Old Ways, Be Damned!!

There were lots of thoughts running through my head this morning after work. So much so that I didn't fall asleep until after 10am. I spent another night upset at myself for the food choices that I made, and the fact that I can NEVER seem to stay OP while at work over the weekends. I'm TIRED of blowing through all of my WPA (and then some, usually) and having to play catch-up all week. That's NOT healthy.

Then I started to do a review of my life as a Weight Watcher. I went to my very first meeting when I was 20 years old, and I haven't been able to get those freaking points out of my head ever since- whether I was counting them or ignoring them! Ha! I mean I might as well follow Weight Watchers, because I'm ALWAYS thinking about it, ALWAYS obsessing over it, ALWAYS planning for meals as if I am a good little Weight Watcher. So what have I been doing wrong all these years? Why do I teeter so much between doing well and not caring at all and ultimately feeling horrible about myself? Let's span it out by periods of my life and see if we detect a pattern:

20-22 years old: First Weight Watchers meeting attended in June of 2000. I was very gung ho, but I basically didn't know how to cook. I lived off of eggbeaters, canned peas, lean cuisines and turkey sandwiches. And weekends were made for binges. I never counted points on weekends. I purposefully made my WI day be on Friday, and then I would drink myself under the table Friday, Saturday and sometimes Sunday, and eat pizza, mexican, etc. Monday's were back to Lean Cuisines and torturing myself. Did I lose weight? Yes. I looked pretty awesome. Was this healthy? NO! Was I being true to the program? NO! The only healthy thing I did was manage to drink plenty of water each day (I had my giant "water cup" that I would drink from while doing homework at night, and I would also bring a big water bottle to school each day) and I managed to exercise 6-7 days a week. Sometimes pushing myself to the limits by going to kickboxing, lifting weights, taking a run and playing tennis, all in the span of about 3-4 hours. Ahhh, don't I wish I had that much free time on my hands these days! But looking back, I never made an effort to change my habits. I never took that step to adopt and develop healthy behaviors, or if I did, I never practiced them long enough for them to become a habit.

22-24: This was a VERY rough time in my life. I was unsure of my job/future, it seemed as if all my friends had moved away and onto bigger and better things, and I was depressed to the hilt over some douchebag who tortured me and my own self worth from age 20-26. I was on anti-depressants, and frequently binged and sometimes purged. I knew I had a problem. I did Weight Watchers off and on but always managed to mess up because of my unhealthy behaviors and feelings of sadness that only food seemed to cure. All that alone time caused major unhealthy food choices. There were nights where I'd have planned binges, stopping off at the grocery store and spending as much as $50 on anything that looked appealing, and I'd chip away at all of it until I felt sick. Was the food hangover the next day and the guilt that is associated with the binge worth it all in the end? NO! Did it help me to move forward from a rough spot in my life? NO! In fact, I feel as if it kept me there. Lot's of people believe that people stay fat throughout their lives to put up a barrier between themselves and others. I guess that is true for me to some degree. Binging and using food as a drug kept me in that dark period of my life for probably way longer than I had to be. It kept me focused on the guilt so that I didn't have to face my future.

24-26: Nursing School. That should cover it all. I tried doing Weight Watchers during this time, and was actually doing really well until the 2nd semester. I was making salads, bringing healthy snacks to school, drinking tons of water, etc until the stress was amped up and it just felt impossible to be in control of my weight, my personal life, school and everything else. When I graduated, I was the heaviest I'd ever been in my life at 202 pounds. I remember thinking that if I could just keep below 200, I'd fix it all once school was over. I'll never forget that moment I reached 200 on the scale. I totally lost it. And I totally stopped caring for a while. By the time I moved back to North Carolina I was a good 215. Those last two weeks before I moved were nothing but a gluttonous celebration of school being finished. My celebration could have lasted just for the night of graduation, but somehow I felt entitled to do this to myself. Again, was it worth the guilt in the end? NO!!!

Are we seeing the pattern yet? Have I mentioned any trends of actual healthy behaviors? Nada. Basically, I have used Weight Watchers as a means of calorie restriction, completely ignoring the message that you are actually supposed to do this while focusing on making healthy choices. Instead, I've spent nearly a decade trying to "cheat" the program. All out binges complimented by strict and torturous restrictive behavior which in turn made me resentful and throw in the towel over and over and over again.

26-present: Nine years later and I'm finally putting this together, slowly but surely. I know what to do to change my behavior, and during the brief periods where I tried it out, I actually felt pretty great. I love having an "exercise high". I love the feeling I get from eating a delicious salad or taking the time to cook something really healthy and actually having it turn out to be yummy. I love how proud of myself I feel when I take the time to plan and prepare for each week and the feeling I get when I see the results on the scale. I'm still struggling all the time, though. I struggle with crazy job hours, and travelling back and forth between my home and my boyfriend's. I've finally realized that the types of planning that I need to do are no longer "one size fits all". I get jealous of people who have a 9-5 job, full of weekends where they get to do whatever they want to do. Their weeks don't drastically change, therefore I think their prep work on their venture towards a healthy lifestyle must be drastically easier than mine. I guess I've used this as an excuse to flux between a really good week and then several bad ones. I'm proud to say that since November when I "recommitted", I have slowly been dropping pounds. For all those weeks that I've given up, I've had another week of pushing forward. This has kept the scale going in the right direction, with a few stalls here and there. But the point is, I'm not back to that horrid number I saw on the scale on November 2nd.

So here lies my renewed interest in getting to my ideal weight. For me it is higher than what those stupid height/weight charts tell me I should weigh (115?! I think I weighed that in the 5th grade). I'd like to be around 140. I love my curves. I just want curves ONLY and not "rolls of curves". But the way I've been going about it has turned into a set of habits from hell. I know I won't change these overnight, but I'm switching my focus for now. I'm going to pay less attention to points, and more attention to making healthier choices. Tomorrow is the official start to loving myself MORE. To believing that I am worth taking the time to pack my lunch versus making a drive-through visit. That the guilt that is associated with making impulsive and unhealthy decisions is worth far less than simply taking ten minutes a few times a day to actually plan. To taking an hour of my day to cook for myself. To looking at planning for work differently than planning for a week at home versus a week at D's house. That each segment needs to be addressed differently. That I owe this to myself.

I hope to post some of my food choices on here for accountability's sake. The plan for now is:

1) Only coffee in am to get a "jump start" and the rest of the day, I'm going to try my best to drink only water. My body is definitely craving that toxin flush right now. I'm going to limit my caffeinated beverages to 2-3 per day. Work might be the exception, but I think I can do this 75% of the time.

2) Take a few minutes before each meal time to actually THINK about what it is that I crave. This giving me satisfaction from my healthy meals. I think too often I get so wrapped up in planning exactly what I'll eat for an entire 7 days and then when that day comes, I don't care to eat what I've planned for that day. I'm too much of a rebel for this kind of planning!!

3) Take these next 4 days I have off from work to really work on myself. Paint the toenails, color my hair, spend quality time at the gym, use some self-tanner. Get into that mode of really enjoying myself again. This is when I do the best in terms of weight loss.

4) Use my mornings after work to do a little planning so that I'm ready to face the day during that tired stretch of three 12-hour days. I'll go ahead and pack the next night's lunch that morning, and if there is any prep work involved in whatever I plan on having for dinner, I'll go ahead and get that out of the way too. This way I have no excuse not to eat healthy, even when I'm in a rush.

5) Plan for healthy indulgences at work. I need this to get by. I need to bribe myself with SOMETHING so that I don't just go crazy and stuff my face. I've used this tactic before and it's worked. Like I'll make a game for myself- drink 2 big bottles of water and then you can have some popcorn. Get to 2am and be caught up on charting and you can have a diet soda, etc. It works! That is when I actually plan for it.

Okay, this post is getting lengthy, but I did want to go ahead and get these thoughts on paper. I think I'll actually read some of the "getting started" material from Weight Watchers again so that I can renew my senses and focus on the healthy pieces that I so often ignore.