After momentarily feeling like I wanted to crack the little scale display, I decided that I cannot stress about this weight gain. Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting a major loss since it was such a big family weekend with no points-counting involved. I wasn’t expecting such a big gain, either, but what can I do about it? I can’t change what I did (biscuits and gravy, cake, calzone, brisket, cookies…) or didn’t do (exercise, count points)last week. All I can do is work toward the future. So, I’m back to counting points, and I’ve been to the gym 3 days in a row.

Perhaps the best news of this past week is that I resolved to be confident at my brother’s wedding. I was going to wear a purple and brown, long-sleeved, autumnal dress. It would have been pretty, but I would have shrunk into the background. Instead, I took a risk and wore my favorite bubble-skirt blue tank dress with a gorgeous jewel-toned turquoise jacket. Recently,  since I’ve gained weight, I’ve let myself fade into the background. I don’t want people to look at me and think, “too bad, she’s not as skinny as she once was.” But, honestly, I can’t control what others say and think. What I can control is how I feel about myself.

Last weekend, I decided to feel beautiful. And, you know what? I not only felt beautiful; I also felt totally invigorated. Just the experience of feeling beautiful has given me the motivation I need to move on from my weight gain and to not lose faith as I try to lose weight. I’m actually looking forward to keep “working the plan” (as my friend in AA says), and I anticipate great results.

One’s brother only gets married once (one hopes!), so I didn’t worry about dieting over the weekend. I weighed myself Monday (why do I still torture myself like this?). The results weren’t good - too much wedding cake, I suppose. I avoided the buttercream, but the raspberry mousse filling was absolutely dreamy! On the plus side, I worked out last night for the first time in weeks, doing a new weight routine for arms and revisiting an old ab workout. I feel good and strong today and plan on doing some cardio this evening. Since I’m back into my healthy routine, I’ll cut myself some slack tomorrow if my weigh-in isn’t ideal. But, I’ll be sure to weigh-in to keep myself focused and on track.

Bonus: If you’re looking for a killer lower calorie chicken parm recipe. Check out this Light Chicken Parmesan from Everyday Food. I substitued Panko (I have a monster sized bag of it) for the whole wheat bread crumbs. The dish is simple but terrific for dinner and makes great leftovers for lunch. Your coworkers will be jealous!   

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 

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.

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.

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…

It’s very rare for me to go through an experience like this. The last time I can remember feeling the way I feel now was when I was trying to get over a heartbreak. I’m not heartbroken now; I have a very lovely man who pledges always to be in my life. Yet, we are in a period of transition as he prepares to move across the country and we prepare to get married. Can someone experience grief over ending a chapter in her life? That’s what I feel I’m going through now.  I’m closing the chapter on an old, deeply rooted set of hopes and dreams, yet the new chapter hasn’t quite started. I’m foundering in this uncertainty but recognize that I can’t continue with the emotional achy-ness that I’ve become immersed in for the past few days.

There are a lot of things I don’t have control over in my life these days, but I refuse to lose control of my own happiness. Ignoring my friends, eating boxed meals, and climbing into bed at 8:30pm certainly aren’t good remedies for staying happy, are they? I need better remedies. I need to be with friends right now. I need to rest. I need to cook. I need to eat. No one else is going to take care of me, as much as I’d like them to, so I need to be sure that I’m taking care of myself as I close one chapter and start working on another.

My heart is overfull, and I want to eat any number of good things and replace all the difficult emotions with pasta, ice cream, and cashews. Nearly every day for the past three weeks has been a struggle for me to keep my emotions in check, my eating in check. Thank God I’ve identified that I’m an emotional eater, so I can limit myself to just a third of a pint of Haagen Dazs at a time. Still, I miss those days when life was more boring and green beans and other healthy things could fill the hollow spot in my gut.

The market has all sorts of really cool (re: intimidating) whole fish, crab legs, claws, lobsters, clams, etc. Wanting to make a quick and tasty dinner, rather than exercise my culinary muscles, I chose some very approachable 21/25 jumbo shrimp.

I love spicy food in the summer (it goes so well with a crisp pale beer), so I decided to make Shrimp Fra Diavolo for dinner - a tasty saute of shrimp served with a spicy tomato sauce over whole wheat pasta. I’ll have to make the Fra Diavolo sauce again to be able to give an actual recipe. Essentially, I used San Marzano tomatoes, a little garlic, fresh basil leaves, cayenne pepper, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. It was too sweet. Then, my fiance got home and decided to dump some cajun seasoning in it, against my protests. Turns out he’s got a pretty good palate after all. The sauce was suddenly nicely spicy and not too sweet. The shrimp, however, were more controlled affair. So, here’s my homespun recipe for Spicy Lemony Sauteed Shrimp (or Shrimp Fra Diavolo when served with the spicy tomato sauce).

If you have fresh herbs on hand (especially basil, parsley, or oregano) mince the herbs and toss with shrimp at the end of cooking.

1 tbsp olive oil

1 medium shallot, minced

2 large cloves garlic, minced

1 lb shrimp, peeled and cleaned

generous pinch Cayenne pepper

generous pinch of salt

1 lemon, halved

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add minced shallot to pan and sauté until shallot softens and is translucent. Add garlic to pan with shallot and sauté until garlic just begins to color (do not let garlic turn brown). Carefully add shrimp to pan so oil does not splatter. Stir and sauté shrimp until it is barley cooked, just opaque on each side. Remove pan from heat. Sprinkle cayenne and salt over shrimp to taste. Squeeze juice from lemon over the shrimp. Add herbs, if using. Toss shrimp until well coated with spices and aromatics. Serve immediately.

Serves 4, est. time 30 min (incl. prep), est. 4 WW points