Weight Watchers?

Well what do you know, it’s Wednesday afternoon already, the sun is shining outside, and I am pretty content today. Yeah happiness. Just get thru the last couple hours of work today, get in what will be a killer personal training session tonight followed by an hour of strength training class and then get thru one more work day tomorrow and then it is off to Seattle for this girl.

Time sure does sneak up on you though doesn’t it? Can you believe we are almost 7 months thru 2014 already? WHERE has this year gone? It’s just crazy.  Do you know what else is actually astonishing to me, July 2, 2014 is the 10 year anniversary of the day I met Chris. 10 years since the first time we went out to Applebee’s together. It seems like a ridiculous lifetime ago. Probably because the last 10 years of my life is where most of the growing and changing has occurred. Boy we’ve been thru insane shit. Boy, I’ve put him thru some insane shit over the years. Guess he’s done the same to me too. Regardless, time does just seem to keep flying by.

Saturday morning after I run thru what is going to be some pretty epic hills of downtown Seattle (consequently I am not expecting a fast finish time at all. Let’s just finish this bad boy is the plan) I get to pick up 3 awesome medals.

 

Totally expect a photo of me rocking all 3 of those bad boys around my neck.  Cause that’s pretty exciting, and because of the aforementioned hills, probably pretty well earned I’m guessing. Maybe it won’t be so bad. I never really think too much about the course or the hills before I run, I just go and do it and simply worry about doing the best I can and as long as I give it my all, then I am contented.

I’ve really been eating like crap lately. What’s new, I’m a broken record… blah blah blah… I’m one of those weird people who eat out of happiness. I have a much easier time restricting and being “good” when I am miserable. It’s self-punishment I think. I am miserable therefore I don’t deserve any amount of happiness, especially the kind that food provides.  I suppose food has always been a happy thing for me. All family celebrations involve copious amounts of food. Special occasions centered around food. Therefore I have grown up equating food to happiness. When I am happy I want to celebrate and enjoy life with good food. When I don’t hate myself I don’t feel like torturing or punishing myself. I think there is a sense of feeling like I have earned that treat which is quite dangerous thinking actually. (Ahem, said the girl with a Dutch Brothers blended coffee drink sitting on her desk, and NO it’s not the light version)

There is also the school of thinking that goes perhaps there are elements of self-sabotage coming into play here as well.  I really only can seem to buckle down when I have larger amounts of weight to shed, like somehow I need to gain weight in order for me to accept the reality that I need to lose it. Denial is a very scary thing.   I am not sure that I am really ready or there at that place where it is more important to me than enjoying my life. I will know when I get to that exact moment where I decide enough is enough but alas it isn’t this moment. I think its coming.  You know that point where I break out a spreadsheet and start actually tracking weekly weigh in’s and percentages and figures, you know all that nerdy shit that a girl like me lives for.

I can tell you this my friends. Over the last year and a half, post losing the weight, since joining the gym, I have done a lot of things food wise, been enlightened and informed to the fitness world of eating. Been told how to eat to build muscle to feed a body, blah blah blah. At the end of the day, this is the truth as I know it. I will return to weight watchers. After a lot of soul searching and trying to figure out why I can’t stop the binges or the self-indulgent behaviors it boils down to this, I don’t want to give up crappy food. Plain and simple. I don’t ultimately want to give up the cookie or the candy or rather the French fries or the margaritas.  I am not coming from it at a place of the fitness world. Sure, I dabbled, but ultimately I’ve got to be real with myself, which is also something I have discovered more exclusively the past couple months. I am 35 years old, I am and always will be a food addict. I have to fight every single day with myself, with my body, which desires every which way to bulk up.  It can expand at an exponential rate, which is something that all the naturally thinner trainers or fitness professionals will never fully grasp.  Sure, in theory, they understand, but they really don’t. Not truly.  As nice as it may be to consider instant oatmeal packets the devil and something you should throw out because it’s not good for you, for a girl like me, taking the step to just eat an instant oatmeal packet is huge.

I don’t have aspirations greater than maintaining a healthy realistic weight and enjoying my life. Weight watchers, for all of its good and bad allows me to do that. It tells me I can have 26 points a day. It tells me I can have 49 extra points a week. It tells me if I bust ass and run a half marathon that if I am hungry I might have earned a few extra points too. How I choose to spend those points is entirely up to me. Ideally, I am making great filling decisions. But on some days when life just gets the better of me and I find myself with a frothy Dutch Brothers drink on my desk, weight watchers allows me to compensate. It may not be the best thing in the world, but it’s the only thing in 11 or 12 years of battling my weight that has actually proved any amount of successful for me. I can live within the world of weight watchers. I get how to play their game, and yes, it’s a game. I can manipulate the game for sure, but guess what, it works. At the end of the day, it works for me. NOTHING else has ever worked.

I don’t necessarily love weight watchers. I don’t necessarily advocate that it’s perfect or healthy or will even work for everyone. But at the end of the day, it is the most real thing I have found to living a life that is conducive to MY lifestyle. And that counts for something. You can fad diet your life away all you want, but there is probably a reason your mother or your grandmother or her mother even did weight watchers. The reality that this program is still here, evolving, and trying, but ultimately being the same basic principles.

Anything will work if you actually follow the program. I have just failed to find anything else that I can actually follow.  This might not come off as the most glowing endorsement for weight watchers, but truthfully I have to stand by the program because here I am today, the happy woman I am, because I was able to actually follow their program. Not always perfectly. Not always getting enough healthy non-processed foods daily, but enough to eat fewer calories weekly than I expended which is the whole theory of weight loss as a whole. Something about the obsessive counting works for me and my mathematically, chart and statistic driven brain.

You know the one thing I have never done in 11 plus years of dabbling in the world of weight watchers? Actually attempt their maintenance phase. Nope. Never, not once, I have I actually figured out the daily points I can consume and maintain my weight. Interesting. Perhaps I need to lose a few pounds to get me to where I need to be and then actually consider what their maintenance plan looks like.

Again, I am not saying this is going to happen tomorrow, I don’t think I am quite there yet, but obviously I am thinking about it. I am strongly considering the option.  And for now, that is good enough. As per my style, I probably wouldn’t announce it until I had successfully managed a week or two anyway. But again, let me reiterate, it’s not happening tomorrow. I have Seattle this weekend and I am going to let myself live and enjoy for at least one more weekend.

So now, I will have my energy drink and contemplate the intense personal training session that I know is coming my way this evening. Oh joy!