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| This office special was inspired by the brief glimpse of blue sky we saw yesterday. |
I’ve finally hit the thirteen-pound mark. Things are moving again, I guess. Water is the key. There are a few things I am learning about this process:
1) it’s easy to think it’s not working. You’re doing everything right, eating the set amount of daily calories and you’re not losing weight... sometimes it’s just a matter of making a minor adjustment and to keep plugging away; but I can still see why so many people just walk away from the program. Plateauing can be disheartening. Luckily I have a wonderful support system in my hubby (who weighed in at 29.4lb mark last Wednesday), so he kept me from being discouraged.
2) This is a healthy way to lose weight. It’s not the way everything *thinks* you should lose weight, and it’s not a fast way to lose weight. The general consensus is diet and exercise and it’ll drop away. That’s what they’re pimping on ‘The Biggest Loser’... working the fatties into jiggling mounds of sweat and indignity like they’re at torture-boot camp. That is not my cup of tea. I’m not a jock; I’ve never been a jock. I used to find every excuse in the book to avoid going to PE class or participate in it, and gaze wonderingly at the kids that would bounce around like over-caffeinated psychos and run the whole mile and think ... wow, that person is a complete lunatic. It’s just never been my thing. It’s heartening to know that I can still lose weight and not be forced to run around like an over-caffeinated psycho.
3. This ‘lifestyle change’ (you are not supposed to refer to Weight Watchers as a diet you see) does one incredible thing... it makes you appreciate food a lot more. You take a lot for granted when you’re not really thinking about what you’re eating. You just go ‘yum’ and cram it into your mouth. But when you are limited to a certain daily allotment of calories, how you choose to consume those calories becomes the challenge. You aren’t deprived by any means on this program. You can eat whatever you want on Weight Watchers, but if you decide to go to McDs and stuff a greasy burger down your throat, you might not be able to eat much else for the rest of the day. So you end up avoiding these things so you can eat more for less so to speak. You avoid bad things like burgers and fries and red meat and pizza and chocolate mostly because you want to not feel hungry all day after you’ve satisfied that yen. You start making things you like with better ingredients, leaner products, less oil, etc. You don’t actually realize it until afterwards as you look into your pantry and fridge and sort of take stock of what’s changed about their contents. Things you love just seem to taste better, it’s more of a treat and an indulgence when you have to earn it.
4. Sometimes you fall off the wagon (which you are allowed to do... you have a weekly ‘wagon tumbling’ allotment of 49 points to do naughty things on. We hardly ever use those points but it’s nice to know they’re there for holidays and such). It’s okay. Just pick yourself up off the ground, dust yourself off, and start fresh the next day. It’s all good.
BUT you don’t *have* to fall off the wagon. You can do naughty things and still be *on* the wagon. There are all these little things out there for the ‘lifestyle changers’ that hit that naughty spot. There are these little slider burgers that you get with soft ooey cheddar on them for five points each, which hubby and I will indulge in when we’re thinking about burgers. We count out and oven-bake fries when we want to be naughty. Lean Cuisine makes these itty bitty dessert-plate sized pizzas, and Dan came home last night with these wafery dessert things from Skinny Cow... Oooooh my Goddd they are SOOO GOOD. Just eating those little indulgences are like partaking in the ambrosia of the Gods when you don’t eat them habitually. That one little 100 calorie bar was like heaven in chocolate form. Four points of heaven. It's a significant possibility that those little chocolate bars are the reason for my good mood today. Who knows?
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| That's a pretty big chunk. I've dropped a little over two of 'em. |
When I lived in Belgium, weight wasn’t ever really an issue. I’m not saying I was skinny, I wasn’t. I was healthy. And when I went through puberty, I was curvy. I was size 10 in 7th grade and I had D cups. I was DD by the time I was in ninth grade. But I wasn’t overweight by any means. I only gained weight when I moved to the US, and I think that has a lot to do with the amount of calories that are served per meal, the type of food and believe it or not, the frequency and time of meals. I ate 4 meals each day before. Breakfast (light), a huge lunch, goûter, which we had at around 4PM and it was something as simple as a tartine (a slice of bread with something on it... pate, cold meats, cheese, Nutella and some cornichons or something) and dinner which wasn’t even close to the proportions it is here. Lunch was closer to the dinners served here. You’d have soup, then a plate with meat, starch and veggies and salad. I ate a lot. I know I did. I like food too much; and I also ate bad things, like tons of fries with mayonnaise, and waffles, and chocolate of all sorts. But I never had a weight problem until I moved to the states. I gained 40 pounds in the first three months here (it was also partly culture-shock and depression that contributed to that weight gain... I hated it here when I first arrived and went into this weird state of fugue. I’d left everything that meant anything to me behind; friends, horses, a life, so my heart was broken and I had nothing in common with this crazy mall-riddled country).
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| I'm amazed how well the detail is maintained in the printing process. Exciting! |
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| This scale might work for a bedspread or curtains or something. |
My mom brought me this item when she came for Mother’s Day on Sunday:
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| Those bedazzled sails are just my sorta thing. ::ugh:: |
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