Weight Update and Why I Reject New Year's Resolutions

First, weight update: On Tuesday I lost the pound gained last week, plus a tiny bit extra! Total is 7.4 pounds down since November 17. Since we’re getting into two months on my Weight Watchers adventure, here is a table of my progress. Sorry for the weird formatting.

January 5th 187.0lbs

December 29th

188.2lbs

December 15th	188.0lbs
December 8th	189.0lbs
Tuesday, December 1st	190.4lbs

Tuesday, November 24th	193.2lbs
Tuesday, November 17th	194.4lbs

Holy crap, do I want to be out of the 180s. The funny (or sad?) thing is that I really could be doing much better. Every week it’s a huge struggle to stay within my daily and weekly points, and I don’t even think I’ve managed to do it once. So if I can lose a pound a week going over, how much better could I do if I really really stuck to it?

Maybe this week can be that week.

Now, onto a super fun topic: New Year’s Resolutions. 

Frankly I think New Year’s resolutions are, more often than not, pointless. Almost by default, they’re designed to be fleeting as you lose momentum, and by March it’s hard to remember what the resolution was. Art classes? Learn to ski? Finally hire that hit man for your horrible boss?

Maybe the trap is that we think a new year will somehow automatically change us.I mean, it’s a new year, we think. It has to, right? But that’s not it.

Change comes from hard fucking work that’s constant effort, and it happens throughout the year. January 1st is not some permission to decide to change something, some unique opening that must be taken advantage of. I joined Weight Watchers the week before Thanksgiving, and I’m so glad I did.

People can and do change themselves, the date is irrelevant. New Year’s resolutions are the punchlines in sitcoms, gyms and weight loss centers prepare for an influx of people, 95% of whom won’t be there in a few months. It’s a nice idea, a new year and a new you, but it’s lost all meaning.

I am trying to make changes, the least of which is weight loss. If people want to learn the guitar, take Spanish lessons, go to the gym, awesome! But I hope they don’t do it for New Year’s, but rather just because they want to, and it happens to be New Year’s.

So if someone here stumbled across this blog because they made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, I hope you know I’m seriously rooting for you. You absolutely rock for trying to get healthier and tackle your weight, and it’s totally possible. But, you know, just do it. Not because it’s January, but because it’s time.

Weigh In & Holiday Parties

I’m down another pound, yes! That brings me to a grand total of 6.4 pounds in 4 weeks, putting my current weight at 188. It’s slightly annoying since I weighed myself at home right before I started Weight Watchers, and it said 184, compared to the 194.4 that Weight Watchers had on their scale. However, I’m trying to go with it, and realize that in the end, those eight or ten pounds don’t really matter.

I’m also getting used to the new Weight Watchers plan, how sugar makes the points value of a food skyrocket. I’m definitely off the office candy bowl. There’s also been a few other times where there has been some great treat in the office, and I didn’t give a second thought to not having any. I also realized that I don’t actually need all the honey that comes in my Fage 2% with honey, which brings the points of the yogurt back down to the original 5 points. Progress!

I'm feeling pretty in control these last few weeks, which is a wonderful feeling indeed. I can gauge how confident I am in my weight loss by what I daydream about while walking to the subway. Is it showing up svelte to my company's holiday party next near, when (hopefully) they would have not seen my transformation because I finally got a new job? Is it running into my sixth grade crush/bully while he's drunkenly peeing in the street and I look great? Or is it what I'd do with 2, 4, or 6 million dollars? It's all in the daydreams, my friends.

How was your office holiday party? Open-bar-fancy-apps or daytime pre-ordered luncheon?

Weekly Weigh In and Weight Watchers Changes

Remember all that stuff I wrote about Weight Watchers and points? Well, they just changed everything. If you have a TV you might have seen the commercials, and Oprah's smiley face seems to have taken over my app and the WW website.

They've been having mass technological issues - I unfortunately had several days worth of stuff just kind of disappear. It seems to be back online, and hopefully will be sorted out once everyone is on the new system.

The point is, last night I was down another 1.4, for a total of 5.4 pounds lost in three weeks! I am really excited at this progress. 

So, the changes to Weight Watchers - they've changed how they calculate points. Ten years ago, food points were calculated by calories, fat, and fiber. Five years ago, they changed that to carbohydrates, fat, fiber, and protein. Now, points are calculated by counting calories, sugar, protein, and fat.

The calories act as the baseline, and then protein can lower points while sugar makes it skyrocket. They're also trying to focus more on whole health, but honestly I'm kind of "eh" about that part.

The point is that they are really, really, penalizing sugar now. A candy bar that was 7 points is now 12. My standard breakfast, the Fage 2% with honey, jumped from 5 to 9 points! On the other hand, beans, tuna, and chicken breast went down. They adjusted the daily and weekly flexible/anytime points. Mine essentially stayed the same - my dailies went up by one, but my weeklies went down by seven. This is going to be tricky since a lot of food are higher in points now - not just sugar, but dairy - but I'm still on the same amount of points. Fruits and veggies are still free, though!

Regarding the sugar penalty - I adore sugar, and at first I was really annoyed by the changes. How can Weight Watchers have the whole "lifestyle" and "fitting everything in moderation" shtick if they make the cost of a slice of birthday cake basically prohibitively high? This I soupboxed at John for awhile.

After a bit of thought, though, I think maybe it could be good for me. I really do struggle with sugar. Maybe this could help me to have fewer treats and appreciate them more. How many times have I grabbed a 40-calorie mini Milky Way from the office candy bowl? A hundred million? How many do I remember, how many did I taste? Zero, probably. In the end it just became a habit. Maybe this will help me stop, when I realize how much it's costing me.

To my fellow, celebrators, Happy Chanukah! As someone trying to lose weight, I'm super duper pumped about a holiday that revolves around frying things and eating them.
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Thanksgiving and Happy Updates

Hi everybody.

So here's where I left off: Feeling angry at myself for weight gain, frustrated at my lack of motivation, feeling like 20 pounds was just a silly dream, waiting to hear on dream job.

Now:

• Didn’t get the dream job, unfortunately. I thought it went great, (and it did!) but there was just someone they liked more, I guess. I’m going to keep trying.
• Lesson: some industries, like publishing, are really hard to break into.
• Ended up at Target with my mom last week and she helped me find a couple more dresses. My mom has an amazing talent for picking out flattering clothing for anyone. And now I really feel like I have a solid fall/winter wardrobe for work and life.

Remember how many “new plans” I came up with, and how I ended up stopping each one after, at most, a couple of weeks? The small meals, the trying to track, the fake Whole30, I gave up on all of it. The plus it that it more or less kept my weight the same at about 185, so at least I’m not heavier than I was in the summer. The minus is that it’s now been at least four months since I speed-gained ten pounds and the pounds are still hanging around.

I joined Weight Watchers two weeks ago. I pre-signed up for three months, and told John that whatever happened, I would go to one meeting a week and weigh in for those 12 weeks. And that I would try, of course, but the main commitment is that I’m going to weigh in and attend the weekly meetings they had. I was a member back in 2011-2012 during my senior year of college, where I lost 40 pounds. It was amazing, I felt great, then graduated and life got in the way, this is all outlined here.

So, skip to the present, I went back to the program that actually worked for me.

For those not familiar, Weight Watchers is a huge American weight loss company. Food is assigned a number of “points” based on the amount of carbs, fat, protein, and fiber in it, and you get a certain amount of points to “spend” per day on food, plus a weekly extra 49 points that can be spent all at once, one day at a time, or not at all. Anything else? Oh yes, fresh fruits and non-starchy vegetables are zero points, which encourages members to choose them over other things.

I like this plan. It’s flexible and I’ve found that tracking is a good tool for me.

I might add this to the sidebar, but just so everyone knows: I am not being sponsored, and am not affiliated with or ever compensated by Weight Watchers (or any company) in any way.

There happened to be a meeting about 5 minutes from my workplace, so I decided to start there. I was actually really, really emotional and felt like I was holding back tears the entire time.

They told me I weighed 194. I was like, “What the fuck? Two days ago I weighed 184.” I’m chalking it up to a different scale and weighing in at night with clothes on as opposed to in the morning in just underwear. That being said, I’m just going to say that 194 is my real weight. It helps that my scale is actually broken - I ascertained this fact when it weighed me in at 133.3 pounds, so that will make it all the more easy to just accept this number.

Two weeks ago I weighed 194. Last week - my first  week - I was down 1.2. I was disappointed at that result for the first week, but couldn’t really complain as I had gone over my points by a bit. The next week, (so last week), Thanksgiving, I was awesome on plan for a couple of days, then really struggled Thanksgiving weekend. I didn’t go crazy, but I did stop tracking so can’t really be sure what I ate.

I was annoyed at myself, thinking that I’d be two weeks into a diet and actually weigh more than when I started. That’s… not how I want it to go. To my utter shock, I was down 2.8 pounds, for a total of 4 pounds. Assuming that’s a little of the first week catching up, or luck, or even water loss, but I’m not going to question it. Four pounds down.

So now I'm 'officially' 190. Cue ugh sound.

That being said, I am trying really hard not to slack off on tracking, and to actually work the plan and stay within my points. I do think I ate less in those two weeks and lost weight, but that kind of off-plan guessing won’t work for long. So far this week has been good! I actually feel soothed when I track, and see the little numbers and know I’m where I want to be. It’s a great feeling.

I know I’ve been lousy at updating. Sometimes I’m just not sure I have anything to say. However, I make a pinky-Internet-promise swear that I will at least update every Wednesday or Thursday after weigh in and report on my progress.

Here we go, week 3!