Forward Ho

Down 1.2 this week to 158.4, so I'm pretty much back to where I was before I had that one weird huge drop a few weeks back and then screwed it up by gaining a lot for two weeks in a row. Heh.

I'm thinking about dropping my Weight Watchers subscription. I can count on one hand the number of times I've logged in over the last three weeks, and at least half of those have been simply to log my weight.

I don't go to meetings and my support group is my friends and family, so there's nothing to lose there. And the website simply isn't giving me much that I can use. I've been double-tracking my weekly weigh-ins on a spreadsheet anyway, and a spreadsheet I own myself can give me much more customized (and therefore useful) graphs and calculations. I occasionally hit the website for recipes -- but since I almost always rebuild the recipes a bit (to replace items we don't eat, or adjust serving sizes, or reduce carbs for Penny's sake) I usually have to recalculate the points anyway, so I can just switch to using the other gajillion-and-one diet recipe sites out there. I've hit all the big milestones I'm going to hit, so I'm not looking forward to the validation of little star icons. I'm not a forums person, I don't use their coupons to buy their food, and it's been ages since I've seen anything new or helpful in the advice columns.

I've been more or less maintaining my weight for the last three months. (Actually, over the last twelve weeks, I've been losing at an average rate of 0.2 pounds a week. I go down, I go up, I go down, I go up. Close enough.) I've been managing my food without tracking it for the last six weeks or so, and honestly, I think I've mostly got it. When I've gained weight, it hasn't been a mystery: I know exactly what I've done wrong and what I have to do to fix it.

The challenge for me now is to keep watching it and not let it slide. To keep stepping on the scale every morning and tracking it every week and screwing down my discipline when I've let things slide too much. But I don't really see the website helping with that.

I'm paid up for this month, but unless something happens to change my mind, I'll cancel before next month's payment is due.

Which, coincidentally, will be just in time to coincide with my 2-year diet anniversary.

Cringe

Apparently, I had too much fun at my cousin's wedding festivities. I'm up another 1.4 pounds, which tips me back over my red-light siren weight of 160, to 160.2. So starting today, I'm back to tracking every little thing I eat, and weighing and measuring everything, and trying to get back to the gym (though with the daycare closed both Friday and Monday, I'm probably not getting in my 3/week until the following week).

It's all very well to relax and overeat on special occasions, but I've been letting that relaxation slide into everyday life. Time to nip that in the bud.

(I'm hungry already.)

WINCE

I gained three pounds this week.  Three.

And I don't even have a good excuse. I know exactly what went wrong.

The CSA brought us a big handful of tomatillas, two weeks ago. Now, I like Mexican food, but a little tomatilla goes a long way, and I didn't really want to be eating Mexican every night. So last weekend, I made a huge batch of guacamole. Six avocados' worth.

I had a plan, to keep myself from eating all that guacamole. Half of it, I sent with my husband to his monthly D&D game. The guys devoured it more or less instantly, and were, by all reports, most grateful.

Now, while he was at his game, I'd intended to meet up with some friends and their kids for dinner. I figured that would give my kids something to do to keep them occupied, and I could take along the rest of the guacamole and some chips, and sure I'd eat some, but so would my friends (and maybe even the kids). It was a plan!

Alas, the friends had to reschedule, and I found myself sitting at home, with the kids in bed and the husband still out... And the guac and chips were just sitting there. Begging to be eaten. I didn't eat all of it, but I probably ate more than I would've if I'd shared it.

And then I had some more the next day. And later that night, for a snack. And then the day after that, I was home alone, waiting on the A/C repair crew, and there was really only a little bit left...

It's not even the guacamole that killed me, though the gods know it's full of fat. But avocado oil is one of the healthy ones, and overindulging on avocado doesn't pack on three pounds in a week. Nope. That was the chips. It's the fried starches and the salt. Not only are they fattening, not only do they make me retain water for days afterward, but I can't stop. If there is an open bag of chips in the house, I will eat some. And then I will eat some more. And then I will lick my fingers and pry the crumbs out of the corners of the bag.

This is why I should not allow chips into my house. Three. Frikkin. Pounds. Ouch.

(But it was amazing guacamole.)

Surprise!

I'm... down to 155.8 -- a loss of 3 pounds over the week. Which is quite the surprise, as yesterday morning I was still clocking in at 158, and I spent three days eating pizza and birthday cake in not-insignificant quantities. Though as I've noted before, my scale is not in its right mind. The Wii had noticed some downward trending, too, though, so I guess it's genuine. That knocks me firmly past a grand total loss of 115 (to 117.2, precisely).

I have trouble celebrating it, though, because I'm not entirely sure what I did to deserve it.

One item I'm proud of, though: Sunday, I was at a mall with a friend, and we stopped at the food court for lunch. I'd figured on going to Chick-fil-A, because they have some reasonable options, but had forgotten that Chick-fil-A doesn't operate on Sundays. So we wandered around to try to figure out what else to get, and I eventually found myself drawn to the Japanese food place.

I was pondering the chicken teriyaki and wondering if they would let me substitute miso soup for the fried rice (because I love fried rice, and if I got it, I would certainly have eaten entirely too much of it) when my eye was caught by some fresh fruit in the display case. And my body said Oh, hell yes.

I ended up with a bowl of miso soup and a big container of fruit for lunch. Not because I was trying to be on-plan, particularly, but because it looked so damn good. And it was good. It was amazing, actually. I even ate the cantaloupe, and I don't even usually like cantaloupe.

Apparently, my body was telling me I needed fruit. Apparently, I was able to hear it, and apparently, I listened.

This is a big deal, for me. I'm really bad at hearing what my body wants to tell me. But somehow, I did it this time.

Now that... That, I'm proud of.

Little Off The Top

I lost 0.6 this week, which nudges me just past where I was before I went on vacation, to 158.2. If that .2 had fallen off, I could officially say that I've lost a total of 115 pounds, but oh well. I'm actually surprised that I lost at all, because I wound up eating out quite a lot last week, and did not meet any of my exercise goals.

I'm trying to be good this week so I can indulge this weekend. It's my daughter's birthday tomorrow, and the party is Saturday, plus a book I wrote is being released, so I've got a lot of fun stuff planned for this weekend, and a fair amount of it involves wonderful, delicious, really quite bad for me food.

But! But! But! I was in dire need of a t-back bra to wear with a dress, and I just happened to be passing by a Victoria's Secret, so I thought -- why not? I went in, and not only did they have exactly the bra I needed, in my size, and in the color I needed -- but it was incredibly comfortable. I mean, weirdly comfortable. Bras are not, in my experience (many years of it, because I was a C cup by the 7th grade), ever actually comfortable. I was insanely excited about that bra for days after I bought it. I haven't been able to shop at Victoria's Secret since early college -- and now I can't wait to go back, slightly expensive or not!

...Easy Go

Weighed in at 158.8 this morning, which is not quite back to where I was, pre-vacation, but it gets me comfortably back out of the 160s and on my way back down.

Of course, I may well see a bump up tomorrow morning. We went out to eat last night and I had a whole mess of hush puppies. With butter. ("Mess o' puppies" is a technical culinary term. I promise. Would I lie to you?) But they were soooo tasty!

I really think I'm beginning to approach equilibrium, with my weight. I'm mostly comfortable with the amount of food I'm eating (usually), and even when I go off-plan and don't log for a couple of days, I'm doing okay at holding my own. When I look at my graphs, I've gone from a fairly steady and smooth downward curve to jaggedy bumps and lurches. The overall average trend is still downward, but it's definitely starting to level off, and it looks like I'll probably even out somewhere around 155.

I could live with that.

Normal

I'm up 1.8 pounds over the last two weeks, back over the 160 mark to 160.2. (It was even higher than that, Monday, but that's not official.)

No stress. No regrets, either. I mostly tried to eat sensibly, but there was a fair amount of fattening food, and there was some stress-eating, and then there was a Garrett kiosk at the airport as I was leaving, and then I met up with a friend for fancy French food, and there was the Mike's Hard Lemonade that (once I thought to look it up) had about 50% more calories than I'd estimated (and alcohol makes me retain water for a day or so, anyway).

We did a bit of walking around, but not as much as I'd expected, and what with one thing and another, I only got to the gym once in the last two weeks. (When I went back on Monday, it kicked my ass, but it felt really good.)

So... Yeah. I splurged a bit, and I bloody well enjoyed it, and now I'm back on the wagon, and the weight is coming back off.

This is what normal people do, right? They go on vacation and splurge and gain a little, and then they buckle down to get it back under control before it can get out of hand.

Yeah. I can do that. I can do this.