wanting to change - 170.6

One of the things I really liked about Weight Watchers was the whole "you can still eat what you love and lose weight!" part of it. This is still part of their program today. But you realize as you get further down the road that you can't eat that stuff all the time. And maybe some of it, you can't ever eat because it's the "gateway" food that just has you eating whatever you want after you eat it.

Earlier in my weight loss, this looming change was crippling and some days, it still is. I don't want to live in a world where I can't eat pizza or tacos every day! Does Weight Watchers let you eat those things every day? Yes. Will you be successful if you do that? Yes... but you will also be hungry. And weight loss will feel really, really hard because you are planning around these things that suck up all your points/calories for the day. Your pizza and tacos habit becomes a headache. You want them, but you don't want to be hungry or do the tracking gymnastics to get everything to line up in a way you'll still lose weight.

So you have three choices:
1) Give up and eat the pizza and tacos and don't worry about it, but also don't lose weight.
2) Go on as you have been doing and figure out how to work it in, but stay a little bit hangry every day you try to have these things. You'll still succeed at losing fat, but it will feel like hard work.
3) Change your approach and have more success losing fat.

For the past ten years, I lived in the land of option 2. I would eat Mexican once a week and pizza at least every other day. I was able to lose weight like this, I fit it in and I worked my plan. But. My losses were slow or stagnant. And I was hungry a lot because I was trying to fit those things in - it was really hard to do. But cutting them out (or back) was not an option I was willing to consider.

And then one day I was talking to a man at my gym about my pizza habit, and he was like "you eat pizza all the time? So unfair!" and I realized that while I did manage my portions, maybe if I backed off on the number of times I ate it, I'd be a little happier overall. And I could still have pizza... would it be so bad if I didn't have it as often? And so just like that I decided to try to I give up the frequency of eating pizza. At first it was kind of hard to do. But then I realized I really liked everything else I was eating - maybe not as much as pizza, but it was still really really good. And then I saw the nutritionist, and I was pretty happy about what I was *already doing* and she confirmed I was making good choices. And so I just kept on going without the daily pizza. I changed!

I still eat pizza once a week - tonight is actually pizza night. As I was planning out exactly the amount of pizza I want to have, I started getting stressed about the rest of the day. And then I realized... I can have less pizza and be less hungry all day and still hit my macros and my calories with no problem. So chill out, already! (And that's another change!) Change doesn't happen overnight and it is a little tough to manage at first, but you figure it out and it's really not so bad. As for Mexican, I now have that a lot more rarely - I really am not very good at controlling myself with the chips. Or any of it (why is it so so sooooo tasty?!?!?) But I don't exactly miss it. And if I really, really want it, I will plan out how to work it in. But again, the frequency is a lot lower - hey lookie there, once again, I CHANGED.

To get different results, we can't just wish it so... we have to do something about it. We have to do what we can to change the things we don't like. I don't like being a heavy bicyclist. I don't like looking like the biggest person in the room, or in the pictures. I also don't like a world without tacos and pizza... but I can change how often I have them. So I did. And when you are ready, you will, too. :)

Mother's Day - 168.8

I was 168.8 on Thursday morning. I am eating MORE food... and lost 2.6 pounds according to WW last week. I love everything I am eating.

Here is what I wrote to Kirsten about it last week:

So after the first week, the scale says I am down almost 3 pounds (!!!) my skin looks extra fantastic and I still feel great. I did have chips and margaritas on Cinco de Mayo... and it was glorious.

Otherwise, I've been pretty well nailing the 1500 calories and the ratios. This is a stressful week with a work project and family in town but overall I feel great, and the food part isn't an issue.

By the way, I LOVE everything I eat. Lots more veggies and avocados, adding seeds to my fruit and greek yogurt at breakfast, using zoodles and spaghetti squash instead of pasta. Patrick loves everything, too! 

So, so far so good. Thank you so much. :)  Have a wonderful weekend and a happy Mother's Day!

-Liz

PS not that the number on the scale matters but I was only ever 168 pounds for ONE WEEK in my adult life... the week I got married, six years ago... so this is amazing. And I'm eating more food, and feel a lot better overall now than I did then, I am SURE of it!

The funny thing is, I found a journal after I wrote this. I was so obsessed about THE NUMBER for so long. And I was measuring my worth by what the scale said. It made me sad to read, but also very grateful that I hold myself in much higher regard today. :)

My mom came out for Mother's Day. It was the best Mother's Day I have had. And she said it was the best she had, too. It's a weird day. I can appreciate it's a day for all the moms out there. It's sad for those who aren't moms but wanted to be, or who lost a child or their mom, or are navigating difficult relationships with their kids or their moms. For me, I am grateful I have my mother and was able to spend the day with her. What a gift for both of us!

I was a little off track for the weekend but it all worked out, I think. I still feel good. Spin class was cancelled last night so I erged instead and I am planning to leave work early to get a bike ride in this evening before dinner. I am doing the work. It is paying off.

getting here, and 171.4

Went to the Thursday Morning WW meeting and was happy to see I am down another .6 pounds. Slow progress is progress! The receptionist (I love her) said "you are really close to goal now." I am. I am still operating under the assumption that It's Gonna Be May :)

Yesterday I went for a consult with a nutritionist. I saw her speak at an event a few years ago - what she said back then was quite compelling and I actually changed some of my eating habits as a result. For example, she was an advocate of eating more fat, such as sautéing veggies and eggs in real butter, use full-fat dairy, etc. And in general, eat whole, real food. These were easy changes for me to make. Higher fat is NOT Weight Watchers friendly... so that is probably around the time I started tracking calories rather than points.

In any case, over the past decade, I have made quite a few changes to how I eat. It has been a long process but the result today is there is less sugar, less alcohol, less pizza, less processed food, more fat, more vegetables, more whole (real) foods in my daily diet. My 27 year old self would never believe that I eat the way I do, and that *I like it* - liking it is the key!

So at this point in my journey, I felt ready to talk to this woman one-on-one about what I'm eating and when I should be eating it, based on my goal to lose fat and properly support my activity levels. I gave her a week's worth of food and workout logs, including the day our friends moved and my lunch was wine and doughnuts. I gave her my most recent lab results. And we met to discuss it all yesterday.

Her conclusion is that I'm making good food choices overall. Yay, me! I knew this, but it's nice to hear someone else recognize it. Her whole premise is to get the body to be trained to use fat as fuel. She gave me a lot of info about how the body works and how it best burns fat. And then she gave me some guidelines to get this going in my body. This involves more of a focus on macronutrients, or macros - carbs, fat and protein. Her goal for me is to for my calories to be made up of 30% carbs, 50% fat and 20% protein. I am currently right on with the protein, but she wants me to shift some of my carb calories to fat calories. She gave me a lot of great ideas, the ones that stand out were:

- Use a whole tbsp. of butter or olive oil at a time
- Up the veggies. Have three vegetables with breakfast, if you can.
- Breakfast should be 2 eggs, not just one.
- Use spiral veggie noodles instead of pasta.
- Add cheese and avocados to salads
- For snacks, you want the same amount of fat and carbs, grams wise. (I think that was it).
- Nuts are great snacks. Beef jerky is, too, as long as the sugar content is on the low side.
- Cauliflower pizza
- Use almond meal or flax seeds instead of bread crumbs
- Recipes for coco seedy bread, a nut/seed mix as a substitute for granola, some coconut bars that are high-fat
- Carb intake should come from veggies and fruits, generally. Sweet potatoes, potatoes and winter squashes are starchy veggies and good carb sources.

Some of those things I know, I just don't do, others are a surprise.

She also wants me to try to eat 1500 calories a day right now and not worry about the workout calories. OK. This makes me nervous... but OK, I will try it.

My overall impression was that these are changes I can definitely live with. And perhaps these are expensive changes... but then, being in a healthy body is truly priceless. I have to actively plan my meals and be a little bit obsessed with tracking for a while until I get the hang of it. I will be learning about macros, I have never concentrated on them before. I am pretty excited to see what happens, here. Oh, and I'm still doing chips and margaritas on Cinco de Mayo. Because, well, life. :)

It's gonna be MAY!

I want to set the tone for this month... I lost almost six pounds in March. I lost another 0.4 pounds in April - which, though small, proves that I can keep the weight off and that I can continue losing weight. So, I'm inspired to work for the same success in MAY that I had in March. And if that happens, guess what? I'm at WW goal weight. Six pounds  and AT WW GOAL WEIGHT - when will that happen? It's gonna be MAY!

OK so jokes aside, clearly April was difficult for me. But I hung in there. I did it. I didn't get as far as I wanted, but I still got down.  But it was hard. It still is hard. Last night I wanted to eat everything. EVERYTHING! But I really am trying to focus on shifting behavior - it's not an easy process. For example, I planned in a cookie, as long as I mowed the lawn. Well, DH was out there mowing the lawn when I got home. So I took the dog on a long walk, which still didn't cover the calories for the cookie, and I was really hungry after eating dinner. I wanted the cookie. I had some peanut butter and a slice of bread (not planned). And then I had the cookie. And it was delicious, but I was MAD the whole time, because I was so over my calories.

And then I realized, that is not how I want to live. I really should have pushed off the cookie to today, after spin. Or I can say I'm borrowing the calories from Spin Day. Something. This is where I'm learning what to do, how to handle things. It's the example that is happening in real life. Some day I hope to just go "no, I don't want that" and really mean that - really, not want it! But for now I have to pretend. And it's hard to pretend you don't want something that you really DO want.

What I can say is, I DO want my six pounds to be gone by the end of May. I can sing NSync songs all day to get there. Ha, perhaps I need to include that stuff into my rotation on Pandora! So with that... it's gonna gonna gonna GONNA.... IT'S GONNA BE MAY!