Fail

I succumbed.

Someone left half a bag of freaking candy corn in the kitchen, and I fell prey to its siren song.

I was poised to deal with doughnuts, with candy canes, with sugar cookies, even with those peanut butter cookies topped with a Hershey's kiss.

But how was I supposed to resist candy corn? That's Hallowe'en candy! I'd dropped those defenses for the year! And not just a handful, either. I snarfed so many of those little puppies that I actually feel faintly nauseous, now.

I'd track the points and chalk it up to a learning experience, except that I have no way to know how many servings I ate. Three? Four?

And tomorrow we're having our belated family Christmas dinner, and we're having both pecan pie and coconut custard pie for dessert. Coconut custard!

I'm doomed.

*deep breath*

One failure -- or two, or three, or even a dozen -- does not mean the diet is doomed. Deprivation is not the answer, and neither is defeatism. I had some of my best weight loss ever in weeks where I was indulging a little almost every day. This is not the end of the world, right?

Right. It probably isn't even as bad as the pizza and carrot cake and ice cream that I had at Gran'ma's house last week. I just can't let it become a pattern. I'll eat a healthy breakfast and lunch tomorrow before the dinner, and only the one piece of pie (not one of each!) and then on Friday I'll get my ass back on that wagon. I'll find healthier outlets for whatever stress is driving me to eat past the point of nausea. I'll go to the gym and work it off -- the stress, and the extra calories.

I am not going to be defeated by candy. I am certainly not going to be defeated by stale candy. Right?

I What?

I missed last week's weigh-in, because I was at my mother-in-law's house and didn't want to deal with a different scale.

I spent the week trying very hard not to eat out of boredom. Or stress. Or both. The closer we got to the end of the week, the more that resolve weakened; I wasn't very restrained at all for our last couple of days. I ate desserts and ice cream and cookies and... Bleh. And I stopped journalling altogether about halfway through the trip; my 'net connection via my phone was so slow it was maddening, and I forgot to take along a paper journal.

(I did, at least, confine myself to no more than a half a bagel for breakfast, and a reasonable lunch of leftovers or a sandwich and some fruit. Even on the days I wasn't journalling)

I was expecting to gain weight. I was hoping it wouldn't be more than a pound or two.

I wasn't expecting a loss.

But that's what I got, anyway. The scale said 246.2 this morning, for a loss of 2.4 pounds over the last two weeks, dropping me below the 25-pound mark. Not bad, considering how little exercise I got (airport navigation notwithstanding) and how badly I ate!

One more big family meal to withstand, tomorrow, and then we'll be off and running for the new year!

'Tis the Season

Last night, we exchanged gifts with our next-door neighbors, since they're leaving today for two weeks. They gave us a cute snowman decoration, and a tin of homemade cookies. (2 points each? Ish?)

There are two boxes of my favorite doughnuts in the kitchen. (6 points each) And a tin of sugar-glazed pecans. (4 points for 1/4c)

In my office is a gift ornament containing eight Ghiradelli chocolate squares. (3 points for 2 squares.) Also, six candy canes. (1 point each)

The doughnuts are the hardest to deal with, and the most dangerous -- I'm constitutionally incapable of only eating one, so I really don't dare indulge. The candy canes are the easiest -- even if I eat all six, it's not completely disastrous. (Which, perversely, makes it easier for me to eat fewer of them.)

Next week, we're going to be out of town, visiting family and (hopefully) friends. Which means I'll spend a lot of time both bored and surrounded by food. We'll eat out a lot. Various relatives will pull out all the stops and have fabulous meals. And then we'll come back and have a big Christmas dinner with my family.

The goal. If I say I'm going to keep losing through all that, then I'm just setting myself up for failure. So the goal is not to stick religiously to the plan, but to try to be a little sensible. The goal is to journal everything, even if it means having to record that I went way overboard on multiple occasions. The goal is to gain no more than 5 pounds over the next two weeks. If, on January 2, I step on the scale and it says 253, then I will have succeeded. And then I will get back on the wagon and lose those pounds before they have a chance to unpack and make friends.

Here's hoping.

Pants

I bought new pants yesterday. The idea of going to visit my in-laws with a pair of pants that was three sizes too big was just frustrating the hell out of me. (Seriously. They were a little loose on me twenty pounds ago -- now, I can pull them off without unzipping them!)

I mean, I can't wear my jeans the whole week -- if nothing else, I need something to wear on the day we'll do laundry. And my brown pants fit fine, but they're brown, which is not really a good color for Christmas. I needed some black pants. That fit. I have an older pair of stretch polyester pants that could work, but as I discovered last year -- they do nothing to stop the cold. Plus, they're starting to look a bit tatty. So. New pants.

So when I was at Target yesterday to get some cold medicine, I bought some pants. They're meant to be sweat pants, I think, but I don't think anyone is going to notice, since they're relatively tight-fitting, and I wear long shirts that will hide the drawstring. I got a pair of black and a pair that's grey. Not sweatpants-grey, but dark grey, like good wool.

They're size 20/22, for whatever that's worth.

I changed into them as soon as I got home, and it felt so much better.

On Approach

This morning I weighed 248.6 -- below 250 for the first time in a while, and less than five pounds from my first big goal.

So I guess I'm surviving the holidays okay, so far -- the extra candy in the house, the cookie party we had last weekend, the tray of treats in the office kitchen. I'm not abstaining, because that would just make me feel martyred and grouchy. I actually dipped into my flex points this week for my office's holiday luncheon. I piled my plate high -- but I tried to be sensible. I took a big scoop of baked ziti, and an equally big scoop of salad. I had a slice of salami off the antipasta platter, and a tomato covered with fresh mozzarella, and a couple of olives bigger than my thumb. And I damned well had a slice of the German chocolate cake for dessert.

But I didn't go back for seconds (though the gods know I wanted to) and I logged it all and I accepted the flex points that it burned. I ate dinner and didn't starve myself that evening in some kind of twisted compensation.

It's worth noting that my best losses have been in weeks when I've been having small indulgences on a regular basis. The week of my birthday, when I was having coconut cake every day. This week, with the party and the cookies and candy in the house. The key, I think, is small. I'm not eating a quarter of a cake. I'm eating a slice. Half a slice. Three or four pieces of chocolate. Two or three small cookies (or one big one). Normal-people amounts.

These amounts do not satisfy. I don't care what anyone else says. They just don't. They make me want more, and more, and more. But I'm drawing the line. I'm eating normal-people amounts of sweets and junk food, and I'm logging it, and I'm counting the points.

And I'm losing weight.

Breakfast

Trying something different for breakfast. I've already switched out my coffee for hot tea, though that's a winter thing, and I'll almost certainly go back to coffee in the spring.

But now I've swapped out one of my two packets of instant grits for a little cup of Fiber One yogurt. It's a one-point reduction, and gives my system a couple of different kinds of food to process, so it seems to last a bit longer.

And since the yogurt takes up some milk/calcium slack, I replaced the half-cup of milk I was drinking with my pills and vitamins with a few swallows of Crystal Light. Which saves me another point.

It's goofy that I'm working on ways to save points right now, because I'm still ending each day with a handful of points to spare. (I'll almost be grateful when I drop to the next category down.) Still, it's good practice for the future. And certainly helpful on days like today, when I've got a pasta, butter, and dessert-laden holiday lunch looming over me.

Baggy

The WW website is still fussing at me for losing weight too quickly, even though I only lost 1.4 pounds this week.

I've got exactly 6 pounds to go before I hit my first 10% goal, so I don't think I'm going to manage it by the end of the year, not with only 3 weigh-ins left and Christmas smack in the middle of it all.

Still, I'm getting pretty close, and that's something to be proud of, right? I need to think of a good reward for myself.

When I was at the gym Monday, my usual stationary bikes were in use, so I spent an entire thirty minutes on one of the elliptical machines. It probably wasn't all that good for my knee, but otherwise it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm thinking of making it a regular part of the rotation -- once a week or so, perhaps.

Or maybe, now that 30 minutes isn't kicking me in the head as hard as it was, I can tack on an extra 5-10 minutes. 20 minutes bike, 15 minutes elliptical? Something like that. I'll try a few different things and see what works for me.

Smaller

Went to fasten my bra this morning and was surprised to discover that it was more comfortable on the second set of hooks.

I bought this bra just as I was starting WW, and I'd noticed that it's gotten a little less snug over the weeks, but this is the first concrete, measurable shrinkage.

(Still amply filling the DDD cups, though. Expect that'll take a bit longer.)

Downs and Ups

I'm up 2.2 pounds this week, but since I was down an unnatural 6.6 last week, I'm not stressing over it -- that's still an average of 2 pounds lost each of the last two weeks, and it means I successfully navigated Thanksgiving. (I think. It's hard to tell, what with the whole "regaining fluid weight" thing after being sick.)

And now begins the hell that is the holiday season on a diet.

The regular full-sized candy canes I bought for my advent calendar at work are 1 point each. The Mint Truffle Hershey's Kisses I bought to put in the advent calendar at home are half a point each. So that's an extra 1.5 points per day for me. Not too hard to carve out of my daily allowance, really -- I could just cut back on the milk I have with dinner, or skip dessert. But that's just the beginning.

Wish me luck.

Seasonal

Doughnuts in the kitchen this morning.

At least they're Dunkin' Donuts and not Krispy Kreme, but still... temptation.

Let the Season Of Foodage begin. Can I get through the next five weeks without going back over 255? We shall see!

Shrunk

So officially, I lost 6.6 pounds this week. (The WW website is serving up a scolding for losing too fast, because I have no way to tell it that it was a perfectly reasonable 1.6-pound loss before I got sick and stopped eating for the better part of three days.)

Of course, being sick probably put the hard brakes on my metabolism, so next week might be a maintain or a gain, to balance it out. And Thanksgiving will make up some of the difference, too. (I'm pondering going off-plan entirely for dinner and then just assuming all my flex points are gone for the rest of the week. We'll see, I guess. I should probably at least try to journal.)

So now I'm down to just a smidge over 250. I'm finally noticing a difference. Not really a visual one, but in my clothes -- my brown pants are no longer cutting into my waist, and my 2X shirts are fitting comfortably.

250 is less than 5 pounds from my first 10% goal, which I'd tentatively set for the end of January. Looks like I might get there in time for Christmas! (Though Christmas might undo that. Sticking strictly to a diet over the holidays, especially while I'm traveling, is just not something that's going to happen.) We'll see, I guess. If I can make it through the holidays without too much damage, then there just might be some hope for me.

Now We Are Sick

The Weight Watchers website does not have any advice whatsoever to offer for the sick.

Well, I take that back. It recommends not trying to exercise if you have nausea or vomiting, and to start back at a lower intensity once you've recovered, which strikes me as kind of obvious advice.

But it doesn't talk about food. It doesn't suggest trying to stick to the plan; it doesn't condone departing from the plan; it doesn't talk about eating plans for when you're recovering from being ill... nothing. Doesn't mention it at all. Which, I guess, sort of translates to, "eat whatever makes you feel better."

Today isn't weigh-in day, but out of curiosity, I stepped on the scale this morning. I'm down something like four pounds.

Two days of nothing but broth and (for an adventure) toast -- and puking half of it back up again -- will do that to a person, I guess. I might put some of it back on over the course of today as I start to recover lost fluids, but I'm thinking I'm in pretty good shape for tomorrow's weigh-in, and maybe even ahead of the game enough to not really worry too much about Thanksgiving.

Another Week, Another Weigh-In

Another pound and a half this week, which seems to be my "usual," and drops me officially below the 15-pound mark.

Is it weird to anyone else that the week of my birthday, the week that I had a slice of fat-and-sugar-laden coconut cake every night for half the week, I lost more weight than the weeks that I'm only having one or two small treats?

Obviously, the solution to losing weight is to eat more cake!

In other news, yesterday I had my first completely unprompted, "you look like you've lost weight" remark.

Awesome!

Weekly

I was proud of myself for managing all the special events this weekend without going too overboard.

I've had a slice of cake every night since my birthday, and only the one actually on my birthday was a big slice. The others have been a respectable 1/16th of the cake slices (for 7 points each). I won't say I didn't want more, but I stopped with that, and it fit into my day's allowance.

As of this morning's weigh-in, I'm down 4.2 pounds, which drops me solidly below the 260-pound mark, and puts me within a spit's distance of 15 pounds lost.

Losing weight is a trip through time: The last time I was below 260 was before I got pregnant with Alex, which was over a year and a half ago.

The Weight Watchers website is chiding me for losing too quickly. I'm looking at it as insurance against the slower losses of the onrushing holidays, and the nearly inevitable gains of Christmas week.

I still don't feel any different. Or look any different. My clothes still feel more or less the same.

But I am going to eat my last small slice of coconut cake tonight, and tomorrow, on my way back to the office from getting my allergy shot, I am going to stop at the Cold Stone Creamery and collect my free birthday club ice cream. It will cost me 14 points, and I may well have to dip into my flex points for it, but I will savor it, and know that I earned it, dammit.

Birthday

That wasn't as bad as I feared.

I think I managed to avoid using flex point on Friday -- again with the estimating amounts of stuff. But I only had one plate at the Chinese buffet (and part of that plate was a bowl of egg drop soup) and then I caved in to decadence and had chicken korma for dinner, with rice -- but I went easy on the rice, and I tried to leave most of the cream-drenched korma sauce in the bowl -- but only one piece of naan. I suggested dessert, but the hubs was too full to want any, and I didn't press it.

And I only used one or two flex points on my birthday. One eighth of a coconut-creme cake works out to about 15 points, nearly half my daily allowance. Luckily, I had planned light-ish meals all day, and skipped my snack entirely.

If I manage to have not gained weight this week, then on Thursday (which has the lightest dinner of the week, if I eat fat-free hot dogs) I plan to use my Coldstone Creamery free ice cream coupon. That's another 14 points there, so I'm likely dipping into flex points again, a bit, but at least there's nothing dangerous planned for the weekend.

Resistance

I am currently resisting an iced cinnamon and raisin bun that someone left in the kitchen.

I might consider giving in, but I'm going out to lunch and dinner, so I need to hoard those points.

So I am not considering it, and I am resisting.

Go me.

Ten

Weekly weigh-in: 262.4. This week's loss: 1.8. Total loss: 10.6.

Whoo, ten-pound mark! That gets me more than 1/3 of the way to my first goal.

This week is going to be pretty rough, though.

A friend is coming from out of town and wants to go out to eat on Friday. Friday evening, the husband and I are dropping child #1 off for a sleepover, and child #2 off with my mom, and enjoying a rare dinner for two out. (Two restaurant meals in one day, whee.) Sunday is my birthday, and I already know that the hubs is planning an ice cream cake.

Any one of them, I could scrounge and save points for -- that's what the flex points are for, after all. Even two would be manageable. But all three... Ug. I don't know if I can do that.

Well, I'll give it my best shot. But just in case, I think I will not expect a loss, next week. I'll be happy if I manage not to gain.

I Will Survive

I made it through the weekend.

I splurged on candy Friday night, a bit. I went to the party on Saturday and didn't touch the chips until the very end of the evening (so I only had about a serving) and only had two slices of thin-crust pizza, and didn't have any candy.

I think I managed to finish both days more or less within my points budget (it's hard to tell; I had to estimate portion sizes, which I'm bad at, and there was no nutrition information for most of it) but even if I went over, I don't think I used more than a few of my "extra" points. And I'm not planning on anything today or tomorrow that should dip into the extras, so I'm well within-plan for the week, even if I fell off for one or both of those days.

And I got on the scale this morning (I weigh every 2-3 days instead of every week, which is a habit left over from when I was trying the Hacker's Diet) and I was down, so whoo! Go me!

We'enie

I have decided to go the "splurge" route.

In part, because when I plotted out my meals for today, I had 12 points left over -- nearly a third of my daily allotment. (Yes, yes I did deliberately plan on a light dinner tonight.)

And in part because the splurging is half the enjoyment of it.

I just hope I'm able to stop.

This is going to be a sort of rough week, diet-wise -- book club was on Wednesday, and while I avoided the cupcakes, I did have apple slices with jelly on them, and heavily buttered popcorn, and a large-ish piece of chocolate chip cookie cake. And a girly martini.

And Hallowe'en tonight. And friends of ours are having a gathering tomorrow, which is usually graced by a huge assortment of treats (and I'm sure, being as it is the day after Hallowe'en, the place will be packed with candy).

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Goalposts

Let's talk about goals. I'm okay with not even thinking about where I want to stop, yet. The journey's too long to contemplate. So I'm not looking at the destination nearly as much as the journey. I'm taking it in 10% increments.

Goal #1 is to lose 10% of my starting body weight, or 27 pounds. I'm hoping to manage that by the end of January. That will put me at just a bit less than I weighed the first time I joined Weight Watchers. (When weight comes back, it brings friends.)

Goal #2 will be to lose another 10% of my body weight, or 24 pounds, which I'm hoping to manage by the end of May. That'll put me right about where I was when I quit WW the last time. Will anyone have noticed by then? 10% and then 10% again is where I actually started noticing the changes in all my friends who are on diets.

Goal #3 will be to lose - you guessed it - another 10%, or 22 pounds, pushing into (probably) September. That will put me right at 200 pounds, or just a smidge under.

And so forth, but that's about as far ahead as I really want to look. The last time I weighed 200 pounds was right about the time I started dating my husband, which is about thirteen years, now.

Even those goals seem pretty huge, right now. I'm focusing on micro-goals. My next micro-goal is to make the 10-pound mark -- I might be able to make that next week, if I don't let the Hallowe'en candy run away with me.

Baby steps. It's about the baby steps.

3 Weeks

Three weeks officially completed on Weight Watchers. This week, I lost 1.4 pounds, for a total of 8.8. Next week, hopefully, I'll reach the 10-pound mark.

All Hallow's Eat Eve

Over the last fifteen years of on-again-off-again dieting, I have learned some things.

One of them is that I'm not good at moderation. I like to fill my plate. I like to go back for seconds and thirds. I can't stand the idea of eating just one candy bar, or just one serving of chips. (I have been known to buy a six-pack of candy bars and eat the whole thing in a sitting -- not meaning to, it just... happens. And not rarely, either.)

One of the things I'm doing right this time (so far, anyway) is snack management. I bring my snack to work with me -- a piece of fruit, usually. Grape tomatoes. Steamed broccoli. I am scrupulously -- religiously -- avoiding the office snack bar, which operates on an honor system and even helpfully provides an IOU sheet. It is OFF. LIMITS. TO ME. Even if I can fit a bag of chips into my day's points (which I usually can -- I tend to clock in under-limit by 2-4 points a day, not even counting activity points earned, or the week's bonus points) I just can't do it. One bag of chips would fit into my diet; four would not. And as soon as I caved, it would be four. I can't not go back.

Weirdly, this isn't ironclad. I had some Tostitos with my chili a week or so ago. (I weighed them out, and scooped up chili with them.) I had a candy bar in the last ten minutes before work was over, and ate it as slowly as I could, so I wouldn't have time to go back for more. But it's the sort of thing that really should remain an exception rather than the rule for at least the next six months -- no more than weekly, say.

This is a horrible time of year for me to diet, though. Christmas is coming. And before that, my son's birthday. And before that, Thanksgiving and my husband's birthday. And before that, my birthday. And before that... Hallowe'en.

Oh, gods, Hallowe'en. We have two big bags of candy at home -- there are a gazillion kids in our neighborhood. Nerds and Laffy Taffy; and Snickers and M&Ms and Twix. Favorites of mine, all. (Not to mention the bag of caramel-flavored candy corn.)

Gods know I want all of it. I could try to be good, fit it into the plan like I'm supposed to... The little boxes of Nerds are 1 point each. The Laffy Taffy is 3 points for 5 pieces. The candy corn is 3 points for a tiny handful of 22 pieces. The chocolate ones are all 2-3 points each. And they're so little... It adds up fast. I could give myself a tiny sample of each and dole it out to myself over the space of a week or two.

Or I could dip into my "overhead" budget and have one actual splurge, fifteen or twenty points' worth of candy, all crammed into one glorious binge, and then brace myself to not even look at the stuff that will be out on offer, for free, in the office kitchen next week.

(Theoretically, I ought to not have any at all. Not with three birthdays and Thanksgiving and Christmas all crammed into the next two months. But... Well, I don't want to do that.)

I wish I could decide which option to go with.

Onymous

If you happen to stumble across this, and you know me, and you aren't sure whether you should mention it... Eh. Don't worry about it. This isn't my journal for spewing bile and speaking my uncensored mind. So you found out I'm dieting -- whatever. I'm not going to be mad or feel censored or anything if you let me know you're here.

Ahem.

This isn't entirely anonymous, because I am too lazy to make a new blogger profile that isn't associated with my email address or my other blog or contain my name, etc.

But since I don't have time to get involved in the online community (hell, I barely have time to breathe, most days) then I don't think this is going to get a lot of traffic, and I don't think anyone I care about will see it.

Why is this here? Well, because I'm dieting, and I don't want anyone to know. My best friend has lost a huge amount of weight this past year, and she looks fantastic, but she doesn't want me to go on a diet. I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's because she wants to be the skinny one. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to feel like we're competing. Maybe it's because I am, as she said, "completely miserable" when I'm dieting and she doesn't want to put up with me.

Well, whatever. She doesn't need to know. I've been on Weight Watchers for almost 3 weeks now, and only one person knows. (Well, I suspect my husband knows, because he's not dumb, but since I haven't said anything to him about it, he's not bringing it up, and he'll probably leave it at that.)

It's not like I'm doing it for either of them. I'm doing it because I'm scared of being the fat one. Because I'm sick of outweighing my husband, who's close to a foot taller than me (and isn't exactly a featherweight, himself). Because my knee gave out this summer, not from injury but from the simple, prolonged stress of holding up my 250+ frame for the past ten years. Because whenever I stopped to think about how much I was eating, I disgusted myself. Because I know too many fat people with awful personalities and I don't want to get lumped in with them. Because I want my kids to grow up with the good eating habits that I somehow failed to learn.

Because it was, as they say, time to shit or get off the pot.