Changing Direction

For those of you who have been following Low Fat Dressing for a while, you may have noticed I stopped posting about the 13-in-13 Challenge a couple weeks ago. I was struggling with it from the get-go, and finally accepted that I was going to need to make some drastic changes to get myself off the trajectory I have been on for months (meaning: gain gain gain, pretend I'm not gaining, gain gain gain).

The reality is I have gained nearly 25 pounds since stopping Medifast in June. It's been a slow chipping away at all my hard work of the winter and spring when I lost 60 pounds total. I did eat relatively heathy, but in fits and starts, and I never quite figured out how to break my worst eating habit: food is a treat for me. A lavish meal is something I think I "deserve" after a hard day, or to celebrate an achievement, or just a way to pamper myself when I am feeling stressed or tired. I love my new job, but it's extremely stressful and I am still figuring out its rhythms and cycles. So pretty much every day, every meal, has been me treating myself. My schedule has been so upended, in fact, I even skipped running last week. ACK! I am on Week 7, where I am running 20-25 minutes straight. Soooo close to completion!

I ordered a box of Medifast food last week, and I started back on plan yesterday. Ironically, the extreme discipline works for me. There are no treats, ever, and for some reason I don't rebel against that. Medifast is mindless: just eat a packet of food every two hours, then for dinner have 3 servings of veggies and 5-7 ounces of meat. We never got out of the dinner habit, so I've got easy-to-make meals at my fingertips. I can just slide back into the rhythms of the plan and let food and eating take a backseat in my life while I concentrate on establishing new rhythms to my day and my attitude (for instance, I now work longer hours, and often on the weekends. I am more responsible for running meetings and projects, unlike before when I was always the second-in-command. That requires a very different level of energy and commitment.)

Six months ago, I vowed never to do Medifast again, and it kills me to go back on that. It was hard, and it doesn't teach me anything about how to eat regular food without gaining weight. But that's not the lesson I need to learn right now. Right now I need to take this weight off again, before I go even further and gain it all back, and get myself back into my 10s like I've been wanting to do for months. Once I get back there, I'll figure out how to do the maintenance part. That's Phase 2, and I may have started it a little too soon last time; I still needed to lose a little more weight when I switched from Medifast, and so I ended up with a hodgepodge of counterproductive goals. I wanted to lose weight, I wanted to maintain, and oh my God I wanted to eat regular food again. Guess which one won? I won't make that mistake again.

Hunh. I've been looking back at old posts as I've been writing this, and I just looked again my 2010 Resolutions. I'm not doing them the way I thought I would be, but I am still on track for all of them:

1. Becoming a 5K runner. Despite missing last week and probably this one, I will be running the St. Pat's 5K on March 14, and I will be running other 5Ks this year.

2. To get back into my 10s. That's what returning to Medifast is about.

3. Go paperless. Hubby actually "re-organized" my disaster of a desk on Sunday, which prompted me to clean the whole thing out and get rid of tons of paper. Now my tax papers are sitting next to me in a folder as I wait for the mortgage company to send their tax forms. Then I'll be using TurboTax online this year -- no more paper or CDs.

4. A new Self-Improvement project for my brain. If this new job doesn't qualify, I don't know what does. I am reading all kinds of books right now, attending classes, learning new business philosophies, etc, as well as learning how to take charge of projects and become more self-sufficient at work. It's not going back to school for a degree, but I can see how it would lead me there in a year or two.

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I started brewing ideas for this post a couple days ago, after my box of food arrived but before I had officially started. I felt fat and unwieldy and desperate, tired of failing and gaining, embarrassed about needing such a strict plan to lose weight and even more embarrassed about not fitting into any of my favorite clothes anymore. (I have another week of dresses I would have loved to have worn for Dress Remix Week, but all of them are hanging in another closet right now so I am not reminded daily about not being able to wear them.) I was beating myself up pretty badly; my original title for this post was "Have I Hit Bottom Yet?"

But that's not how I feel anymore. I survived my first day back on Medifast, and I actually was relieved by the end that those 5 little bars were in my purse. I appreciate not having to think about food right now, and I am looking forward to getting back to running tomorrow. I'm proud of taking action again, not just kicking myself for failing. I'm excited to look ahead again, to make plans and see achievable goals in front of me, and to realize I hadn't actually gone as far off-track as I thought. Yeah, 25 pounds up still pisses me off, but it could have been worse, and at the rate I was going it was going to be much worse very quickly. So maybe this drastic change is what I needed.

I'll check back in a week and let you guys know how it's going. My guess it will be even better once I hit ketosis and all the hunger pangs and headaches go away. The first few days of Medifast are rough!

13-in-13 Challenge: Week 7 complete

I am writing the bulk of this post before I head out to my WW meeting, and I will enter the weight loss section when I get back. I had a really good week with food and exercise and mental readiness, and I want to look back at that before I know how that translated on the scale.

Anyway, as you may or may not remember, last week was really rough, and I actually skipped my WW meeting for the first time since the summer. I am thinking of that as a hard reboot; you know, when your computer gets so overloaded after running without turning it off for a long time, and just the act of rebooting it resets all the running applications and cleans up any problems you are having. That's what missing last week's meeting was like for me. I hope!

1. LOSE WEIGHT.
(For continuity's sake, my last weigh-in on January 9 was 182, and that was a -4.2 pound loss. I checked my home scale last week before I bailed on the meeting, and I was up to around 184. I will be delighted if I am close to where I was on the 9th.)

ETA after meeting:
Weight: 180.6
LOSS: -1.4

WooooooohOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! The reboot worked! Thank goodness.

2. Eat one vegetable-based meal a day.
Accomplished!

I did grab a cheeseburger at McDonald's one day, but it was a salad for dinner so I kept it under control. We celebrated my job offer at Sweet Tomatoes, not some upscale restaurant where I would have eaten all the wrong things ad had some wine to boot.

Interestingly, I had to eat on the run a second day so I stopped at Quizno's, and I ordered the honey mustard chicken salad because on the menu it looked like the most reasonable option with the most vegetables. Then I looked it up on Dotti's Weight Loss Zone site, and nearly had a heart attack: it was 28 points!!!! It was the highest-point item on the menu. Sheesh!

3. Do at least 2 different types of exercise each week.
Week 4 of C25K is complete, and it felt darned good. I purchased some running tights instead of wearing my too-short yoga pants, and I can really see the difference this is making on my dupa in my window reflection. The running pattern in W4 is 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and I was starting to feel like I was pushing it at last in the 5-minute intervals. Next week are 3 sets of 5 minutes, and I'm looking forward to seeing how I adjust.

That said, I did not get a second type of exercise in, but I am starting to feel restless. I need to find another routine for my off-running days. Hmmm, will ponder this more...

4. Limit my sweets/dessert/treats to 3-4 per week.
Like I said, I did not go the traditional route for celebrating my new job, and on Friday night, when all I wanted to do was go out to dinner and drink wine with my husband I instead had a big bowl of spaghetti squash and meatballs. Every time I was tempted I thought, "I want a good weigh-in on Saturday, I want a good weigh-in on Saturday," and that was enough to keep me on the straight and narrow.

AND (counting it up in my Tracker) I kept the sweets indulgences down to 4 this week. Wow, good for me; didn't think I had done it, but I did! I've been substituting clementines or flavored yogurt for when I have a sweet tooth and it looks like it's been working. What a Splurge mentioned that one of the new habits she developed last year was to have a bowl of fruit along with her breakfast every morning, and I have been trying to do the same. Those little clementines are perfect for when I don't have time to eat before I leave for work, and I have pineapple and canteloupe to cut up for this week.

So yeah, things are coming along a little better this week. Next week, the goal is get rid of that pesky 8 in the middle of my weight. 170s, I am aiming for you!

13-in-13 Challenge: Week 6 complete

Let's just jump right in and recap my commitments.

1. LOSE WEIGHT.
Weight: ????
LOSS: I doubt it.

I did something I haven't done in five months: I skipped my WW meeting. On purpose.

I just did not want to go this week. I ate horribly all week, and I knew I had gained at least a pound back. I did not want to see that on my tracker, I wanted my Saturday morning to myself, and I decided that I would skip for ONE WEEK ONLY and see what happens. So I did, and I got a lot accomplished at home instead. I wish I had had a better week, but I don't feel guilty about skipping and my commitment is strangely renewed despite not going.

2. Eat one vegetable-based meal a day.
Hmmm, what does it say in my tracker? (I did track eventually, on Thursday I went back and made myself write down everything I had been eating. It wasn't pretty.) Ah, here it is: I did this 2 out of 7 days. Blerg.

3. Do at least 2 different types of exercise each week.
I completed Week 3 of C25K; this meant doing 2 rounds of 90 seconds running, 90 seconds walking, 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking. It felt good; I am looking forward to increasing my running times next week.

But I didn't get a second exercise type in this week. Hrm. Does taking down Christmas decorations count? :)

4. Limit my sweets/dessert/treats to 3-4 per week.
Oh, hahahaha. It wasn't my sweet tooth that got me this week, it was salty fast food. McDonald's, Taco Bell, McDonald's again...I don't know what caused the cravings -- probably my TOM -- but I fed it repeatedly. Blerg again.

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Okay. Not great. But it's a new week, I'm really looking forward to running, and I want to go back next Saturday to my meeting at least where I was last week. I'm going to keep tracking, keep eating my tasty bag of clementines, and make myself a nice batch of homemade sauce to eat with my spaghetti squash. I am halfway through my 13-week challenge now and I am still 1.8 pounds OVER where I started. 13 pounds obviously isn't realistic anymore, but I do want to have made some headway before I get to my birthday. So...onward!

13-in-13 Challenge: Week 5 complete

Well, this was a much better week than the first 4, on all fronts.

Let's review the commitments:

1. LOSE WEIGHT.
Weight: 182.0
LOSS: -4.2

Well, hallelujah!! First loss in months. Months! Heh, it's amazing what tracking, eating less, exercising, and not drinking boozy concoctions will do.

Of course, future losses will not be as high as this -- they never are after the first week -- but as long as it continues to go down, it's all good.

2. Eat one vegetable-based meal a day.
Completed this every single day, and on some days had two.

3. Do at least 2 different types of exercise each week.
I got in my 3 days of Week 2 of the C25K plan; setting the days to MWF has made a big difference in my commitment. I am actually looking forward to my next run tomorrow!

That said, I didn't exercise much on my off-days; sure on Saturday I did go to the Art Institute and walk all over that place for hours, but it's not the same. However, I have been feeling stiff and sore in my pelvis and back the last couple of days, so I did a half-hour of Wii yoga this morning, and that helped immensely.

Whoo! That makes it two types of exercise in a week! Check mark next to this one too!

4. Limit my sweets/dessert/treats to 3-4 per week.
Sunday -- tiny yogurt cone at Sweet Tomatoes
Wednesday -- 4 squares of Toblerone
Thursday -- 4 squares of Toblerone
Friday -- cookie at lunch, 1/2 brownie and frozen yogurt at Sweet Tomatoes, crackers and Better'n'Peanut Butter at night
Saturday -- tiny cookies and a small cranberry scone at the Russian Tea Room, 2 glasses of wine with dinner
Sunday -- crackers and Better'n'Peanut Butter for lunch

I can do better next week. At least the Toblerone is almost gone. Then there is no chocolate I like in my house; that's the hardest thing.

I am noticing I am falling back on my peanut-butter-and-crackers habit too much, even with the fake peanut butter. It's my comfort food, hands-down. I think I am going to need to banish the fake stuff from my house for a bit. (The crackers are already gone.) It's the only way I can control it. Believe me, I've tried.

Anyway, it was a very good week, and next week is shaping up well too. Now it's time to start prepping dinner: roasted bone-in chicken thighs with 20 cloves of garlic, carrots and sweet potatoes. They all roast together in a pan for an hour, mmmmmm, so sweet and softy and garlick-y...

Can you tell it's my womantimes? I'm so food-obsessed, LOL!

13-in-13 Challenge: Week 4 complete

The hardest part of issuing self-challenges like this is facing up to it when you haven't been trying. Blah, blah, okay it was the holidays, but if I had really wanted to work at this, I could have. I didn't.

But I went to my WW meeting today, knowing full well the damage was going to be huge, and I paid her to tell me how much I gained. It was as bad as I thought. The receptionist (who is also the leader at the Thursday meeting) drew a line above today's weigh-in, and said it was a fresh start. Just move forward, stay on plan, and keep going. So that's what I'm doing. It's a new year, and I've got 9 more weeks left in this challenge; I can make real headway if I work at it. And I want to work at it.

1. LOSE WEIGHT.
Weight: 186.2
GAIN: 6.2

In 3 weeks, oh boy. Okay, onward!

2. Eat one vegetable-based meal a day.
I was lucky when we were at my in-laws to get any vegetables in the meal at all. Yikes! But I am making a concerted effort this week to follow this. We've stocked up on salad fixin's (which we love), spaghetti squash and sauce, and I just picked up a bag of shredded cabbage and mushrooms today. That makes the best stir-fry...

3. Do at least 2 different types of exercise each week.
I completed the first week of the Couch-to-5K plan this week, Monday Wednesday and Saturday. I'm glad I'm starting from the beginning, because it's not easy!

I did have to miss my Friday workout because I was, um, hungover after New Year's, but I made sure to get there today. Next week I will get my C25K workouts done during the week, and Saturday after my WW meeting, I will hit the pool! Looking foward to that.

But oh my gosh, it must be January 2nd. The gym was PACKED. There was a line waiting to get into an exercise class next to the indoor track, and the pool water was splashing up on the sides there were so many people in there. I have to get there early or I'll be irritated.

4. Limit my sweets/dessert/treats to 3-4 per week.
There were Christmas cookies, and I got 4 different chocolate/candy gifts from co-workers. This was hopeless.
But I did throw away all the cookies and most of the candy now, and the few that are left are put aside for my 3-4 treats per week. Even those might get tossed in a day or two...

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I'm not going to include them as part of a challenge or anything, but there are a few new habits I am trying to form now, to firm up my eating plan and really pushing myself to lose weight instead of continuing to gain.

-Eating a bowl of fruit with breakfast every morning. I read this new habit that What A Splurge had developed over last year, and it sounds like a brilliant idea. I have a platter of excellent fruit that I picked up for New Year's, and it's a great way to start the day!

-Tracking my food. I cracked open my WW journal again, and am even counting points this week.

-Eat more unexpected varieties of vegetable soup. I love soup, but when I think of "vegetable soup" I think of the cubed carrots, green beans, peas, zucchini and tomatoes that are in traditional vegetable soups. I hate all those veggies, especially together. So I bought a light Maryland crab broth soup, some light French onion, and a spicy black bean for this week's lunches. I'd like to make a non-creamy mushroom soon, and maybe a squash-tomato. They're still all vegetable, they're just not "vegetable soup".

-I've got to find a good dinner roll. With Medifast last year we gave up all bread and carbs, and that's not what I want to do this year. But I do want it in moderation, thus the dinner rolls; they're great with soup or to sop up the last bits of salad or spaghetti squash and tomato sauce. Natural Ovens used to have a great one but I haven't seen it in stores lately.

That's it for now! I have a good feeling about this week. Mainly because I CANNOT GAIN MORE WEIGHT. Argh!

Resolution: I will be a runner.

I was remiss this week on posting about the 13-in-13 challenge. I don't want to do it, even now. I really am tired of discussing my failures in losing weight, in eating right, in blowing off exercise. I'm tired of feeling fat and ungainly and like a failure.

It's time to change. Coincidentally, it's also coming time for New Year's Resolutions. I love New Year's, when the year is fresh and new and full of promise. I like looking ahead, imagining the person I want to be when the year ends again, and setting goals to become that person. Last year, I made a commitment to lose weight, and I accomplished that. I lost a lot of weight, and changed the way I looked at myself and the way other people looked at me. I also began a long obsession with dresses, started this blog, ran a 5K, swam laps at my lovely little secret town pool, and joined the online fashion community. It was a really good year.

So, what do I want to accomplish this year? What person do I want to be when 2010 is over? I've got many dreams percolating, about finishing losing this weight, about maybe going back to school for process engineering, about finally getting a new haircut that I really like. But mostly I dream about being a runner.

I like running. I'm terrible at it, and I hate myself about halfway through and I want to quit/die/curl up on a ball on my couch, but I still like it. I like that's it just me and the path in front of me, no expensive equipment save a good pair of running shoes, a chance to tune in my iPod and shut out the world and run. I like what it does to my body, the way it firms up the flabby parts on my dupa and my hips, the way the deep breathing reminds me it's only been 5 years since I quit smoking, and I never thought I would be able to do that. I like wearing cute tops and shorts in the summer, and yoga pants and sweatshirts in the winter. I like running.

So that's the goal: to become a runner once and for all. I don't have dreams of a marathon or even a 10K, not quite yet. I want to run 5Ks, lots of them, all year long. I plan on signing up for as many of them as I can this summer and fall. Until then, I have started the Couch-to-5K plan again; it's been so long since I ran regularly I might as well start over from the beginning. This time I plan on completing it in 9 weeks, which will be just about when the 13-week challenge ends, just before my birthday. (Hey, maybe there is a St. Pat's 5K I can sign up for! I will check that out.)

I started Day 1, Week 1 this morning. It felt good, but no lie, it was hard. The indoor track at my park center has windows on three of the walls, and at 6am there's nothing to see except one's reflection in the glass. It was hard seeing that, seeing things jiggle that haven't jiggled for a while. Accepting that this is the same size body I was dragging around the same track last spring, that all the work and weight loss of the summer was gone and I had a lot of ground to cover again.

But that's okay; I've got my running shoes on, my iPod has some new playlists, and I am ready to go.

13-in-13 Challenge: Week 2 complete

Good Lord, this is embarrassing. I did even worse on week 2 than I did on week 1.

Let's review the goals:

1. LOSE WEIGHT.
I'm not gonna lie, I used the No-Weigh-In pass this week. It was a rough week: 3 holiday luncheon parties and my womantimes started up. I knew from my own daily weigh-ins the news was not good, but I just could not handle seeing it written down on my WW card. So I didn't.

I won't be able to attend a meeting next week as we'll be traveling so the next one won't be until around New Year's. But as I said at the meeting, this week was really the worst for me in terms of parties. Christmas will only be one meal, and I can survive that.

2. Eat one vegetable-based meal a day.
My mistake here was not preparing that spaghetti squash earlier in the week to have throughout. Too easy to have a sandwich for dinner after a big luncheon, and it showed.

3. Do at least 2 different types of exercise each week.
Um.

At least my running shoes came yesterday? And I took them out of the box today?

I've been thinking about this today, as I frantically worked on all the last of my Christmas preparations. New Year's is in 2 weeks, and I usually try to spend some time thinking about the achievements and failures of the previous year, and making goals for the upcoming one. Last year was a success: my goal was to lose weight, and I did. I'm not finished with that, obviously, so it's definitely something I will continue to work on.

But this year...this year, I really want to make exercise a regular part of my life. I tend to go in spurts; I run or swim or do yoga consistently for a few months, then it fades out for a month or two before my motivation kicks back up again. I'm in a lull right now, as much as I am trying to pretend I'm not. I need consistency, a regular routine. I like exercise, and I love what it does to my body; I like the definition in my arms, when my dupa gets firmer and less wide. I like feeling strong and healthy and invincible.

Consistent exercise is the goal for 2010. I'd like to be running 5Ks when it's 5K season again, so I think a do-over of the Couch to 5K plan is probably in order. Last time, I did it rather haphazardly, ending up finishing the 9-week plan in about 20 weeks. Adhering strictly to the 9-week length will be a great start at getting myself into a routine.

What's nice about making New Year's Resolutions early is that you can get a head-start on them. I'll be bringing my running shoes to Detroit this week!

4. Limit my sweets/dessert/treats to 3-4 per week.
I am going to be so happy when Christmas is over. That is all I am saying about that.

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On the good news front, I brought the last of our fat clothes to a donation place yesterday. I've given away some to friends and family, and I had already donated all of our coats to a charity drive they were doing at a friend's church. Between me and Hubby, we had 15 boxes of clothes that I brought to the Home of the Sparrow. Fifteen! Because I am going to write it off for taxes, I counted everything in the boxes. This was pretty much everything in our closets, under the bed, in storage boxes, all seasons. Going from 18-20 to 10-12 means a complete and total turnover in one's closet. Luckily, we were able to still fit in our shoes!

The tally, MEN'S version:
Dress pants = 17
Jeans = 13
Sweaters = 14
Button-down shirts = 15
Vests = 5
Casual shirts = 18
t-shirts = 45
short-sleeve polos = 29
turtlenecks = 3
shorts = 15

The tally, WOMEN'S version:
Suits = 2
Dress pants = 19
Skirts = 10
Jeans = 18 (many were hand-me-downs from friends over the last year)
shorts = 3
Capri pants = 7
short-sleeve t-shirts = 24
long-sleeve t-shirts = 25
turtlenecks = 5
long-sleeved sweaters = 34
short-sleeved sweaters = 17
dress tops = 16
button-down shirts = 21
tanks/camisoles = 41
workout tops = 6
workout pants = 9
shoes = 9 pairs
belts = 6
purses = 5
blazers = 7
dresses = 8

Plus 7 men's coats and 14 women's.
And the two boxes I sent to my sister, the two boxes I gave to friends, and the jumbo-sized two boxes Hubby gave to his brother.

Okay. We had a lot of clothes. Still do, just smaller sizes now!

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Shopping Friend gave me 5 bags full of clothes that she was going to donate, thus bringing the circle 'round again. My closet is busting from the seams again, now with clothes in two sizes: what fits me now, and what I want to fit me in the next few months. I've already started a new type of donate pile; not just clothes that are too big, but things that just aren't going to work. It's tough work rebuilding a closet from scratch, and I've made plenty of mistakes along the way. In those bags that were donated yesterday were already some losers from purchases this year.

Heh, I should do a photo post of 'gone but not forgotten' pieces. Whaddya think?

13-in-13 Challenge: Week 1 complete

I don't really follow football. I understand the basic rules of the game, but I don't follow any teams or know how long a whole season lasts or spend my Sundays watching games with friends. That said, I adore Friday Night Lights. It's a terrific, nuanced, beautifully-acted show about the complicated lives of a town who lives and dies by their high-school football team. I can't wait for it to start again on NBC this January (don't have DirectTV).

Anyway, on FNL they occasionally have a "bye" week, when they don't have a game that Friday and they spend the week taking it a little easier and recharging their batteries for the game the following week.

I think I should have had a bye week between my (self-imposed!) challenges.

I wasn't super-horrible, going on some crazy binge ordering pizza** and eating pints of ice cream or anything close to that. I just didn't TRY to do any of the 4 goals I set. I didn't even feel guilty for not trying. By about Thursday I started asking myself what I was doing and why, and the best I could come up with was that I just didn't feel like it this week. That's when the "bye week" phrase popped into my head, and I realized what I had done.

Well, I wish I had tried more, but hopefully my total procrastination -- and that I have to confess said procrastination publicly right here and now -- will spur me on to getting it right this week. I am so tired of not fitting in all my cute dresses!

For posterity's sake, here is the review of my goals.

1. LOSE WEIGHT.
Weight: 180.2
GAIN: 1.2

Dang. DAAAAAAAANG.

2. Eat one vegetable-based meal a day.
This was the one thing that I did most consistently; I think there were only 2 days out of 7 where I did not have at least one veggie-based meal per day.


3. Do at least 2 different types of exercise each week.
Oh, hahahahaha! Heeheeheehee! Oh, I crack myself up with my grand plans!
But my new running shoes arrive this week, and I truly am looking forward to getting to use them again. I miss running a lot.


4. Limit my sweets/dessert/treats to 3-4 per week.
I think I was acting like this week was a farewell tour to cookies; I ate some of all of my favorites! And Thursday we had our division holiday luncheon, and there were sugar cookies galore. I love Christmas sugar cookies, the shaped ones with sprinkles, and especially the colored ones you make with the form-shooter thing. It was four hours of listening to people drone on and on about project plans, and platters of sparkly sugar cookies in front of me. Guess how I chose to keep myself awake?

There are 2 more parties this week; I won't be falling into the same trap. But I will save up my treat days for those, so I can have something delicious at each.


**Hubby and I made a promise earlier this fall that we were going to not order pizza for the rest of the year, in a reverse New Year's resolution. This was a huge shift for us; pizza is our default "I'm too lazy to do anything, we deserve a treat" meal, and we often order it once a week. We've stuck to our vow, though, and it's actually getting easier over time. We've come up with quick meals to replace it at home, and now when we want a treat we go out to a nice dinner. Even there at that "treat" moment, I am getting better about making smarter choices. We also often select Sweet Tomatoes as our "treat" restaurant, and we pile on the salad fixin's.

I am looking forward to a nice thin-crust pizza with onions, spinach and sausage on New Year's Eve, I will admit, but I think after that I'm going back to the No-Pizza Promise. It's really been a great help in not careening completely out of control.

16-Week Commitment Challenge: COMPLETE

Hard to believe the 16 weeks is finally over! In some ways, it took forever, and in others it flew by. Strange to look back and see that 16 weeks ago was AUGUST; I thought it was at least the fall when I started it. But no!

Instead of doing a weekly recap, I thought I would look at my success at each goal overall. Looking at the big picture has helped me think about what I want to focus on next, what I've managed to build into a habit and what still needs work.

1. Attend WW meetings every week without skipping any.
This was the primary goal I wanted to accomplish, and I succeeded 100%. Attending weekly meetings is now a regular habit, one I will continue through 2010 at least. I prefer the Thursday leader but I like the convenience of a Saturday meeting better, so if I don't make one I definitely do the other.

For those of you new to the blog, I actually am a former WW Leader. It's a program I love and wholeheartedly believe in. It's not for everyone, but the weekly meeting format is where I thrive. I needed to get back into it, to get over my embarrassment of paying while being Lifetime, of continuing to gain and still attend meetings. It's not just when you are successful that you need to go to a meeting; it's every week. That finally sunk in during these 16 weeks.

2. Exercise 4 days a week minimum.
My success here was much more sporadic. I tried mixing it up, doing running and Wii yoga and stretching, working the Couch-to-5K plan and running a 5K, picking specific days for exercise, etc, but I still could not quite get to a regular routine. I will continue to concentrate on getting this into a habit, because I know regular exercise is so good for my health and for continued weight loss.

3. Count my points in my Tracker.
This took some time to get going, but I have been regularly journaling all my foods in my Tracker for the last 7 weeks. I don't count points but I do write (most) of it down now. Weekends are my weakest still; the Tracker stays tucked away in my purse with the rest of my work papers, unfortunately. I will keep plugging away at this too.

4. Cut back on the alcohol to 1-2 drinks a week.
This was pretty easy, for the most part. We do end up drinking more during the holiday so I will stay more aware of it, but right now my biggest empty-calorie indulgence is cookies.


Overall, I think I did pretty well sticking to my goals. The problem, though, was despite all that focus, I did not lose any weight. In fact, I ended up gaining 11 pounds over the last 16 weeks.

Oops.

So my next challenge will address that. This one will range from today through to my birthday, March 13. Ironically, that is 13 weeks away. Yay, my lucky number! And even more ironically, I want to lose at least 13 pounds by then; that will put me at 166, which is a good middle point to decide what my final goal number will be.

I'm calling it the 13-in-13 Challenge. All the regular things will still be in place: I will be following the WW plan, attending weekly meetings, and exercising. But it's not enough to randomly pick a goal weight to aim for; I need smaller goals to achieve every week that will help me get to the larger goal. These are the ones I am doing for the next 13 weeks:

1. LOSE WEIGHT.
It seems so obvious a goal, but since it didn't happen the last challenge I am going to spell it out here. I will record my loss every week (or my gain, SIGH) instead of glancing once ay my book after weigh-in and not thinking about it again until the next weigh-in.

2. Eat one vegetable-based meal a day.
This means salads, veggie soups, my beloved spaghetti squash and tomato sauce, etc. If I have salad for lunch, then I can have a meat-based meal for dinner (steeak, meatloaf, etc). If I have a sandwich or hot entree at lunch, then dinner will be a salad or soup or spaghetti squash.
I have learned from journaling that the days I do best at staying on-track are days I do one veggie-based meal. So now I am going to do so consciously.

3. Do at least 2 different types of exercise each week.
Instead of focusing on the quantity of exercise, I am going to focus on the type. I have my punchcard for lap sessions at the park district pool, I have at least 2 types of Wii exercises I can alternate, and I will be ordering new running shoes this week so I can pick that back up. Maybe by keeping it changed up I will do it more often, and get into that habit I want so much to have.

4. Limit my sweets/dessert/treats to 3-4 per week.
I have to stop having a cookie a day, but cold turkey will only result in disaster. So I'll try moderation. I hear it's all the rage. :)

So there you have it. Ready, set, get to goal!