Cara's Weightloss Journal

At Weight Watchers yesterday, my leader challenged us to be good at least ONE weekend day. To track our points and stay on plan. Well, this is something I’ve been trying to do for weeks… months… heck, maybe even years. So I was up for the challenge.

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Here I sit at the end of my Sunday, a complete failure.

I knew I was going to splurge a little on Saturday. I always do. That one is hard for me to not do. But if I could just figure out how to be good on Sundays! I don’t think it’s genetically possible.

I posted a blog about this a while back and I got a comment back from a very nice gentleman suggesting that I change my perspective on splurges and indulgences. If I could eat the food that I like on a regular basis and still stay on plan, that would be the answer.

I’ve actually been doing that lately and it’s really been helping my weight loss. I’ve lost a total of 3.8 lbs over the past 3 weeks. I’ve been eating primarily low carb/high protein/high fiber foods (Weight Watchers calls these Power Foods). I haven’t been watching the fat content too closely, though, but it seems to be working.

The most important part is that I truly enjoy the food I’m eating on a regular basis. I eat full fat cheese, regular eggs, bacon, real mayo, etc. I just eat less of it and concentrate the majority of my diet on low carbs/high protein, etc.

So why the heck do I splurge on crap foods on the weekends!?

I mean, when I say I’m thoroughly enjoying my diet (not the word diet as in the “d” word, but the word diet as in the type of foods I eat). I can eat foods I haven’t eaten in years and I’m loving it. In fact, I keep small 1″ cubes of full fat sharp cheddar cheese in my fridge to snack on whenever I want. I usually on eat 1 or 2 squares at a time and I only do this once or twice a day, but it’s there for me whenever I want it. And I love it!

This is what makes me mad… Saturday night I had fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I didn’t even want it. I knew what the breading, grease and potatoes would do to my body. I knew I’d feel like crap as soon as I got done eating. And boy did I! I literally thought if I could just puke, I’d feel better. I had so many tums that night it was sad.

Then I woke up this morning and we went to McDonalds for breakfast. Why?! I don’t know. Neither one of us wanted the junk food. And for dinner… Wendys!!

I’m so stinking mad!!!

You know the sad part about it? I don’t even like bread, so I don’t miss it one bit! I don’t really miss potatoes because when I ate them this weekend, they didn’t really taste that good. I kept wishing I was eating a steak and veggies. Or a lettuce wrap roast beef sandwich.

I truly believe the only reason I splurge and indulge like this on the weekend is… well, is… is because I can.

I know I don’t want to.

But I do it because I can.

And now I feel like a complete failure.

I’ll bet I gained those 4 pounds back just over these past 2 days. And look at what I ate! What the heck! I don’t even like Wendy’s!!!

So, okay, I realize it’s been since July 29th since I’ve last blogged (well, before yesterday, which wasn’t really a blog post). I really hate myself for not blogging because so much happens from day to day and I really do need to blog it. It helps me be able to process things better and understand what’s happening to me and I know it helps others who are going through the same things.

So this is me kicking myself in the pants to get myself to blog more often. (ouch!)

As of today, I am 4.6 lbs away from my Weight Watchers goal. Last week I was 3.8 lbs away. So, yes, I gained 8/10ths of a pound this past week. I have no idea why and frankly I just don’t care to analyze it to figure out why. All I know is I ate what I was supposed to and I exercises like I was supposed to. So there. Nuf sed!

I know last week at Weight Watchers I wasn’t that happy. They were talking about hiding when you eat what you’re not supposed to and then hiding the evidence of it after you’re done with it. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been doing that my whole life. I can’t count how many times I’d get an extra hamburger from the drive through and eat it before I got home where I’d eat my “regular” meal with my family. Or I’d eat an entire bag of chips and dip at lunch time, then shove the evidence of them to the bottom of the trash bag so no one would be the wiser. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this type of thing since I started Weight Watchers 3 1/2 years ago.

In fact, here’s a blog about my last big fall. Though this was not the last time I’ve done something like this. I don’t know if I’ll ever be free of that monkey. But I can at least acknowledge that it happens. At least there’s that.

But the thing that upset me so much about the meeting last week was that I felt like I was the only one who did this. There were others in the class who seemed so genuinely confused about the whole process and couldn’t imagine actually hiding what they were eating or any evidence of it after they’d eaten it. Now, my husband said that maybe no one wanted to admit it out loud because of the humiliation of it all. And maybe that is what it was, but I just felt like I was as odd as a purple winged banana flying over a big pile of tie-died chocolate leaves. I felt so ashamed that I could possibly be the only one who did this.

Then this past week (yesterday) at Weight Watchers was much better. There was a lady there who seemed to be going through the same thing I went through a little more than a year ago with my self-sabotaging. It really started about a year and a half ago when I realize I was subconsciously telling myself that I wasn’t good enough to be thin. Kind of a weird concept, now, but at the time it was so devastating that I could actually purposefully do something to sabotage my health and happiness. But I did it (and still do it sometimes). Whenever things would be going good and I’d be losing weight and feeling good, I’d derail my success by eating a TON of food and gaining alot of my hard earned losses back. Just crazy. But I kept doing it over and over until I, first, realized it and, secondly, did something about it. Brought it out into the open and told it that it couldn’t not control my life any more.

Anyway, it was so nice being able to help someone else with these same feelings. She had already lost 150 lbs and I think she still had another hundred to go and she had never been thin a day in her life, even as a child. So now that she was looking and feeling so much better than she ever had, she wasn’t allowing herself to feel good about that. She was still wanting to hide behind the fat that wasn’t there any more. She wasn’t feeling worthy of her loss.

Weird how we do that. We work so hard and get such great results, but then we won’t allow ourselves to accept the outcome. We still feel like we didn’t do anything. Or that we still have so far to go that we don’t acknowledge how far we’ve come.

It was neat because I noticed that our leader just sat back and let us talk it through. There were others who had other problems that we all talked through, too. Was so nice to be able to help each other like that.

You know, that’s what Weight Watchers is really all about for me. It’s the sense of togetherness and knowing that we’re all going through the same thing or have been through the same thing. We’re not alone and we want to help each other get through it all. And that’s why I love this blog, too. I love sharing what I’ve been through and am going through because you guys help me work through it and by you helping me, you’re helping yourself as well. We have an unseen connection that ties us all together and helps us pull each other along.

Weight loss is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. And I’m so glad I’m not alone.

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Here I sit… 6 pounds from goal.

6 pounds…

6 pounds might as well be 50. I can’t believe the week I’ve had.

I’ve actually gained 5 pounds since last Saturday’s weigh in. So technically, I’m 11 pounds from goal. What the heck!?

For no reason, I decided to have pizza Tuesday night. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but I had 2 cheesy bread sticks and about 8 or 10 of those Hershey’s Chocolate Dunkers from Pizza Hut. The picture says it all.


Then for another “no reason at all” we decided to splurge last night and went out for steak. We haven’t been out to eat in SO long (other than the obligatory Saturday lunch with the in-laws) in forEVER.


Steak wouldn’t have been all that bad if I didn’t get the buttery mashed potatoes to go with it and the salad with chipotle ranch dressing and the cheese fries as an appetizer (of course, loaded with bacon and cheese and TONs of ranch dressing).


Why?


No reason in particular. I guess I was just feeling particularly self-destructive.


I’ve eaten sensible since then. But I think I’ve done too much damage to be repaired in time for Saturday morning’s weigh in.


I don’t get it. I know what to do and I just don’t do it. And I take no pleasure in it whatsoever.


Does this ever happen to you? What do you guys do when you do this? Please help me get past this. I just want to be at goal. I’ve been 10 pounds away from goal since a year ago this month. Now that I’m getting so close, why is this happening. I just want to be done!

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I did something really stupid this past weekend and I’m really hating myself for it. And no, it wasn’t eating the Texas sheet cake. :)