Angel Food (lowfat)

I gave up last week. I threw up my hands in dismay. I was exhausted from failing. My weight loss has been stalled out for nearly two years! I’ve been somewhere between 153 and 162 since the fall of 2006 - nowhere near the 210 I was at my highest, but still a few sizes away from my beloved size 8 jeans. (I own one pair of size sixes, but I’m not crazy about them…) Somewhere on Thursday, I stopped my food journaling and decided that exercising was just not happening. I needed to reevaluate. Clearly, my half-hearted attempts at weight loss had become more trying than the times when I worked hard to lose weight.

On Sunday, my weekly Monday morning weigh in looming, I found myself with a choice to make. Do I, for the umpteenth time this year, stop my food diary, stop counting points, and stop working out? Or, do I do what it really takes to lose weight? New marriage looming, I realized that I must choose the second option. I don’t want to become a new wife weighed down by feelings of failure and disappointment. I want to start my new life feeling strong and healthy. I’m marrying a pilot who’s six years my junior, for goodness’ sakes, I need to be able to keep up with him!

After that little epiphany (yes, one can skip church and still be given epiphanies), I immediately set about finding my old WW points logs from 2005. Thank God that I saved them. I wanted to see what I did that made me so successful in weight loss a few years ago. How dedicated was I really? See, I have been telling myself lately that I can count points ever so loosely and still succeed. My journals tell a different story. I was shocked to read how faithful I was at points counting. I seriously stuck to the plan? Oh yes. On weeks that I went over my points allowance, I usually didn’t lose anything or gained a little bit. Another thing I noticed is that I regularly ate all of my recommended fruits and vegetables. I was the fiber queen!

Sitting in my kitchen on Sunday, with all these old WW journals in front of me,  I felt a strange combination of annoyance and relief. Annoyance  - that I’ve not been wanting to admit that someone else’s plan worked so well for me. (I am too gosh darn defiant and independent at times.) Relief - that there was something out there that worked for me. So, today, I am proudly giving up my own stubborn ways and am back on my the WW points plan (22 base, 35 flex a week). I’ve been fibering up and feel much less hungry than if I’d just been subsisting on cheese and crackers (re: last week’s breakfasts).  I’ll check in here again during the week to report on whether or not I’m ready to cannibalize myself from hunger (likely, I’ll be ok). I hope to report my weigh in results regularly on Mondays from now on (nothing like some accountability to start the week). For someone like me who likes to feel so in control, it actually feels kind of good to tell my little points log that it is to be my guide.

Today’s weigh in: 160.6 

I had the most lovely lunch today. A coworker emailed a last minute invite to our staff to join her for lunch in the dining hall. It’s “Fried Chicken Day” at the college where we work, which always puts people in a celebratory mood . Diet be darned. You don’t say no to Eddie’s Fried Chicken.

This Georgia girl enjoyed her chicken, collard greens, and black-eyed peas immensely. Even more special, however, was the camaraderie around the table. We were a diverse group of personalities but had a fine time talking about our families, tv, zodiac signs, church, etc. What we talked about honestly didn’t matter. I was struck but how we all were engaged getting to know each other better. There was no competition, no gossip, just pure enjoyment of the moment.

This is what “good food” should be about, right? Not the grams of fiber, the number of calories, or even gourmet ingredients. Good food helps to bring people together. Nutrition has its place and must not be totally ignored, but the best food is the kind that makes you comfortable and happy enough simply to relax, enjoy the moment, and feel the love.

Perhaps this entry’s title is a little over the top. I didn’t win anything, and nobody’s giving me a medal or putting a laurel wreath on my head. I’m celebrating, anyway, though! I survived my near exercise-less week with weight loss plans intact. I knew that my week would be nuts and exercise would be difficult to squeeze in, so I didn’t beat myself up about it. I did what I could, which turned out just to be one intensive cardio day and one yoga class. But, just doing that little amount of exercise reminded me of the commitment I have made to myself to get in better shape.

However, my biggest success last week may have been in my dieting - making realistic choices in what I eat, and staying focused on the end goal, even on days when a little too much food made its way down my gullet. Last week, I decided I was tired of failing at hitting my points targets, so I made some small adjustments to my daily points values. Usually, when I’m counting points (I do Weight Watchers flex points, with a current base of 22pts) I get desperate when my points start to run low for the day. I tend to freak out, thinking there is no way I’ll be able to deal with the hunger that is necessary for losing weight. Then, I’ll just sabotage myself - might as well just go all out at dinner since I won’t hit my points target anyway, right?

Well, last week I decided that just wasn’t good enough. I don’t mind telling you that I didn’t hit my points targets at all. Instead, I gave myself three extra points a day. In real nutrition speak, I think that’s about 150 extra calories a day. It was enough to take the edge off, fit in an additional snack or larger meal, and still lose weight. To be perfectly honest, I still went over my points, even given the extra 3 a day. No matter, though. I wound up losing 2.2 lbs, which is light years ahead of where I’ve been in my weight loss lately.

I think at the heart of this success is simply that I didn’t give up and I took it easy on myself without losing sight of my goal. It’s been ages since I’ve been this excited about making real changes in my lifestyle. I look forward to working out now. I’m trying new foods (papaya lime salad today - yum), and I’m not worrying about what the scale says every morning. Weight Watchers folks talk about “non-scale victories” - well, I had a scale victory this week, but the non-scale victories of being kinder to myself and changing my approaches to food and exercise feel even better.

Wow, this old blog sure is dusty. My weight loss has more than stalled, it has reversed. I put on 5 lbs nearly overnight in September. I’ve only sort of halfway been counting points, only mostly faithful with my food diary, and only occasionally hitting the gym. Honestly, my heart hasn’t been in my weight loss lately. Honestly, my heart hasn’t been into anything much lately.

Three weeks ago I helped my fiance move halfway across the U.S., and I’ve been trying not to think about how much I’m missing him. We’ve been doing the long distance thing for a long time, longer than we actually dated in the same city. But, when he was down in Florida, he was a fun five hour drive away. I’d hop in the car, find some baseball game to listen to on my XM, and then settle in for the jaunt through the backwoods of the South. Now, he is a whopping sixteen hours drive away from me. I won’t be seeing him again until Thanksgiving. And, I’m totally oscillating between (1) feeling like this is a wonderful opportunity for me to take advantage of this time to work on me and plan our wedding AND (2) feeling overwhelmed by the planning, the loneliness, the fear of all the changes that are taking place in my life. I’ve been having restless dreams that can only be defined as loopy. I’m trying to put on a very brave phone voice when I talk to my fiance who has his own problems out in Oklahoma.

So, I give up. I’m gonna stop trying to be so brave and hiding how I feel, which is morphing into added stress, which morphs into added foodstuffs finding their way on my plate (or napkin, or just straight from bag to mouth). Instead, here I am again, back writing in all my strange glory.

And, as an added dose of irony, I’m off to a wedding cake tasting with about 10 points left in my day. Here’s to cake for dinner…