A Great Weigh In and How Not to Hate Your Body During Weight Loss

Good news! This week I was down 2 pounds. That puts me at 185.6. The previous week I was up .6, so I lost that plus another pound and a half.

I'm proud. I worked so hard last week to stay on plan, and I did it. I keep learning the lesson that I do much better with routine, and really struggle when not in my regular environment, whether that's vacation in Michigan or visiting my parent's. I'm not sure yet how to deal with that. However, most of life is, thankfully, pretty routine, so if I can get that down well, then those occasional vacation or party struggles won't matter so much.

Remember when I first started Weight Watchers, and my first weigh-in was 10 pounds above what my home scale was giving me? At the time, I figured a few pounds were because of wearing clothing and weighing in later in the day, and the rest was just the WW scale being off. For a while, I would subtract 10 pounds from every weigh in, and think of that as my real weight.

No more. There's no point. I'm now down, officially from weight watchers, 8.8 pounds. Maybe I can hit the big 1-0 this week?

My biggest weight struggle right now is trying not to be, essentially, grossed out by my current body. I know it's not that bad, and I don't look so terrible. But I carry so much of the weight in my stomach and thighs and I hate seeing it in the mirror and realizing that it will be at least several months of hard work before it gets better.

I know the title of the post makes it sound like I'm offering advice, but really I'm at a loss. I try to appreciate the things my body can do - do endless jumping jacks during our kick-ass Power Dance class, hug the people I love, or just generally give a cozy home to my brain and let me live with all my senses. I try. It's hard when I see my stomach sticking out. When something is too small on my stomach but too loose at my waist.

Frankly, I don't think I should love this body. It's not a healthy one. I should appreciate it, and probably be nicer when I think about, but I don't have to love it. I just maybe shouldn't hate it.

What do you LOVE about your body?

I do like my eyes (grey-green) and my hair. I also like that even at this weight, I have a shape with a curved waist and hips.

Weigh In and I Got My Cheese Back

Weight first:

Currently at 176.6, which is six pounds down from my August 21st weight of 182.6 and one pound down of my last weigh in, two weeks ago. Not sure of body or muscle fat.

Last week I intended to continue on my no carb/sugar/legumes/dairy plan for the rest of the month. But the idea of that was so, I don’t know, icky, that I realized just how much I wanted to stop doing it. I missed beans on my salad, and milk in my coffee, and nothing in the world will convince me that those things are bad for weight loss. What also happened is that I thought of a better plan for me, one that felt more fitting. Also, how can a blog with this title not have dairy?

My highest weight was 200 pounds, during the first half of college. I’ve written a little about how my parents sat me down, told me they were terrified for my health and that I needed to lose weight. That was a wake-up call that still gets to me, and I think it’s part of why I never got back to 200 pounds again. (Though, full disclosure, I got to 190.)

Back at sophomore year, I lost those first twenty pounds quite easily. I took the number of calories I wanted to eat - in that case, 1200-1400 - and split them into 200-250 calorie mini meals. Six or seven snack/meals a day, and I lost twenty pounds that semester without feeling hungry or deprived. I aimed to have at least five of those “meals” be healthier and nutrient rich food, and then one or two could be whatever I wanted.

A day might have consisted of a Larabar, a slice of toast with 1 tbsp peanut butter, a cup of homemade black bean soup, a turkey burger patty on a salad, a whole milk latte, and a Milky Way. I didn’t eat enough vegetables back then, but overall I felt great. I’m pretty sure I ate a candy bar every day that semester, and that was a big reason I stuck to it. No need to go off plan to eat something sweet, it was already part of the plan.

I liked how it broke down the 70 pounds I needed to lose into this little 200-250 calorie slots. It really worked for me. Sometimes I’d end up eating 7 or 8 or these mini-meals, but in that context it didn’t seem like a disaster.

So I’m trying that again now. Sunday was my first day, and so far it’s going pretty well! I’ve been keeping track of everything on the Notes app on my phone, though trying to think of a better system. Six or seven meals a day, ideally maximum only one of junk food, and lots of veggies.

This is definitely working better for me than the previous diet, but I think I still needed it for those 2-3 weeks to get out of the “eat everything and then feel like shit” pattern I had been on.

So, this is it, right? I’ll just lose a perfect pound per week until I hit my goal weight, then I’ll be featured in a few magazines for my new hotness, and life will be perfect? No? Dammit.