Lowering the Feed Limit

Well, I’ve finished my second full week wearing this little gem.

Last week I figured I’d lose about 1.5 pounds so when I lost only .2 I was pretty upset. I couldn’t figure it out.

On Thursday, I had my coaching session with a Bodybugg coach. She walked me through the website and showed me some things I didn’t know about even with all my playing around on the site. She also said to give things another week and see what we might need to change.

Well, I started weighing my food after talking to her because, as she said, I might have been underestimating how big a portion I’m eating.

Well, what I found explains EVERYTHING – all the problems I’ve been having getting to my goal, all the weeks I should have been down and wasn’t, EVERYTHING!

Popcorn has more calories than I ever could have imagined.

I LOVE popcorn and clearly was underestimating how much of it I eat. I looked one night at how many calories I had left and thought I would figure out how much popcorn I could have. Turned out to be about two handfuls!

Not even a bowl full.

Seeing this, I realized that at least twice a week, I was eating half a big bowl (shared with Beloved), and I was assuming it was only a few cups and totally messing up the points (on WW) or calories.

This week I weighed everything (well, after Thursday’s coaching session).

I lost THREE pounds this week!!! Three pounds!!!

And that was being sick yesterday and not really being able to exercise much. We went to Pizza Hut on Friday and I went out with my writers’ group on Saturday! And I lost 3 pounds!

I love this little thing!!!

We went to Greenwood Plantation Saturday for a romantic overnight stay. It was wonderful, and beautiful as you can see from the picture above. We didn’t actually stay in the plantation itself but on the other side of a small lake, but we toured the plantation house twice and took a ton of pictures. I have an idea for a new book, this one a ghost story.

The biggest problem with this trip was that when I came back I’d gained 2.2 pounds. Beloved said not to worry; we were going to handle it, but you know, if you’re struggling to lose weight, you do worry.

A week ago, I’d been the lowest I’d been since the start of the year and here it is MAY and I’d finally gotten 7 pounds down. In one weekend I messed up it all.

Yes, it was a special occasion (it was my 50th birthday gift and Mother’s day), but that doesn’t matter or it shouldn’t. I should be able to do what everyone else can do. I should be able to lose 1 pound a week, but you know, I celebrate losses of .4. It’s pathetic.

I’ve been doing Weight Watchers for THREE YEARS, and YAY, I’ve lost 5 STINKIN’ POUNDS. I feel like giving up.

A few weeks ago, we went to Cheeburger Cheeburger, a yummy 50s style restaurant. The Girl loves it and she was right. It was fun and delicious.

However, nearly every other person in the place was overweight. Not a little. Not like, “I can stand to lose 20 pounds.” I’m talking Biggest Loser Week 1 heavy! I felt terrible sitting there. Was I going to look like that if I eat there?

Then there was this weird thought in my head. I looked at some of those people and I thought, “They don’t count points. They don’t worry about what they eat. They could have a chocolate peanut butter milkshake without feeling guilty.”

It seems like there was a freedom there. My biggest stumbling block is that food TASTES good and that’s what gets me eating when I’m not hungry. That’s what makes me want something fried and yummy but high in points. It’s what keeps me staring at my reflection and despairing that I’ll never get to my goal weight.

Then I watch the Biggest Loser and listen to these people talk about how unhappy they were when they were heavy. I listen to Jillian trying to get to the core of why they let themselves get this way and honestly, I can’t see some deep seated reason for me. I didn’t live through my parents’ divorce or watch my parents both eat until they were over 300 pounds. I don’t have a psychological reason for eating – I’m not trying to hide behind fat.

I lost 40 pounds on Atkins before my transplant and I kept it off for about 2 years. Then the prednisone and other drugs made it easy to gain the weight back. Now, I’m taking Prograf and according to Drugs.com one of the less common side effects in kidney transplant patients is weight gain. Is it possible that I’m fighting a losing battle?

I don’t want to use that as an excuse, and in July when I talk to my nephrologist I will ask him about it. I know I don’t track well enough. I hate tracking and I know that’s the problem. I just feel like when I have to write everything down, it means no more eating out, no more going to someone else’s house and eating. How can WW be a lifestyle if it means I never can do those things?

Seems like every weekend something comes up that sabotages the week. This weekend we have a wedding reception to go to, but fortunately, it’s at an Indian restaurant and I’m not a big fan of Indian food, so maybe I won’t eat much.

Today, I did some weights at the Y. I’ve let the weight training go because I don’t get points for that, but the last meeting was about metabolism and how important strength training is, so I’m trying to add more to increase my metabolism.

We’ll see how this next week goes.

I didn’t update yesterday’s post, but I was down .4 at the weigh in. Yeah, it’s not a lot. In fact it means that in three weeks, I was only down .2.

Still though, since the WW topic was positive thoughts, I will keep in mind that this is the lowest I’ve been since the beginning of the year. Yeah, it’s been 5 months, but I’m already convinced that it’s going to take me years to get down another 10 pounds, the amount I need to lose to start working for WW and then another 10 to be at the top of my healthy weight. AND if you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know I want to lose another 12 pounds after that to be at the weight I was the morning of my kidney transplant.

Today so far, I’ve had 4 points for breakfast and did 41 minutes of stationary bike riding while watching In Plain Sight on Hulu.com.

Now to make my famous/favorite salad!

Beginning Points – 21

Breakfast smoothie – 6 points

– 15 points

MOOD: Had a fight with the Girl this morning. She’s not feeling well and wanted to stay in bed longer and have me drive her to campus, but since Dad works there, he didn’t want me to make an extra trip so either she had to stay home or get up and get ready when he was. As always seems to happen, I get involved, and both sides end up yelling at me. Add this to the fact that I’m suffering from the same cold she is, and I wasn’t a happy Mommy this morning. The Boy is doing better in school and we’re preparing for his 7th birthday party on Sunday. Finally, we got a yes from the emails I sent yesterday. So, it looks like at least two of his classmates (both girls) will be at the party.

I’m trying to be more productive today. I have Chapter 12 of Sword & Illusion to finish and then maybe there will be time for me to do some designing. I also need to exercise. I’ll report more later.

2:23 pm

80 minutes on the bike – 11 points (I’m only taking credit for half of the points.)

– 20 points

Salad – 5 points

– 15 points

fudge bar- 1 point

– 14 points

Ham sandwich – 5 points

– 9 points

Popcorn – 6 points

– 3 points.

Food/Exercise/points

Beginning – 21

My regular smoothie for breakfast but we don’t have skim milk so I used 2%. The points booklet that comes with point calculator and all that says 2% is only 2 points but the complete food companion says 3. Anyway, I figured 7 points for the smoothie. More than I normally eat for BF but I’m being honest today and it was 2% milk.

– 14 points

Slim-a-bear fudge bar – 1 point

– 13 points

Salad – 5 points

– 8 points

Another fudge bar – 1 point

– 7 points

Ham Sandwich – 2 points for bread/3 for 2.5 ounces of ham – 5 points

– 2 points

30 minutes of bike riding – 4 points

– 6 points

WW ice cream – 2 points/banana – 2 points/ff whipped topping 1 point – 5 points for dessert

– 1 point

———————

Mood:

I was up .2 this week which I guess isn’t surprising given that:

1. I ate Easter candy

2. We went to a BBQ on Thursday

3. I went out with a friend to a Chinese buffet on Saturday

4. I didn’t track.

Okay, I did a TON of exercise this past week which is a good thing or I’d have been up more.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to do the same this week, but I am going to try. I’m also going to track better, and I hope this blog will help keep me accountable.

We’re not going to talk about how Weight Watchers was due to a bad (high) number on the scale which is in no way indicative how how I’ve been saying on program.

Today, kiddies, we’re going to talk about food!!!

I always put something in the crockpot on Sundays because we go to 6 pm mass. Beloved and the Girl sing in the contemporary choir at 6 but they have to be there at 5 for rehearsal. This makes eating dinner problematic for us.

Anyway, on a suggestion from a friend on plurk, I found this site: A Year of Crockpotting. I love my crock pot. Always have, even when I was such a lazy housekeeper that I had to put a chore card in my box that said, “Wash crock pot.” If I hadn’t had that card, sometimes the crock pot would sit for days with dead food in it.

Okay, that was my confession for the day!

Anyway, this summer I’ve been using the crock pot on Thursdays, too. Thursday is the day the Boy has piano lessons at 3 and art lessons at 6. Since Beloved doesn’t get home until after we leave for art, that means that I couldn’t start dinner until after 7 and the crock pot is just easier.

I found this recipe: Super Easy Crock Pot Lasagna. We tried this last night.

Now, first off, it was yummy and easy.

I went to the store first thing yesterday morning to get the supplies. I looked for very lean hamburger or ground turkey, but for some reason at 7:30 am, our grocery store had nothing like this. Side note: the latest flyer says ground turkey is on sale this week!

So, since I didn’t want to try running around to some other store, I got creative and bought a bag of broccoli slaw.

Other than that, I made this (oh, wait, I got fat free cottage cheese instead of ricotta) just as she said, layering everything and turning the crock pot on low.

It was yummy. The noodles were a little mushy, so I may have put too much water in, but it tasted good and got the family’s approval. The great thing, okay two great things:

1. No meat, so we can eat it tonight, too! (Sweet!)
2. Only 6 points according to WW Recipe Builder, the way I made it!

Next – Rice Krispie Treats in the crock pot???

Things have been working better since my talk with Theresa two weeks ago. I went out and binged with Cold Stone ice cream two weeks ago (that Monday) and I ended up losing .6 that week. This week, after not exactly binging but trying to eat more points, I lost 1.4. So that’s two pounds in two weeks. Pretty good.

This past Monday I did a bit of a binge, too, but I didn’t actually count points. I estimated and marked them off my tracker. So, I’ve been trying to make up for it a bit by working out for 95 minutes on Tuesday and I’m going to the Y this morning, too. I don’t want to, but I really need to.

Hope everyone else is having a good day.

Well, I did it again. I did everything right (so I thought). I tracked, made sure I drank my water, exercised.

Up 1 pound.

I was SO DISCOURAGED! Honestly, I might not have stayed for the meeting if my friend Jeri hadn’t been with me. I told the receptionist that this was impossible. I have been working hard for two weeks and have been up both weeks. Now I need to lose SIX pounds to get where I need to be to work for  Weight Watchers. I seriously wonder if I shouldn’t have even applied.

However, God always has a plan and He answered my prayers about this. Our regular leaders, who is the woman who interviewed me and offered me the job, wasn’t there today. Instead, we had the Territorial Manager!

The receptionist, Laura, asked me if I wanted to talk to Theresa, and I said I did because for the last few weeks Beloved has asked me why I don’t talk to someone and I didn’t realize that I could stay after the meeting to talk. I know, probably stupid, but today I decided I really needed to figure out what’s going on.

Theresa was wonderful. I got kinda emotional because I feel like I’m failing. I mean it took me from August to the first of the year to lose THREE stinkin’ pounds and I still haven’t lost the next three, and I’ve regained. It’s a mess.

Plus, the stress of worrying that someone is going to step forward and say, “Hey you can’t lose the five pounds you need to lose to start training? How are you ever going to get to your goal?”

First thing Theresa said when I told her that I am a new hire and I want to be a leader was, “I want you to be one.” We talked and she said that I don’t owe her anything and I should stop stressing about the time it’s taking me to lose this. She said it’s my journey and my experience will help someone else someday.

Then we talked about what I’ve been eating and what I’ve been doing and she suggested that (1) the stress I feel every week about this might be keeping weight on and (2) I really need to eat more! That blew me away, but she’s right in that every week I try to eat a little less and I don’t use, usually, even half my weekly allowance points. It’s possible that since I’m working out so much (yesterday I did an hour and a half to make up for a wedding reception on Saturday) that I need to eat all my points so my body doesn’t hold on to things.

She asked if I could feel a difference in my clothes and I said all week I’ve been walking around saying that I feel smaller. She said she thinks I’m doing everything right but I need to relax a little. She did say we might have to work hard when I do get to goal in the maintenance part so I don’t gain too easily.

She suggested that today I do a “blow out” (her words) and use 20 of my weekly points allowance. So, we went to Cold Stone and had ice cream. I figured out that mine was 23 points!!! AHHH! That seems so wrong, but you know I’ll be careful the rest of the week and I’ll hit the gym tomorrow.

Maybe it’ll shock my system and I can get back on track. Theresa said she expects that when the weight does come off I’ll drop two or three pounds. Here’s hopin’!

Today was the day I had my interview with Weight Watchers for a job. I REALLY want to be a leader – I love talking in front of people and I think doing that job would be really fun. A few weeks ago, my WW leader gave some of us a sheet about a questionnaire for people interested in working for them. I took the survey and earlier this week I got an email with a job application and an interview was set up for today.

The interview was a little stressful even though the woman doing it said no pressure, but I felt an incredible amount of pressure. The other two women there both worked outside the home so they had great answers for questions like, “Tell me a time you had to think on your feet,” or “Tell me about a time you had to change your approach to achieve something.”

I ended up answering a lot of the questions using examples from my time as president of HeartLA. I also couldn’t say much about making a schedule and keeping it, because as a mom it’s nearly impossible to keep to a schedule – kids get sick or forget something and I have to drive to the school or Beloved sends me an email about some stupid bureaucratic problem with our medical payments or something and those things have to take priority over whatever I had planned.

I’m sure I sounded like a complete loser.

Anyway, after the interview she said that according to the questionnaire, my skills lead me to receptionist rather than leader. Okay, I know I’m still about 26 pounds from my goal weight and that may be the reason I shouldn’t be a leader just yet, but it felt like a blow. I mean, I love speaking in front of people and I’m good at it! I emceed our luncheon last year and everyone said how wonderful I did and now that I’m co-president again, Elaine said she was relieved that we have me again as emcee. I really believe God has given me the ability to speak in front of people and I know that the Holy Spirit has used me in this way many times.

Anyway, I’m happy that they offered me (all three of us, actually) a job and I’ll be working for WW soon, but I’m disappointed about the leader thing. I’m going to work hard and get to my goal weight and try to “work my way up” to leader.

Next week is our 21st anniversary, but Beloved and the Boy leave that night for an Indian Guides campout, so we decided to go out tonight and celebrate. We went to Olive Garden after I carefully went online and looked at a bunch of restaurants and their nutritional information (not sure I’ll EVER eat at Macaroni Grill again – nearly everything was over 1,000 calories!). I knew what I was going to order, I knew how many points I had left and I even had dessert and tonight I have 1.5 points left!

Unfortunately, I’m stuffed and I think that’s affecting my mood. I also didn’t sleep well Thursday night (I hate menopause insomnia) and went to Adoration last night, getting home at around 1:15. My mother called at 8 this morning  because I usually call her on Saturdays but she was going to Cleveland for a sewing and quilting expo or something like that and wouldn’t be home. So, she wanted to call me and let me know. However, that meant I didn’t get to sleep as long as I normally on Saturday mornings, so being tired might be part of the problem.

Anyway, I know God has something wonderful for me and since I prayed about the interview and stuff last night in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I’m sure this is what He wants. Maybe it will make me more motivated to actually get my weight down to where I want it, and I’m sure something wonderful will happen because of this.

I just wish I could feel excited now.

It hasn’t been a good couple of days here. First off, Saturday night Beloved and the Girl had a major fight when he asked her to do the dishes. It’s kind of an ongoing fight around her to get her to do her chores, and she has some kind of issue with people knocking on her bedroom door. She literally yells “What?” whenever anyone knocks. I should say when her parents knock. She knows when it’s the Boy and doesn’t yell at him. It gets a little annoying when I’m scared to knock to see what she wants to drink for dinner for fear she’ll snap my head off.

Anyway, this fight was a bad one and pretty much lasted until…well, kind of, until now. A cease-fire has been established and relationships are cordial. Beloved still maintains that he will not mention her chores anymore, preferring to do them himself so as to not be a nag, but with that is no allowance for her and no going out with her friends. She, for her part, did work on the dishes after dinner and hasn’t yelled at anyone today.

This morning I woke up depressed. I think being in that menopausal state means that my hormones are messed up (Beloved calls it puberty in reverses) so some days I’m just depressed.

Well, I did all my weights yesterday – something I haven’t done in a while – and my entire body from inner thigh to triceps ache from the effort, so I didn’t go to the gym this morning. Beloved and I have a date to go tomorrow evening.

Weight watchers was a disaster. Up 2.2 pounds. I wanted to quit right then and there. I haven’t been tracking but I didn’t think I did that badly. I made it to the gym three times – twice for cardio – so I guess I got a little cocky and figured I was safe.

This afternoon I was working on my book and my computer froze up three times, meaning, I think, that I might have lost some of my work and I’m not happy about it.

Beloved and the Girl went to choir practice tonight and stopped at the grocery store. He bought me a red silk rose. Isn’t that nice?

If there is anyone out there, I could really use some encouragement and cheering up.