC and I have hit the boring part between Twin Falls and the mountain pass. You know the part where its nothing but flat, straight road accented by the occasional tumble weed. Yeah. I hate that part of the drive. But eventually I will see pretty mountains and trees and arrive at my destination. Just have to keep the car at the speed limit and know that there is better scenery and better company just a ways down the road.

Well that sucks

I gained. Again.
Why is it so easy to fall back into bad habits? It's not like I was gorging on chocolate cake the whole week. I drank more than I should have and indulged in some Doritos. But seriously? A whole pound?
gahhhhhhhh!
Bastard!
Now it's back to the drawing board. Time to get serious...Again.
I wish this was easier. I wish I could change my eating habits without feeling like I'm denying myself of the things I enjoy!
How could I have done so will just to fall back again?
Grumble grumble gripe gripe!
Guess it's time to turn on the work out video and just work again

What a week!

So this last week I was absolutely horrible. I ended up gaining two pounds and feeling awful about it.
I know why I gained I know I was bad but it doesn't make me feel very good at all.
I really need to get bank in track. Oy but it is so hard! I just don't have the time to cook I don't have the give a damn to cook.
I just don't wanna! I have been so stressed and so tired I just don't wanna.
Sigh.
Guess I need to go grocery shopping. Get off my ass and just do what needs to be done.
Blah!

Lets get serious

Okay so it's time to get serious.
I mean I have been doing this since January. I have had ample time to figure out the point system and how to use the app and website. That is not my problem.
Nooo my problem is I am not taking this seriously.
Let me start at the beginning: my sister, who is more than my sister, she is my soul mate (not the romantic kind obviously!) decided she needed to make a change and that she was going to join Weight Watchers. Another childhood friend has had great success with the program, so she decided to give it a shot as nothing else was working for her.
I decided to join so she would have some support, someone to commiserate with when she gained instead of lost, or went over board on the nacho platter. Someone to cheer for her and do a happy dance when she lost weight, and hey if I was losing too even better!!!
So yeah I wanted to join Weight Watchers to help my sister be successful and to maybe lose some of my unwanted weight too. The only problem is I didn't really commit. I see that now. I committed to helping her, but not to helping myself.
I look at my tracking and I see more gains then loses. I see all the times when I just didn't give a you know what, and ate whatever I wanted. I still tracked it but I was obviously not doing myself any favors.
Then my sons birthday came around. He wanted a very specific cake. A seed cake. I had never made one before so I did a test cake. It was very dry, in the end, in my attempts to make a seed cake that wasn't like drywall, I made 5 test cakes. and yes my family and I ate all five. This happened over a week and a half! 5 seed cakes plus the 2 actual seed cakes for his party and then a regular birthday cake because we decided seed cake with frosting would not be an awesome combo.
THAT'S A LOT OF CAKE PEOPLE!
Plus all the candy in the pinata and fruit snacks and cheese, root beers, grapes, crackers, mushrooms, ice cream, oh man we had so much food!!! (It was a hobbit themed birthday party if you haven't guessed yet!)
So yeah needless to say I didn't even bother to track for the last two weeks. I know I know bad bad bad! And I ate more junk than I should have, than I would have if I had been tracking.
On the bright side I only gained 1 pound 4 ounces. On the other hand, if I had behaved myself and stuck with the tracking and paid attention to what I was putting in my face, I may have actually stayed put or even, dare I say it, lost weight! (Gasp!)
So after doing some reflecting this weekend I decided, I really need to get serious. Not just for my sister, but because I need to help me. Obesity runs in my family like blue eyes or large noses run in other peoples families. I have seen the health problems and the dissipation of quality of life first hand. I don't want that for me and I don't want that for my kids.
I want to run and play and have the energy to keep up with my kids and grand kids (if I have any) I want to live a long healthy life span without the pain and misery I watched some of my relatives suffer through.
So from here on out I am going to get serious. I am going to hold myself accountable and do everything I can to succeed on this plan. This up and down business has been quite discouraging but it has been my own doing. I know I can loose on this plan. I mean I lost 5 pounds my first week because I was committed. and then I got lazy.
No more. From here on out its crunch time. Okay maybe not crunches I hate those things, they kill my back, but you know what I mean!
So let's get serious and do this!

long slow road

Well this week was pretty tough. Eric had been sick and we have both been feeling stressed and down waiting to hear back on test results. The good news is it's nothing serious the bad news is they aren't really sure what's wrong. We should hear Monday on the bacterial culture and more blood work.
Needless to say this week we basically ate nothing but comfort food. I tried to stick to the healthier snacks but didn't get a drop of exercise in. So I only lost a half a pound. Eric on the other hand lost 3 pounds this week! The doctor told him it was time for a life style change and I think with the "we don't know" diagnosis it scared him enough to take it seriously this time. He's cut way back on beer and is starting to be more mindful of his points.
I hate that it took a scare like this to make him get serious about getting healthy but glad that we are staying sooner rather than later.
Complete derailment from previous topic.
today we are doing a cook everything day. In which we prepare a months worth of meals and freeze them. I got all my recipes from laaloosh.com, skinnykitchen.com, and food.com (search under weight watchers recipes). I am really excited to try some of them! Especially the nutella banana bread!
I find it so much easier to be good when I have meals made ahead. Especially since starting after Valentine's day I am going to become very busy and have zero time for cooking during the week.  I got cast  in a play! It's a rally physical show so will hopefully help with the exercise!
Anyway how's it going this week? Any achievements or bragging? (Half a pound!) Any set backs ore general gripes? (I miss juice)
Keep your chin up! If you don't then you just spend the whole day staring at your boobs!

Danielle's mission slimpossible

Howdy! I am finally posting  about my weight watchers journey. I haven't been doing it very long.
I started this journey to support my sister and because nothing else I had tried had worked for me. I am starting on the downhill side of my 30's and am learning that it only gets harder to loose it the older I get.  For the sake of getting to know one another, I am a soon to be 37 year old mother of 2 boys ages 8 and 5! I have never been terribly active as far as running or playing sports goes. I am more of a bookish, crochet junky who loves her geeky TV shows i.e. Dr. Who, and The Blacklist, just to name a few and to keep this blog post on the shorter side. Since having my first child 8 years ago I have only continued to gain weight. Over the last 2 years I have managed to loose 5 pounds a year according to my Dr. but hey maybe I was just having a good weight day on those days ;)
So I started on January 4th of this year. I weighed 184 pounds give or take a few ounces. My goal weight is 140. So my first week I totally rocked it out of the ballpark and lost 5lbs!!! I was so totally stoked (wait do people even use that word anymore or am I dating myself?) Excited, lets go with excited! I was totally excited.
The next week I only lost 2 pounds. Not sure why, I haven't had the time to go back and look at my tracking that week, So it could be something I was eating or perhaps I went over my points allowance that week. I am also not working out as of yet.
The next week was even worse because I gained those 2 pounds right back. Now to be fair that week I was having my friendly monthly visitor, or as my hubs and I call it Shark Week. On Shark Week I usually crave all manner of carbs, sugar, and greasy fatty foods. So yeah I bought some donuts and I yeah I had 3 of them, so there! And I bought some Doritos Taco chips too. Ugh I was totally bad on Saturday, but I am pretty sure I didn't gain those 2 pounds back in 12 hours. Mostly sure, but hey what do I know!?
This past week I lost 2.8 pounds. so who knows what that means. Shark Week could have been excess water weight, or bloating or whatever. Is this TMI?  I'll stop now.
So Super Bowl Sunday. Oy! I saved up all my splurge points for the week and didn't really eat much on Sunday morning. So I had a good store of points. I must admit for the sake of full disclosure, I didn't keep track of my points during the super bowl. I did keep track today, and yes I went over my daily allowance. I think I am at 26 points a day. We have left over super bowl food, so that didn't help. Not that I binged on junk today, but I did have some of the soft pretzels I baked, and some of the homemade mini pizzas. The one thing that will probably kill me is the soda. I had two sodas during the super bowl, and finished the last two off today. So I definitely need to go run around the block or something. On the plus side I hardly ever drink soda. Which if you know me is a small miracle. It was at one time my go to drink of choice. But after having two kids, coffee and lots of it, is my beverage of choice. So I am going to have to be really good the rest of the week to make up for Sunday and Monday.
Some observations on this current journey of mine: I enjoy this system. I like that I can eat mostly what I want. I like that it helps me control portion sizes and I like the ease of keeping track of my points on my phone. So that has been nice.
What is difficult for me is I make most of the things I eat from scratch. So I am constantly having to get on the computer after a meal and write in a recipe, and try to guess how many servings there are.
Example: I make my own bread. But when I make my bread I make 8 loaves at a time. The problem with the recipe writer is that they want to know how many servings those 8 loaves of bread contain. WHAT!? How should I know? It depends on how thick you slice the bread! So my recipe is a total guess on that score.
Oh well. I really wish I could just add the recipes from my phone but they don't let you. Probably a software thing. Also you can't add a recipe into a recipe. So when I make little mini pizzas I make my own sour dough pizza crust. But I can't add that recipe to the mini pizza recipe. Kind of frustrating.
But these are minor issues. I am really enjoying the program because I am seeing progress, Not a whole lot but more than when I wasn't on it. One step forward two steps back. I think what I need to do, when I can find the time, is go through my tracking so far and see what it is that has been keeping me from major success. Is it going over my points or is it something I am eating that is a large portion of points. That sort of thing. Also I need to throw in some exercise. Definitely need to throw in some exercise.
My main food downfall are potato chips and chocolate. Luckily we don't buy potato chips often, but we always have chocolate chips on hand for all the baking we do. I have actually found however, that just 2 or 3 chocolate chips are enough. They are actually quite heavenly in small doses, and I find that I savor them more than when I am having a handful. Interesting.
My biggest problem is portion size. I grew up with the more is better philosophy as far as how much food should be on your plate. So actually measuring with measuring cups has been an interesting experience. Interesting in that I feel kind of ridiculous measuring my food out onto my plate with measuring cups, but even more importantly realizing, once I have eaten, that that is all I really need to feel satisfied.
So anyone else have any major revelations, success stories or just griping they want to get off there chest? Let us know in the comments! :)

Sorry for the absence

I've been finding it very hard to come up with something to write these days. It seems the longer I am on the program the harder it is to lose.
I was pretty stagnant for a while. Didn't lose anything over new years and then only half a pound the next week. I decided to get of my booty and start working hard at it again and low and behold I lost five and a half pounds!
I think right now the hardest thing for me is that it doesn't come naturally. I have a tenancy to think "well what could one little piece of candy hurt?" then the one little piece turns into four or five. I also fall into the trap of "I will work out tomorrow, I'm to tired after working all day". Which at this point means a zero or small loss For the week.
With the grey days and stress at work getting up in the evenings and being active has been very hard. I knowu will feel better if I do it, it's just the getting going that is tuff.
Thank goodness for the Amazon music app and Pandora. I have gotten into the habit of turning these on when I am in the kitchen and just dancing around like an idiot. It's amazing how a little hip shaking can really rev up your heart rate. Plus if you really shake your hips you are working your core. I think that's how I found my waist again.
Hoping to find hip bones next!
There had also been good news on the support front. Diana and Danielle have both started and that's encouraging as they are two people I confide a lot in.
Together we can do anything!
How are your weeks going? Any news is greatly received.
Love you all and keep plugging away. Remember the only one who can stop you from doing anything is yourself!