Revised Goals

I know I haven't been keeping up with posting about WW on this blog, but that doesn't mean I stopped doing WW! Well, I didn't track for about two weeks over Christmas but up until then I kept at it, and since then I'm back on track! At today's weigh-in, I was down 1.8 lbs from the weigh-in before Christmas. I was shocked to hear that, given my overindulgence over the holidays. But I'll take it! And I'll attribute it in part to the muscle I've built from weight lifting over the past few months, which has helped speed up my metabolism and burn calories even when they're from bad foods.

I've fallen a little bit behind on my mini goals because, even though I had a great weigh-in today, it followed a couple of less than great weigh-ins during December. I was supposed to hit the 30 lb. mark today, but I'm only at 27.8. Not far off, but not quite there, so I've revised my goals a bit and laid them out below:

My Mini Goals:
10 lbs. by September 12  Done, on schedule!
15 lbs. by October 10  Done, on schedule!
18 lbs. (my 10% goal) by October 24 Done, one week late (10/31)
20 lbs. by November 7 Done, on schedule!
25 lbs. by December 5 Done, on schedule!
28 lbs. (my 15% goal) by December 19 January 9
30 lbs. by January 2 January 17
35 lbs. by January 30 February 6
38 lbs. (my 20% goal) by February 13
40 lbs. by March 5
45 lbs. by March 26
47 lbs. (my 25% goal) by April 9
50 lbs. by April 23 - GOAL WEIGHT!! 

2011

So I've been seriously neglecting this blog for the last two months, but I've seen this Year in Review questionnaire floating around the blogosphere and thought it would be fun to do, and nice to have to look back on a few years from now.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Got a Brazilian wax

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Yes and no. My main resolution, as usual, was to lose weight. I didn't start trying until the year was more than half over, but I'm down 26 pounds so far, with about 20 more to go. I also resolved to be better with money. That was a roller coaster. I sort of take one step ahead and two steps back when it comes to this. I'll buckle down and pay some bills, and then find something else to spend money on, sometimes fun stuff, sometimes unforeseen expenses. I'm going to continue to work on both of these this year. And my third resolution for 2012 is to be more outgoing/daring/less shy. Being such an introvert is not helpful and not going to get my anywhere, and I need to work on that.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
One of my good friends at work had a beautiful baby boy named Javier in September.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, I've been very blessed in that regard after a few hard losses a couple of years back. Knock on wood.

5. What countries did you visit?
The Bahamas

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
A boyfriend

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
August 4 - 7, Boozapalooza!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Losing 26 pounds

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not completing everything on my 30 by 30 list

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I was very sick on July 4th and had a miserable day, but otherwise I was mostly healthy. Knock on wood again!

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My glittery gold pumps. They're fabulous.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage, taxes, condo association, happy hour

13. What did you get really excited about?
My cruise to the Bahamas in February, the final Harry Potter movie, Boozapalooza, the Big E

14. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Club Can't Handle Me by Flo Rida. This was sort of the anthem on our cruise and will always make me think of it.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
– happier or sadder? About the same
– thinner or fatter? Thinner!
– richer or poorer? Poorer

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
I can't actually think of anything

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
I suppose I should say sleeping/watching TV/surfing online, but I don't care. I like those things!

18. How did you spend Christmas?
Went to church with my family, opened presents, took a long bath, ate lobster risotto, played Taboo with Laura, Mom, and Ty.

19. What was your favorite TV program?
Modern Family

20. What were your favorite books of the year?
The Hunger Games series

21. What was your favorite music from this year?
Adele and on the opposite side of the spectrum, LMFAO

22. What were your favorite films of the year?
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Crazy Stupid Love

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned the Big 3-0. I went to Boston with some of my best friends, had dinner with my parents (paid for by my brother!) and spent the night in a hotel.

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Any of these three things: Reaching my goal weight, paying off my debt, or dating a wonderful guy. Hell, even just kissing a wonderful guy.

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Wear whatever I can find in my closet that fits. And heels. Oh, and big sparkly jewelry.

26. What kept you sane?
My friends. Always my friends, near and far.

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
That my happiness and success lies with me and me alone. If I don't fight for myself, no one else is going to.

Things 7 and 8

I didn't get home until about midnight last night, so here I am playing catch-up again.

Yesterday, I was thankful for unseasonably beautiful weather. After the freak snowstorm last week (that still has some people without power, 12 days later!!!) yesterday was sunny and in the mid to upper 60s. I went out without a jacket at lunch time and it was just gorgeous. Such a shame to have to sit inside at work on a glorious day like that.

Today I am thankful for pumpkin coffee. I'm generally not a big coffee drinker, and actually didn't even own a coffee pot at home until a month or so ago, but we've entered seasonal coffee time. Pumpkin spice lattes soon to be followed by gingerbread and peppermint mocha lattes. Those are neither wallet nor waistline friendly, so I finally caved and bought a single cup coffee maker and have been making my own pumpkin coffee/latte combos. Only two WW points and the perfect start to a tired, slow-moving morning!

A Goal Met and Giving Thanks

I clocked a 1.8 pound loss at WW this week, bringing me to an even 20 lbs lost, and putting me back on track with my goal schedule!

My Mini Goals:
10 lbs. by September 12  Done, on schedule!
15 lbs. by October 10  Done, on schedule!
18 lbs. (my 10% goal) by October 24 Done, one week late (10/31)
20 lbs. by November 7 Done, on schedule!
25 lbs. by December 5
28 lbs. (my 15% goal) by December 19
30 lbs. by January 2
35 lbs. by January 30
38 lbs. (my 20% goal) by February 20
40 lbs. by March 5
45 lbs. by March 26
47 lbs. (my 25% goal) by April 9
50 lbs. by April 23 - GOAL WEIGHT!! 

I'm really not sure how that happened, as I definitely went over my points this week. I'm not sure exactly how much I went over, but I'd say it was about 10 points or so. I know there were a few things that I ate while tailgating on Saturday that I forgot to track. I guess this is the point where I'm happy I'm doing weight training instead of being discouraged by it like I was a few weeks ago. I lost a total of 5 pounds in my four weeks of weight training, which is not too shabby. And I think my metabolism is starting to pick up enough that I can eat a little more and, in fact, I need to eat a little more, and still lose weight. I was doing an exercise with a 20 lb weight yesterday and marveling that that is how much weight I've lost. I don't feel that much lighter, so it's pretty cool to have something tangible like that to show me how far I've come. That 20 lb weight is heavy!!

I'm noticing other nice changes too. My biceps definitely feel more defined, though I don't think my arms actually look any different when they're bare. And I'm noticing more definition in my quads, too. Walking down some stairs at work the other day, I could see a nicely defined thigh through my black pants and that was cool to see. I still have miles to go before my naked body will look better, but it's nice to know I can sort of fake it when I'm clothed!

So today, I am thankful for Weight Watchers. I've been at it for 13 weeks now, which is close to the longest I've stuck with any eating plan before. And I don't have any intention of stopping any time soon, or even at all. This is a plan I can live with. I've made it through my birthday, friends' birthdays, gatherings with family, half of football season, the Big E, and tailgating and still keep losing. I've found that I can enjoy myself on these occasions, indulge in the things I love (though in far less quantities than what I used to consume!) and continue to move in the right direction. I'm proud of myself that in 13 weeks of trying to lose weight, I never posted a gain for the week. In fact, I've lost weight 12 out of the 13 weeks. That one pesky week where I stayed the same will forever bother me because it broke a perfect streak, but I know that I'm still doing incredibly well and should be proud of myself. And I am.

Things 2 - 6

This past week has been pretty busy and I never got a change to blog about what I'm thankful for on November 2 - 5. So I'll list something for today and the last few days to get myself caught up.

November 2 - I'm thankful for my weekly night out with my friends. Wednesday is happy hour night and it's often the highlight of the week. It's a great way to break up the week a little and have something to look forward to halfway to the weekend. This week we went to Trivia Night at a bar we've been trying out lately and had a great time. We didn't win, but it was nice to visit our bartender friend Cenz, and we made a new friend,. Todd, who's a regular at the bar.

November 3 - I'm thankful for my brother, Tyler. I went out for dinner with him tonight at Wood n'Tap. He's my favorite person in the world and I'm so grateful whenever I get to spend time with him.

November 4 - I'm thankful for my cooking and baking skills. I spent a number of hours tonight making food to bring tailgating tomorrow. I made spinach dip, beer cheese dip, pumpkin beer soft pretzels, homemade butterfingers, and pumpkin cookies with brown butter icing. I love cooking and baking for my friends and it's one of my favorite ways to show my love for them.

November 5 - I'm thankful for a perfect fall day. We had gorgeous weather for tailgating at the UConn game today. A crisp and cool morning turned into a lovely sunny day with bright blue skies. I had a great time with my friends eating and drinking before and after the game, and to top it off UConn won. A wonderful day all around.

November 6 - I'm thankful for lazy Sundays. Getting up early yesterday and being in the sun all day tired me out. I was in bed a little after 10 last night, and slept for almost 13 hours. The clocks turned back last night, so it was noon before I got out of bed. Aside from a workout and a quick trip to Target, my day was spent on the couch watching football and clearing shows from my DVR.

I've got WW tomorrow. Not sure how weigh-in will go. This morning I was shocked to find that I was actually down around a pound from last Monday. It was very surprising considering how much I ate yesterday. I definitely went over my points a little. Today I stuck within my points and did a heavy lifting workout, so hopefully that'll help me enough to keep my weight down for the weigh-in tomorrow!

Two Things

First, I'm very excited because yesterday I hit my next goal, so I have officially lost 10% of my body weight! I got my WW keychain and am so happy to have hit that goal. I still have a long way to go, but I'm finally noticing a difference in how I look and in how clothes fit. The skirt I wore today is one of my favorite skirts, but two months ago, it was painful to wear. It was so tight that it dug into my skin, and I may or may not have unzipped the top of it a little toward the end of the work day. Now it fits great, and is even heading toward being a little loose! I'm proud of myself for sticking with this for 12 whole weeks with no intention of stopping any time soon!

My Mini Goals:
10 lbs. by September 12  Done, on schedule!
15 lbs. by October 10  Done, on schedule!
18 lbs. (my 10% goal) by October 24 Done, one week late (10/31)
20 lbs. by November 7
25 lbs. by December 5
28 lbs. (my 15% goal) by December 19
30 lbs. by January 2
35 lbs. by January 30
38 lbs. (my 20% goal) by February 20
40 lbs. by March 5
45 lbs. by March 26
47 lbs. (my 25% goal) by April 9
50 lbs. by April 23 - GOAL WEIGHT!!

Second, I want to take part in something I've seen on some other blogs. Since November is the month of Thanksgiving, many bloggers are taking a couple of minutes a day to write about something they're thankful for. I think that's a great idea and will really force me to examine my life and all the gifts and blessings I've been given. So today, November 1st, I am thankful for electricity. With the freak snowstorm that hit this area over the week, hundreds of thousands of people in my state are without power. Many of these people were without power for up to a week just two months ago when Hurricane Irene hit New England. It was bad enough back then, but now it's gotten cold and with no electricity comes no heat. I'm very fortunate to have both and I'm thankful to be able to take hot showers and keep my food cold and type on this laptop. None of that would be possible without electricity, and while I may grumble when the bill comes, times like this remind me why I should be happy that I have electricity to pay for at all!

Frustration

Well, I didn't do it. I needed to lose 2.6 lbs this week to hit my 10% goal, but it didn't happen. Not even close. Despite the fact that I was where I needed to be on Saturday (granted, that was with my clothes off) I only lost one pound this week. It's frustrating because I did everything right. I exercised 5 days and earned 19 activity points, and didn't eat any of them. I also purposely avoided going out to watch football yesterday, and had 23 unused weekly bonus points. You would think that would add up to a nice loss for me, but nope.

The only thing I can think of is that lifting weights might be impacting my results on the scale, specifically lifting on Mondays, which are my weigh-in days. I've tried to do research on that, and most sites say that it doesn't matter. I've found a few sources though that say muscles hold onto water right after lifting as they work to repair themselves. So maybe that's it? I don't really want to switch from my Monday/Wednesday/Friday lifting routine, but if I have another disappointing weigh-in next week, I might have to.

After today, my next goal was to reach 20 lbs (down 2 lbs more) by November 7, two weeks from today. So with today's failure I'm looking at needing to lose 3.6 lbs in two weeks in order to get back on track. That's going to be tricky, if my progress as of late is any indication. Especially because on November 5 some friends and I are going tailgating at a college football game and even if we do try to make things WW friendly, I'm sure that will be a points-heavy day.

Blah. I'm just in such a gloomy mood now after going to WW. I'm so disappointed and quite honestly I just want to give up. I want to forget about portion sizes and number of points. I want to dive bomb into a tub of frosting and never come out. I won't, of course, because I know that overall I just need to keep pushing through and it'll all be worth it, but right now it just sucks.

Stupid Scales

I had a pretty good week with WW last week - as of Saturday morning, I still had 35 weekly points left, along with 13 activity points I'd earned from exercising 4 days during the week. I restarted ChaLean Extreme on Monday, so I wasn't quite sure how my body would react to reintroducing weight lifting into my routine. I know that long term, weight lifting is hugely beneficial to weight loss, but sometimes you can show a gain at first and I was nervous about it. So I was glad to see that when I weighed myself for my Biggest Loser weigh-in on Saturday, I was down 1.2 lbs. I proceeded to use all the rest of my weekly points and a few of my activity points over the rest of the weekend, but still, I was within the points that I had.

This morning before I left for work, I weighed myself wearing the clothes I would have on for WW. Still down 1.2 lbs. Awesome! I got to WW today feeling pretty hopeful. I stepped on the scale and was told I lost 0.4 lbs. WTF? Seriously? It would have been one thing to lose 0.4 if I had been expecting it. After having 30 points of beer yesterday, I would almost have deserved it! But having expected a better number, I'm feeling really disappointed. Plus, now that means I need to lose 2.6 lbs by next Monday in order to hit 10% on that date like I planned. It's doable, I know, because I've done it before, but not for over a month. My body doesn't seem to want to let go of weight that quickly anymore. I'm definitely going to give it my best effort, but it's a little more daunting than I would like! Blah.

On a more positive note, I had two non-scale victories last week. First, I discovered I was able to put my biggest pair of jeans on and off without unbuttoning/unzipping them. Yay! I don't feel like I look any different, but that's proof that I'm losing weight even if I don't feel it. Second, I saw a friend yesterday who I haven't seen in a while, maybe since late July. So he had no idea I was doing WW. He noticed my weight loss and that made my day. I've had other people tell me that they notice I lost weight, but they all know that I'm doing WW so I wonder how much of it is just them being encouraging. Which I appreciate, don't get me wrong, but somehow it means more coming from somehow who hasn't seen me in some time and who doesn't have a clue I've been working away at this.

I just need to focus on those things and less on the number on the scale, though that's easier said than done!

Just made it!

On my schedule of mini goals, I had decided that I wanted to reach 15 pounds by this week. Well, I did it! I needed to lose 1.8 lbs this week in order to hit the goal and I lost EXACTLY 1.8 lbs! Yay! Here's the updated schedule:

My Mini Goals:
10 lbs. by September 12  Done, on schedule!
15 lbs. by October 10  Done, on schedule!
18 lbs. (my 10% goal) by October 24
20 lbs. by November 7
25 lbs. by December 5
28 lbs. (my 15% goal) by December 19
30 lbs. by January 2
35 lbs. by January 30
38 lbs. (my 20% goal) by February 20
40 lbs. by March 5
45 lbs. by March 26
47 lbs. (my 25% goal) by April 9
50 lbs. by April 23 - GOAL WEIGHT!!

So now I've got two weeks to lose three more pounds and reach the next goal. And with that 10% goal I get my WW keychain! I don't know why I'm so excited for that silly keychain, but I am. I'd LOVE to get it by next week, but I don't know how realistic that is, so I won't be disappointed if it takes me two weeks to do it.

I'm also excited because I'm spreading the WW enthusiasm among my friends, family, and co-workers. My mom joined today and I'm really happy for her and looking forward to supporting each other on this. Two of my co-workers joined this week too, and will be going to meetings with my friend Colleen and me on Mondays. And, I have two friends thinking about signing up for online memberships. I love talking about WW and am so glad that I've helped inspire people to join. It sort of reinforced for me that I might like to look into being a meeting leader once I've hit my goal weight/lifetime member status. WW is hard work, no doubt, and frustrating at times, but I really believe in it and it's worked well for me so far, so I can't help but sing its praises!

Weight Loss is Confusing

I went to Weight Watchers today and I'm down 1.6 pounds. Yay, right? The part that's confusing is that this week should not have been a good one! I didn't even give points a thought last Tuesday when I went to the Big E and ate everything fried, dipped in chocolate, or covered in bacon that I could find. Since I definitely used all my weekly bonus points there, that meant I was all out on the second day of the week. That also meant that I went over by a point or two (or sometimes three) almost every day because I just can't forego my little after dinner treat. Granted, I did earn activity points to cover those overages, but still. And then Sunday I went to a friend's house to watch football and was parked directly in front of pizza, chips, cheese balls, and dip. And anyone who knows me knows that once something is in front of me, 9 times out of 10, it's going straight into my face. So on Sunday I stopped counting points by about 4pm.

Why then did I lose almost 2 pounds this week? And lost no weight two weeks ago when I didn't go a point over my bonus weekly and activity points? I just don't get it. I'm not complaining of course, I just wish there was a rhyme or reason to it so I could know what to expect from week to week. Does this mean that it's ok for me to splurge and go over my points here and there? I'm not so sure I want to get into the habit of that to find out the answer.

I guess all I can do is keep going as I have been. Stay within my points 5 or 6 days of the week, but don't beat myself up if I take a special occasion out with friends (and let's face it, Sunday is a special occasion during football season!) to enjoy the foods and drinks that I love.

The other thing I find confusing (well, maybe more annoying than confusing) is how, despite the fact that I've lost 13.2 pounds, which I feel is significant, I don't look or feel any different. A couple of people have said that they can see I've lost weight, but I don't know. These are all people who know I'm doing WW and trying hard to shed the pounds, so it's possible they're just trying to be encouraging. When I look in the mirror, I don't see anything different. My clothes really aren't fitting differently. Shouldn't there be a slight difference after losing almost 8% of my body weight so far? Maybe one day it'll be a sudden change that I see out of nowhere. Fingers crossed...

Next week is the next date on the goal calendar that I set for myself. 15 pounds by October 10, which will actually be October 11 because WW is closed on Columbus Day next week. That means I need to lose 1.8 pounds. It's definitely doable, but it won't be easy. I'm going to have to really be careful about the choices I make, and I'm going to have to drag myself out of bed to exercise in the mornings. I don't want to miss a goal this early in the process, so I've got to do it!