Ugh.

I was good this week. Ate well, no leftover Easter candy to tempt me, even managed to stick to soup and salad at the birthday luncheon I went to yesterday, consistently came in under my points for the day all week, moderate exercise every day. Three separate people mentioned, completely out of the blue, how good I look and how impressed they are with my weight loss.

I was feeling good and positive as I got on the scale this morning, wondering where it would be. 217? Possibly even a smidge below that?

But... I only lost .4 pounds. 218, for a total loss of 55 pounds. (It couldn't even give me 217.8, for the psychological benefit of a new number. Stupid scale.)

Given that I was good this week, I can only really think of two reasons for it: either I've hit a plateau, or there's some holdover weight gain from last week's anniversary splurge. (I suppose it could also be feminine-cycle weight, but my cycle is completely flipping unpredictable these days. Four weeks? Six? Nine? Whatever.)

Anyway, I won't know if it's a temporary cause or a plateau until next week's weigh-in (assuming I'm good this week, of course). It's a little disheartening, though, to have to consider the possibility that I've gotten rid of all the "easy-come, easy-go" weight that I put on since my last diet a few years ago, and now I'm going to have to struggle for every loss, because from here on out, this is all weight I've been harboring for ten years or more.

That's just the kind of day I'm having, I guess.

Working Woman's Diet

A friend at work forwarded this to me in an email, and it made me grin, so I figured, why not? After all, I'm pretty sure I've had this day:

The Working Woman's Stress-Coping Diet

Breakfast
1/2 grapefruit
1 slice whole wheat toast
1 cup skim milk

Lunch
1 small portion lean, steamed chicken breast
1 cup spinach
1 cup herbal tea
1 Hershey's kiss

Afternoon Snack
The rest of the Hershey kisses in the bag
1 tub of Hagen-Daaz ice cream with chocolate chips

Dinner
4 glasses of wine (red or white)
2 loaves garlic bread
1 family size supreme pizza
3 Snickers Bars

Late Night Snack
1 whole Sarah Lee cheesecake (eaten directly from the freezer)

Wait, What?

Apparently, chocolate-peanut butter confections are on the list of things I can't have in the house because I will not eat Just One. And also, possibly, malted candy (Whoppers and its kin). Leftover Easter candy in the house was pretty dangerous, and though I mostly held off during the day, there were a lot of evenings this week when I'd go into the kitchen to feed the cat before I went to bed and that bag of junk food would call to me, and I'd stand at the counter (because, apparently, if no one sees me eating candy, it doesn't count?) and eat two or three pieces of candy. (Just one mini cadbury egg -- they're only one point each. Oh, well, okay, and a Reese egg. Oooh, and there's a packet of Robin Eggs left! Like that.)

Admittedly, this is still an improvement in habit over previous years, where I wouldn't have managed to restrain myself until bedtime, and I most certainly wouldn't have stopped at only two or three pieces. But still, not that good.

On top of that, my husband and I celebrated our anniversary by going out to eat for lunch Monday, and I very carefully and deliberately chose to go off-diet. I did not want to fret over how many points I had. I had a buttered roll and french onion soup (with cheese and croutons, thank you) and filet mignon (which is actually pretty low in points, for beef, but that's not why I chose it) with garlic mashed potatoes and buttered vegetables. And I had coconut cake and caramel ice cream for dessert. It was lovely and decadent and strictly out of curiosity, I came home and put it in the tracker (though I was totally guessing at the points on the cake and the amount of butter) and it turned out that the meal exceeded my daily points allowance. By a significant amount.

But damn, it was worth it, and I approached the scale this morning having already accepted that I had probably gained. I hoped it wasn't more than a pound. I was secretly hoping for a "maintain."

The scale said 218.4. Well, that's not so bad, I thought. I didn't go back up over 220, at least-- Wait, what? Wasn't I at 219.something last week?

Obviously, Penny had jumped on it and upset the alignment. I re-zeroed it and stepped on again. 218.4. That's a 1.4 pound loss. 54.6 pounds total.

Well, then. We'll see. As a friend pointed out, sometimes the weight gain holds off somehow until the next weigh-in, so I don't expect I can completely relax.

But at least the Easter candy is all gone.

Moderation

Well, despite the house being loaded with Easter candy, I managed to lose 1.2 pounds this week, which wasn't as much as I was hoping for, but any loss is good loss, right? So I'm at 219.8, which is a total of 53.2 pounds lost.

I got my new purse yesterday, and it's exactly as gorgeous as it looked, and I'm loving it. Though I'm some kind of freak of nature that doesn't like the smell of fresh leather, so I'm hoping that will fade soon.

So I got my weekly email from Weight Watchers this morning, and it had a link to an article on how to eat healthy on a budget, and I went to look, because who couldn't stand to save a little, right?

Of course, the article was mostly things I already knew, like "buy produce in-season" and "don't buy pre-portioned food" and "make your own sauces", but there was a sidebar offering a sample menu on how to eat healthy for only $6 a day!

Six dollars a day, really? It sounds like such a good deal, doesn't it? Six dollars a day, for a family of four, works out to $168 a week. That's not that much of a deal, really. I usually manage to come in at less than $150 a week, and that includes non-food items like cat litter and toiletry items, and each week usually includes a handful of "occasional" items that the sample menu didn't account for, like spices. Sure, $168 a week is cheaper than eating out every day, but you know what? It's still a hell of a lot more expensive to eat healthy.

(It also doesn't address the fact that their sample menu was pretty damned boring. I'm not a gourmet or anything, but seriously? Oatmeal and meatless sandwiches and turkey chili? Yawn.)

Yeah, I know, it's Weight Watchers, they have to try to put a positive spin on it. But seriously, I found it kind of insulting. I'd really rather they didn't try to candy-coat this. Eating healthy costs more. It's a fact. If they're going to just wave their hands and say, "Oh, this isn't really a problem," then they're denying a serious issue for a lot of their customers.

Progress Picture

I didn't take a "before" picture. I don't really know why, except maybe that it was going to seem like such a long time before I could see a difference that it was too depressing to contemplate.

And since I'm the one who takes pictures, among my friends, there aren't that many pictures of me. The only picture I have of myself from around the time I started the diet is a group picture that was taken at a JDRF walk, and you can't really use it for comparison, because I've got three family members blocking off most of my body.

So this is a picture from last summer, several months before I joined Weight Watchers, that a friend took. This is probably even a bit heavier than I was when I started dieting, because sometime after this picture was taken, but before I went on the diet, I started working out, and that probably lost me a few pounds. But it's pretty close. So here's my "before" (I'm the one with the baby):



And this is where I am today, some fifty-odd pounds later:

Score!

Okay, so it wasn't a huge loss, but it was 1.2 pounds, which was just enough to put me smack on top of my second 10% target, getting me down to 221. (That's 52 pounds total lost.)

So if my weekend splurging wasn't precisely good for me, it didn't completely kill me, either. Hooray!

Checking out my spreadsheet: I lost that 25 pounds over 13 weeks, averaging just under 2 pounds per week. If I keep that rate up, I'll hit my next 10% goal around the end of June -- though I'm giving myself until the end of summer, to allow for plateaus and, well, other weekends of splurging.

And when I get a chance later today, I'll order my new purse. And start comparing features and prices for that new camera.

Confessions

I burned through some extra points this weekend.

I stayed inside my weekly points, but I exceeded my daily points for three straight days, which I don't usually do. So on Wednesday morning, I'm either going to lose some weight and find out that no really, I can use some of my activity or weekly points without completely falling apart, or I'm going to maintain/gain and learn that no, really, I need to keep my intake to somewhere just below my daily allowance.

I honestly have no idea which it's going to be.

On Friday, I'd planned a spectacularly low-point dinner. I worked everything out and discovered that I had ample space in my dietary budget for a candy bar in the afternoon. About ten seconds after I licked the last delicious chocolate off my fingers, my husband called to tell me that some friends had called and wanted to take us out for Mexican. Well... heck.

To cut down on the damage, I forbade myself even a single chip, and I had vegetarian fajitas. I didn't eat the tortillas, but then I never do -- I dump the lettuce and sour cream and guacamole onto the fajita plate and add about half of my refried beans and mix it all up into a fajita salad. (Yes, the restaurant offers a fajita salad already made, but it doesn't taste the same, and it's only about half as much food once you ignore the fried tortilla bowl thingy.)

So I think, all in all, I didn't do too badly, there. It was certainly more points than I'd planned on having that day, but I don't think I exceeded the boundaries of reasonableness too much.

Saturday was a birthday party, and I went fully intending to fix myself a single plate of food, with a pre-figured amount of specific foods on it, and to skip the cake.

But there were no plates (and I was apparently too dumb to just ask for one) so I found myself wandering back to the food table and grazing and I ate crackers and paté that I hadn't banked on, and more mini-muffins than I'd planned, and only a fraction of the veggies, and then I had chili and... well, heck, might as well have just a small piece of cake, right?

Sigh. Next time, I will remember to ask for a plate, and then I will get my planned amount of food and go plant my butt on the couch and not keep walking back over to the food table. And then, if I give in and have cake anyway, at least it will not be on top of extra muffins and paté and chili that I hadn't planned on.

Sunday was an early Easter dinner with my family. I brought low-cal biscuits, only took one, filled my plate once and did not have any seconds. I also brought my own dessert and managed to avoid the temptation of cookies. So the only real problem for the day was that 1) I have no idea whether my guesstimates of how much ham and potato salad I ate were correct, and 2) I have no idea how many points my mom's potato salad is. (It ranges from 3 to 8 points per half cup, in the WW database. I'm quite sure I ate more than half a cup of the stuff.)

As an aside, have you ever noticed that for certain foods -- potato salad, or mac-and-cheese, or other really common dishes where every family has its own variant -- the one you grew up with is always the Right One? And everyone else's variant is always just a bit... off? Could be really good, but it's not THE food? Which is sad, because I have no idea what my mom's recipe is for potato salad. (At least I have her mac-and-cheese recipe.)

So anyway, there's my confession. We'll find out Wednesday if my damage control efforts did any good, or if I completely blew it.

Fifty

Weighed in at 222.2 today, which is 2.2 pounds lost and puts me at over fifty pounds lost. Another fifty pounds, and I'll be able to see the end of the road. Or at least, figure out where the end of the road should be. But that's far enough away that I don't really want to contemplate it yet. Right now, I'll take pleasure in having come this far, and being within spitting distance of my second 10% goal -- as long as I lose a pound or more next week, that'll be it! Knock on wood... I have stalled before, just before a goal... And we're celebrating Easter with my parents this weekend.

(Speaking of 10% goals, someone made her fourth 10% goal this week! Whoo!!!)

I'm tentatively hoping to make my third 10% goal by the end of the summer. It's plausible and even probable -- my Shrinking Spreadsheet says that if I can keep up this rate of weight loss, it'll happen in June, but I like to build in some fudge factor in case I run into a plateau, or something happens to sabotage my exercise routine (like the kids getting sick, or a twisted ankle, etc).