Cara's Weightloss Journal

Okay, so who likes yogurt?

• Antioxidant vitamins A and E (now with 20% of your recommended daily value)
• A blend of probiotic cultures & fiber (3 grams of fiber per 4-ounce serving) for digestive health
• Calcium and vitamin D for bone health

Each 4 oz container was only 2 points. It had 3 grams of fiber and 4 grams of protein, so it made a wonderful afternoon snack. It tied me over quite well ’til dinner.

I really can’t believe I gained 8/10ths of a pound this week. I mean, what the heck?!

I did good all week and I mean ALL week. According to my scales at home, I lost 2/10ths so at WW I should have, at the very least, broken even. But to gain almost a whole pound. I refuse to accept that!

Now, I’m not saying that the WW scales are messed up. In fact, I bank on the fact that of all the scales on this planet, WW scales should be the most accurately functioning. I depend on that every week. So I believe they are accurate.

So what am I saying then? Am I saying there’s something wrong with my scales at home? Possibly. But I don’t want to think that. I want to think that my scales at home do fluctuate from time to time. I mean, I bought them on sale like 10 years ago at KMart, so at some point they’re going to be letting me down. But I don’t want to believe that. They’ve been so consistent for me over these past few months.

So then if it’s not the WW scale and it’s not my scales at home, what am I trying to say?

Well, here’s my best explanation. Something drastically went wrong between the time I weighed myself at home this morning and when I weighed in at WW.

Something altogether unexplainable. Something from another dimension. Something so strange that I don’t think even the best CSI and NCS investigators could solve.

What happened was this… I all of the sudden bloated between 8:30 and 8:45 this morning. That’s my explanation. That’s what must have happened.

It’s really my only explanation because there is no way I am accepting this gain.

I reject it. It did not happen. In the immortal words of Derek Zoolander’s father “it’s dead to me”.

So, now that I have that off my chest, how did you guys do this week? I’m pulling for you, so let me know how you did.

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You know, I have had the slowest weight loss for someone who has never missed a Weight Watchers meeting in almost 3 years and has never stopped one day from counting my points and working the plan. I’ve weighed in EVERY Saturday since May 12, 2007—EVERY SATURDAY.

And look at this. It’s my weight loss chart from day one:

• My average weight loss has be 7/10ths of a pound each week. Not bad.

• I started at 265.2 lbs and I’m now down to 163.2 lbs.

• I’ve lost a total of 102 lbs.

Here’s the sad info (well, sad for me):

• From May 12, 2007 to Dec. 20, 2009 I lost a total of 97.4 lbs with an average loss of 1.2 lbs each week. 19 months, not bad, right?

• Then from Dec. 20, 2009 to present day, I’ve only lost a total of 6.4 lbs with an average loss of .1 lbs each week.

Look at this plateau—a plateau I basically maintained for 15 months:

See how many ups and downs there were? The gray line going horizontal across the center of the chart is the 175 lb mark. So even though I reached my 100 lb goal in May of 2009, look how much I went back up and down. I’ll bet I lost 50 lbs (and gained 50 lbs) over the past 15 months. All the while, never missing a Saturday morning weigh in or meeting.

Crazy!!

I mean, I’ve heard of people having plateaus for a short period of time. A few weeks or maybe a month or two at the most. But never for 15 months!! And I’ve heard of people not following their plan or “kinda” following their plan and having stats like this.

But me? I’ve been on plan the whole time. What the heck?!

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m ecstatic at my losses recently and I know I’m heading down the right path now to make these pounds stay off for good, instead of gaining them back like I’ve done over the past couple of years, but doesn’t this sound a little crazy?

Who in their right mind would keep going this long, day in, day out, non-stop every week?

The truth be told, I’ve learned a lot about myself over these 15 months. Sometimes I thought I had myself figured out. Each time, I learned something valuable about me. Its been a long process and one I would never want to do again nor would I want to recommend to anyone, but this process has brought me to where I am today. I can look back at every loss and every gain and say “I’ve overcome”.

I’m not at goal, yet. I’m only 8.2 lbs away from my Weight Watchers goal. And 23.2 lbs away from my ultimate goal. I sure hope it doesn’t take me another 15 months to lose these last 8 lbs.

Who knows. All I know is that I will make goal one day. I am sure of that. In the mean time, one day at a time, one week at a time, one step at a time.

P.S. The twitter guy hasn’t bugged me any more. Whew! He’s probably off terrorizing someone else by now. My boss hasn’t said anything about any phone calls to the owner either.

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I can’t remember the last time I blogged twice in one day. But this one was important to me.

I had something happen this week that’s shook me up a bit.

Before I get into it, I want to explain what I mean by “transparency”. In my weight loss journey, I’ve learned that it helps me, and the people going along the journey with me, if I’m as honest and open as possible. It helps me learn things about myself and it helps others identify with my journey so they can grow in theirs. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “that really inspired me” or “thanks for being so vulnerable, I can totally relate” or “your honesty has helped me work out my own issues”, etc. So I’ve tried to be as transparent as possible in every walk of my life, not in just blogging. No holding anything back.

Well, it backfired a bit on me this past week.

You might know that I’m an avid Twitter-er. I tweet about absolutely everything. Conversations between me and my daughter. Comments on idiots driving in traffic. My favorite movies. I’ll pass along professional resources I’ve found. Jokes. Funny thoughts that pop into my head. Bible verses. My struggles with weight loss from hour to hour. Stuff like that.

Well, So last weekend I just finished watching Breaking Bad and I was twittering about the show when I came across a comment Wil Wheaton had made that I thought was hilarious. First, if you don’t know who Wil Wheaton is, he played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was the highly intelligent, geeky teenage son of the doctor. And in case you’re not familiar with Breaking Bad, it’s a new series staring Bryan Cranston, who was the father on Malcolm in the Middle, who plays a high school chemistry teacher gone bad. In fact, he’s turned his knowledge of chemistry into manufacturing methamphetamines to raise quick cash to leave for his family as he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

Okay, so Will Wheaton (geeky guy) says he loves Breaking Bad so much that he wants to guest star on it. So I commented back to him, retweeting his original comment, saying it would be hilarious to see him as a drug lord. Stop for a minute to picture that. … Well, I didn’t realize it at the time, but his original tweet had profanity in it. A pretty bad one, in my book (god-d**m).

One more bit of information that’s important to this story… I work for a Christian publisher and I state so in my twitter bio.

The next morning, someone had called me out on it and basically said ‘how dare you retweet profanity when you represent your employer”. I quickly apologized by saying I probably should have deleted the profanity before retweeting it but I’m human and I made a mistake. He didn’t like my response. He said I sounded flip and arrogant and was obviously not sorry at all. He demanded an apology. I told him I didn’t need to ask for his forgiveness, only God’s.

He kept on publicly berating me saying very mean things about me and my character. The thing that really shook me up is that he talked like he knew the owner of the company I work for and he threatened to call him if I didn’t apologize to his liking.

He went on for about a day and a half. All the while, I did not respond to any of his tweets. My silence only made him angrier and drew him to further outlandish conclusions. I still did not respond.

One thing he originally said was that he would have gladly direct messaged me (which only the 2 of us would have seen) but I didn’t follow him so he couldn’t. But I was following him. So my only conclusion was that he wanted this to be intentionally public.

So yesterday morning, I unfollowed him in an attempt to get him to leave me alone. He came back with a sharp comment saying something like ‘fine, if that’s the way you want to be, I’ll have to take a different approach’. That really spooked me. What was this “different approach”.

Everyone kept telling me he was a bully and to just ignore him. I did. But I made one last comment (3 tweets to him altogether). I told him I unfollowed him so hopefully he’d leave me alone.

Well, he didn’t. In fact, he threatened to call the owner of the company I work for and he called him by name.

My husband got involved last night and tweeted back and forth with him trying to get him to back off. That didn’t help. It just made him madder.

So you know what I had to do this morning? I had to go to the owner of the company and tell him my side of the story before this guy called him. I felt like a kid in school. The original offense was so lame and he (the owner) even asked me a couple of times “what does this have to do with me”. I had to tell him that it doesn’t, it’s stupid. But I just wanted to bring it to his attention before this guy did so he’d be prepared.

So by me being transparent and stating my employer in my bio, I feel like I have to watch what I do in my tweets, now. I don’t like being held back from being who I am. I’m not saying I condone cussing. In fact, I don’t cuss and I find it very offensive. But now I feel like I have to watch to make sure that what I tweet won’t offend the readers of the magazine I work on. I don’t like that. I am who I am.

And on top of that, I feel like he’s watching my every tweet just waiting for me to mess up. I think of him every time I tweet and wonder if he’s reading this one. I feel like I’m being watched. I don’t know how to get him out of my head. If feel violated almost. I just want my tweeting to be what it used to be… random and fun. Not cautious and precise.

P.S. I removed my the name of the company I work for from my twitter bio. I can’t wait until “he” finds out. I’m sure he’ll say something like “oh, so now you’re hiding who you work for… isn’t that a little like closing the barn door after the horse has run free?’. See, I feel so invaded.

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A few weeks ago, my weight watcher leader handed out little slips of papers to each of us for us to write down 10 things on this list called “I’ve Come a Long Way”. The idea was to list out 10 things that I do now that I could never do when I was at my heaviest. Kind of a “look at me now”.

I thought I’d share that list with you guys:

(In no particular order)

• I’ve gone from a size 28 to size 10. In this picture, on the left, I was trying on a dress in the dressing room when I snapped that pic (I did buy it and loved it). It was a size 28. On the right is me over a year ago when I was only 8 pounds heavier than I am now.

• I’ve had to resize my wedding rings (and one of them needs resizing again)

• I don’t sweat anymore when I go shopping. This used to be terrible. I’d go grocery shopping for just a half hour and before I could make it to the check out line, I’d have sweat beads running down my forehead. It was so embarrassing.

• I can cross my legs by putting one knee over the other knee. This was a huge one for me. I’ve been crossing my knees by putting my ankle on top of my other knee for so long. I really missed crossing my legs like a lady.

• I can fold my arms in front of me and my arms aren’t squeezing my boobs. Now my folded arms fall under my boobs and rest on my tummy like they should. This was another huge one for me. I always hated folding my arms over my boobs like that.

• Walking up the three flights of stairs at work without getting winded. I remember when I first started taking the stairs I had to stop at the 2nd landing and catch my breath and I had to stop at the top of the 3rd landing before I opened the door so in case someone was standing on the other side of the door they wouldn’t be freaked out by a panting fat woman blazing through the door.

• I can buy clothes in regular stores, now. Not the plus size stores or departments. That’s a huge victory. I remember the first time this happened I had the biggest smile and told my daughter, “Look, I don’t need to go to that department any more”. I was so proud.

• I can fold my hands in my lap. I actually have a lap, now. Awesome!

• I can pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around my knees and sit like I used to sit with I was a kid in school. =]

• I don’t snore any more. I used to snore HORRIBLY. My husband recorded me one night and it was humiliating. But now, no more!

• I can eat in public without feeling embarrassed or like the whole restaurant is watching that “fat woman” eat like a pig.

• I can fit in a booth in a restaurant, now. In fact, most booths are too far away for me. I have to scoot up to the table.

Okay, so that was a little more than 10 things, but I had a couple more things I’m proud of.

What about you? What can you do now that you couldn’t do before you started losing weight? Or if you’ve just started, what are you looking forward to doing again?

Keep these things in the front of your mind. Even write them down or blog about them like I did. They are great motivations. Great trophies. Great milestones in my weight loss journey.

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