16-week Commitment Challenge: Week 13 complete

I am back from my early Thanksgiving celebration with family in Arizona. Sadly, I was promptly felled by a cold as soon as I got off the plane back home (I think literally running flat-out 20 gates at the Dallas airport to catch my connection loosened up a lot of gunk in my chest), so I stayed home yesterday and took it easy. But I was well enough to do my yoga this morning so I am well enough to go into the office. Alas! :)

How did I do with my goals this week?

1. Attend WW meetings every week without skipping any.
I went to the Thursday night meeting since I was going to be out of town over the weekend. I really like this leader a lot; she's very good at engaging the members in real conversations, not just trying to get us to fill in the blanks exactly, like Saturday's does. I am going back to the Thursday meeting again this week.

The topic was about trying new traditions mixed in with the old ones, and I was able to put some of that to use during Thanksgiving #1 this weekend. They served all the old-fashioned classics, like green bean casserole and sweet potatoes with marshmallows. I filled half my plate with plain old peas-and-carrots, then took small scoops of everything else. Of course, I also ate my weight in crescent rolls, which probably defeated the peas-and-carrots victory. Ah well!

My own Thanksgiving will be much easier; I am serving a small turkey breast, my delicious cornbread-and-sausage stuffing, and the rest will be one huge pan of roasted veggies and potatoes. I'm looking forward to it!

2. Exercise 4 days a week minimum.
I. Exercised. Every. Single. Day.

That Wii Fitness Plus is awesome. At home, I alternated between yoga days and cardio days, then I wrote down all my yoga and stretching moves and brought them with me to Arizona. Did them every morning!

Interestingly, just doing yoga for days straight made me crave a good cardio workout. Wish I'd brought my running shoes there, but I got a good workout this morning, and I'm going to plan to get at least one run in this week. There is a Turkey Trot being held in the neighborhood down the street on Thanksgiving morning, and I'm considering doing it, just because.

3. Count my points in my Tracker.
Did it almost every day on the day, and filled it in the next day if I had missed. Definitely becoming a nice, solid habit now.

4. Cut back on the alcohol to 1-2 drinks a week.
Didn't have any. Next will be to cut back on sugar and cookies. :)

Reality Check

From January to June of this year, I lost 63 pounds.

From June to November, I put 18 back on.

I keep pretending that it's only been 10 or so, not acknowledging that I keep creeping up, week after week, even during my 16-week commitment challenge. I kid myself that "now" I have stabilized, that this week I am starting to go down, but then every week I pack on another pound.

But it's been more than that, and these are all the ways that it is impacting me:

-2/3 of my current closet are clothes I cannot currently wear; all my skirts, all my pants, and even now a good number of my dresses are too tight.
-I put myself on a clothing budget last month, and it's been easy to follow because I don't fit into 10s anymore and I refuse to buy anything bigger.
-I'm afraid to invest in a long wool winter coat right now because I currently need a bigger size than I want to be wearing all season.
-My bras look TERRIBLE on me. Ditto my underwear. I have to select outfits based on what kind of supportive undergarments I can fit under them to smooth things out.
-I look in the mirror and I see all the old familiar lumps and rolls coming back, one by one. I don't see slender me anymore. I miss her, A LOT.
-I've gotten soft everywhere; all the muscles and tone I acquired while I was swimming this summer or doing daily yoga on the Wii last spring or doing the Couch-to-5K program this summer and fall...it's all gone. I'm flabby and weak and yes, fat.

I'm not saying these things because I am looking for positive reinforcement or because I have low self-esteem and I secretly hate myself. I have a very healthy self-image -- probably too healthy, at times -- but I need to make myself face reality now. I need to acknowledge and recognize that I am destroying all the hard work I did earlier this year. Medifast was HARD, and it was a sacrifice to do it. We drank shakes and ate bars at the hospital when my father-in-law was dying, all through his funeral. I ate that stupid cup of soup every single day for lunch for 6 months. I paid $300 a month for the privilege of eating the worst food I ever ate in my life.

And now I am undoing all that hard work, every day and every meal. And for what? For bad-tasting Halloween candy? For giant toffee cookies I think I have "earned"? Because I am too lazy to get off my dupa, get off the computer, and go for a run?

Here would be the point in my inner monologue where I would vow to straighten up my act, to really commit to eating better and make all kinds of promises to myself and to everyone. But it doesn't work like that; I've tried that, and I've failed. I've promised to do better, and then as soon as I walk away from the computer my resolve crumbles.

I think I need to just keep making small steps, one meal and one hour at a time. I've slowly been incorporating exercise back into my daily routine again, not planning out what day I was going to run, to swim, to do yoga; instead I just wake up and make sure I carve out time between 6 and 7 am to turn on the Wii and MOVE. Maybe tomorrow I will put on my running shoes, maybe I won't. I decide in that moment, but no matter what I make myself MOVE.

I've also been trying to steer my food choices to the best ones, automatically. For instance:
-we don't order pizza when we are 'too lazy to cook'; now we go to Whole Foods and make giant salads with soup.
-I cut out granola bars as my snacks and have fruit, yogurt or string cheese instead.
-one of my meals must always be vegetable-based. If I have a sandwich at lunch then I must have spaghetti squash or a salad for dinner; if I have salad at lunch I can have meat and starch for dinner.

It's not perfect, but it's much better than it was even a month ago. The next step I want to do is get rid of the sweets, the cookie at lunch or the dessert with dinner. I know from past experience with Core once you cut out the sugar for a few days you stop craving it, and that's where I need to get.

(Of course, I want to do this just after Hubby and I finally discovered the pure awesomeness of key lime pie, but I am on a hunt to find the brand of yogurt that makes the most delicious version of it. I always poo-poo'ed flavored yogurt as a poor substitute for real, delicious yogurt and thought that it did nothing to extinguish cravings for the real food flavor it had in it, but that was before I started trying new flavors. I am a convert!)

I just need to keep doing what I have started to do, all the time. Eat better, exercise more, keep attending meetings. Stay aware of the mental tricks my mind plays on me, stop thinking about food as a treat I have earned.

And most of all, I have to remember I can't wear the clothes in my closet, for the sole reason that I am eating too much and exercising too little. Is losing the wardrobe I worked so hard to rebuild really worth less than a damn toffee cookie to me?

No, it isn't.

6am. Time to turn on the Wii!

Tuesday: Would you like some cheese with that whine?

A short black dress, a hot pink sweater, and grey patterned hose. Gee, do you think I was trying to distract anyone from looking at my hair? LOL.

The dress is new: a duplicate in black of the aubergine sheath. AT had them on mega-sale last week and the grey was already gone so I grabbed the black while I could. I adore this dress! Sadly, there was something funky and raw with the hem because it went to war with my new Spanx grey patterned hose, and each rubbed against each other on my thigh all day; the hose pilled and pulled and were ruined, and the hem fell apart in the seams. I am going to have my tailor re-hem the dress, and maybe drop the hem so it's a little longer.

And of course, I cannot forget the shoes! EEEEEE, I got these months ago at the Naturalizer outlet and have been waiting impatiently for it to get cool enough to wear them. They are ridiculously cute.



The bows! The fabric! The bows!!!! Love 'em, and so did my coworkers. Even one of the guys noticed them, hahaha. They are pretty tall, though; taller than I thought. My coworker whipped out the ruler and measured, and they're only 3 inches. I guess it's the way they're constructed that seems like more. I put in some ball cushions and they were fine.



++++++

In whiny news, I am still not liking the haircut at all. I do appreciate all the comments and suggestions, and I think I may try styling it so it's spikier today to see if that helps. My stylist had recommended using a flat-iron sometimes, but a) I don't own one, and b) I have no idea how to use one or what it is supposed to do.

But my bigger struggle right now is that I feel FAT. I'm still the same distance away from goal as I have been for weeks and months now (13 pounds), but the weight has settled in around my middle section and nothing is fitting or looking right. And for a clotheshorse like me, that is depressing in the extreme. My eating is not good at all; I have one good meal and one bad one nearly every day, and my willpower to stop that is low. I think I really need to kick up the exercise in response; running is good, but I need to get into yoga again immediately. That reshaped my middle like nothing else this spring.

So I am getting off the computer right now and getting a session in before work. YES! *fist pump*

Thursday: Backup plan

I wanted to play in today's challenge, I really did. But none of my browns were working together and I needed to be dressier than what I could cobble together. So I bowed out of today and wore a little-worn Loft LBD with a short-sleeve cranberry cardigan. I don't know why I don't wear this more often, but I love it. It's the first size 10 dress I ever bought. I almost cried when I realized that was my new (and final) size.



I think I don't wear it a lot because it's almost more of an evening dress than a day one. Pairing it with a sweater brings it down enough to be appropriate for work. (It's kind of funny how much effort I put into wearing appropriate work clothes when almost no one else in my department does.)

++++++

In exercise news, I signed up for a 5K race on September 27! Still two more weeks to go to finish C25K, and I think I will be ready. I'm not the fastest runner but taking my time getting through the program has been good for me; I'm consistent, I move my feet now, and frankly, I'm pretty amazed still that I can do this.

I also brought out the Wii Fit yesterday and did a round of yoga. It had been 104 days since the last time I used it! Yeesh. I was better at most of the poses than I had been before, but I realized how flabby everything has become since I stopped doing it. It really made a difference in my core and waist, and I want that leanness back. So back to regular yoga workouts it is! This is a good thing; I've been struggling to find another cheapo workout on my non-running days. Swimming is great, but I don't have time for more than one workout a week. I can do a yoga workout in the morning before work.

I will get 4 workouts in this week, yes I will. Monday was running, Wednesday was yoga, today was running again. Hmmm, yoga will be tomorrow, and I'm hoping I can get a run in Saturday. Ha, I might even make it to 5!