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?

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.

The Most Perfect Diet That Ever Was

Whoa, that’s some pretty bleak stuff down below. Thankfully, I’ve been feeling better. Not “I’m so gonna nail this thing” awesome, but not hopeless like I was. Last night there was a happy hour to send off a departing colleague in style. After a bit of internal debate, I decided not to go. I’m not that close to this person so don’t think she’d care (or possibly notice) if I didn’t show, and I was feeling like the absolute last thing I needed was to be surrounded by tons of drinking and free, fried deliciousness. I definitely don’t want to avoid living and being social for fear of overeating, but last night it just didn’t seem worth it.

My “plan” right now is to keep with what I’ve been doing a little extra, another two weeks or so - the almost Whole30. For after that, I’m still not sure. I have really loved not counting calories, but now I’m wondering if not tracking is a sort of trigger for me. I have an idea of a semi-tracking, to allow myself unlimited veggies, lean meats, legumes, oil, and eggs, and then have limited dairy and starch that I can use how I want throughout the day. Limit sweets, and maybe up the workouts.

I do know that whatever plan I use or try - Weight Watchers, or low carb, or calorie counting - would work. Any reasonable eating plan works if you follow it, I know that. It’s not a matter of finding the “perfect” diet, but of just sticking to SOMETHING. So I need to find that something that will maybe make this a little more doable. Trying to find a plan that is the right combination of flexibility and guidelines that will maybe help me to repair my relationship with food a little.

I’m also trying really hard to get out of the “just let me lose ten pounds quickly even if not sustainably then I’ll do something more regular.” I really hate these ten pounds. They made such a difference in how I looked and felt when I lost them, even more than the first twenty did, so of course gaining them back made a big difference. But I can do this, I can take them off.