ZUMBA!!!!

I'm taking a free Zumba class. It's tons of fun! Try it...you'll like it. Gotta love Shakira too!

Oh Happy Day

I'm a happy girl! I should have blogged Tuesday or yesterday but I've been busy. It's a good busy though.

Went to Weight Watchers on Tuesday. Another week had gone by...I ate every single point allotted to me and then ate into my Activity points. I was nervous. I thought for sure I'd have stayed the same. I didn't really think I'd gained but I wasn't sure what the scale at Weight Watchers would say. I had walked, worked out to Richard Simmons in my living room and had done a real good job at tracking!

Again, I put on the same outfit. Black capri work out pants, gray workout shirt, flip flops...they're easier to get off than regular shoes. I stepped on the scale and lost another 1.6 pounds for a total of 11.8 in 5 weeks! I'm feeling good and I'm not feeling deprived.

Deprivation is a bad thing for me when it comes to food. As soon as I have the feeling that I "can't" have something or if I think that I won't get to eat something I will have a desire to eat only that....in huge quantities.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to dinner with some friends. We ate at a Mexican restaurant. They brought chips, salsa, a sour cream dip thing for the chips that is to D.I.E. for! One of the girls in the group is a young mom of 2 children. She is an avid runner, loves to bike and do other exercises. That girl ate more than I did! As I sat there it dawned on me....yet again...that skinny people don't deprive themselves of food.

They really don't. Skinny people eat what they want but then they do things I haven't done...they exercise, they stop eating when they're full, they don't eat that way all the time! As I watched my friend eat her dinner I thought "It's OK if you have some chips and salsa as long as you don't go crazy and as long as you account for your points."

I still have "red light" foods. Nuts are a big red light food for me. So are chips. I've learned to purchase smaller quantities and buy baked versions of my favorite chips. I am learning how to eat less and have even had a pan of brownies in my house so long that they've gone stale! Amazing.

I don't feel deprived at all. Last week I made an apple pie. I ate a nice healthy slice too. I tracked it. One night after I hadn't really had too many points during the day I ate 3 slices of cheese pizza. Tracked that too and still lost 1.6 this week.

I'm a loser

These photos didn't show up the way I wanted them to but they're supposed to represent 1.4 lbs which is how much weight I lost this week!

The grand total for 4 weeks:

POUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So...let me be perfectly honest. I was biting my fingernails when I stepped on the scale today. This week, I've tracked but not as good as I did last week. I did more exercise this week though, I went to Zumba and on a couple of walks. (Maybe someday I'll love exercise but I highly doubt it.) I have been watching my portions but I sabotaged myself by bringing Pretzel M&M's into the house. I did count out 17 M&M's to myself and counted every point....a couple of times, meaning I had more than 17 M&M's.

If you've never been overweight you can't relate to this ritual, but this morning I wanted to make sure I'd given myself every advantage when I went to weigh in. I didn't eat this morning, actually I never eat the morning of weigh in. I usually never even have any water because it weighs something and I don't know if I can pee it out before I have to step on the scale. Before I showered I got on the scale, after I showered I got on the scale, then I dried my hair and got on the scale. Then I put on my underwear and got on the scale. After getting dressed I....got on the scale. I took off the pants I had chosen, put on a different pair and got on the scale. I put on some jewelry and got on the scale again. Then I took that jewelry off and put on some other jewelry which was actually .2 of a pound lighter! Why did I go through this you might ask?

According to my scale I hadn't lost anything this week and I did not want to go in to WW showing I'd gained. I could live with staying the same but I did not want to weigh more than I did last week so every ounce counted today!

Lucky for me my scale must be a little off or something but I'm down 1.4 pounds. I feel good about being able to keep it up for the last 4 weeks but 4 weeks is nothing when you have so many more to go.

I still need to keep in mind that there will be good weeks and bad weeks but it's about learning to live a different, healthier lifestyle. It's about life changes not just dietary changes.

Drumroll please.....

I've had a great week! I have been really good about tracking the good, bad and ugly. But I managed to stay within my points, ate all but 3 of my weekly points and had 14 activity points to spare.

I knew I had lost but I didn't know how much for sure, I never know if my scale is working right or not. I must have been totally stressing about it though because last night I dreamed that I went to weigh in and when I stepped on the scale it read that I weighed 424 pounds. In the dream I was so upset because I knew that I had never weighed that even before starting my diet and we couldn't figure out why the scale was saying that but the Weight Watcher lady wrote that down as my current weight even though she knew it was wrong. Honestly, it was awful and I was grateful that I was able to wake up from my dream.

Anyway...I got to Weight Watchers and stepped up onto the scale with great trepidation. I was ready to see something like a 1 or 2 pound loss but instead it was FIVE POUNDS! I was so excited!!! So that makes it 8.8 in the first 3 weeks.

I'm not feeling deprived at all. I still get to eat treats. In fact last week I ate pizza, a Twisted Root guacamole onion burger and some fries, and had a brownie with ice cream and chocolate sauce on it.

When I look at the picture of what 5 pounds of fat looks like it amazes me that although it looks like a lot I have SOOOOO much more to go. If I can keep up the pace I will lose a total of 35.2 pounds in 3 months. For now I'm trying not to get ahead of myself and just looking at this in 2 pound increments.

5 lbs of FAT!
(This is not me----if I looked like her I would be shopping for clothes instead of writing the blog!)

She's Making History, Working for Victory

I know you know who she is but...

Here is some information on Rosie the Riveter on the National Park Service Website (Click on that and it will give you the full information)...

"Before the United States entered World War II, several companies already had contracts with the government to produce war equipment for the Allies. Almost overnight the United States entered the war and war production had to increase dramatically in a short amount of time. Auto factories were converted to build airplanes, shipyards were expanded, and new factories were built, and all these facilities needed workers. At first companies did not think that there would be a labor shortage so they did not take the idea of hiring women seriously. Eventually, women were needed because companies were signing large, lucrative contracts with the government just as all the men were leaving for the service.

Working was not new to women. Women have always worked, especially minority and lower-class women. However, the cultural division of labor by sex ideally placed white middle-class women in the home and men in the workforce. Also, because of high unemployment during the Depression, most people were against women working because they saw it as women taking jobs from unemployed men.

The start of World War II tested these ideas. Everyone agreed that workers were greatly needed. They also agreed that having women work in the war industries would only be temporary.

The United States government had to overcome these challenges in order to recruit women to the workforce. Early in the war, the government was not satisfied with women’s response to the call to work (Rupp 98).

The government decided to launch a propaganda campaign to sell the importance of the war effort and to lure women into working.

They promoted the fictional character of “Rosie the Riveter” as the ideal woman worker: loyal, efficient, patriotic, and pretty (Yellin 43). A song, “Rosie the Riveter”, became very popular in 1942. Norman Rockwell’s image on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943 was the first widely publicized pictorial representation of the new “Rosie the Riveter”.A few months after Rockwell’s image, the most famous image of Rosie appeared in the government-commissioned poster “We Can Do It” (Yellin 44).

Here are some of the words to the song about Rosie the Riveter:

All the day long,
Whether rain or shine
She’s part of the assembly line.
She’s making history,
Working for victory
Rosie the Riveter

So, why have I chosen Rosie the Riveter as my symbol for weight loss today you may ask? Well, the words, "We Can Do It" have been echoing in my mind today.

I went to WW to weigh in yesterday and am down another 1.6 pounds for a total of 3.8 in two weeks. It is difficult for me not to be discouraged even though I am losing. I keep asking myself why I'm discouraged when the plan is obviously working for me. Maybe I'm conditioned to seeing larger losses because of idiot shows like The Biggest Loser where people are losing 10 pounds in a week.
Weight loss of about 2 pounds per week is preferable and studies show that if you lose weight faster than that it's bound to come right back when you go off the diet.

I haven't felt deprived at all in my efforts to lose weight. I've enjoyed pizza, steak, ice cream and other snacks the last 2 weeks. I've eaten my points and my weekly points as well which have contributed to me feeling like I can still enjoy eating and lose weight.

I thought of Rosie when I got in the car and said out loud, "I can do it." I just need to stay committed and on the path I'm on.

Writing things down is key. Even the 1/3 cup of cashews I throw into my mouth has to be tracked. If I don't it's too easy to lose track of what I'm putting in my mouth and sooner than later the pounds will start coming back.

So....I've chosen Norman Rockwell's original image of Rosie the Riveter...namely because she was the first and secondly because she has a sandwich in one hand!

I can do it, I can do it, I can do it. Hopefully I can make history, working for victory.

Minus 2.2

On Tuesday, Sept 28th I went in for my first weigh in at Weight Watchers. I've had several first weigh in's at WW in my lifetime! My experience has been that the first week is always a banner week for me. Typically I lose around 4 pounds and a couple of times was even down 6 pounds in the first week!

During my first week on the program this time, I tracked EVERY single thing I put in my mouth....good, bad or ugly it went on the tracker.

Before I left for my initial weigh in I weighed on my scale at home and there was a slight difference in the scale at WW and my scale at home but I accounted for that during the week when I would weigh at home. According to my scale at home, by the appointed weigh in day, I was down 4 pounds. "Not bad!", I thought to myself.

To my amazement when I got on the scale at WW on Tuesday I was only down 2.2 pounds. I am very superstitious about weighing on the same scale at WW each time so it wasn't the fact that I had weighed on a different scale. It just didn't show the weight loss I had anticipated and frankly, I was very disappointed.

I stayed through the meeting as we talked about how to shop at the grocery store, but my mind was on that 2.2 pounds of weight loss and how I wanted it to be more. After the meeting, part of me just wanted to go through the drive through at McDonald's and get a Big Mac! I started to have the mindset that if I was only going to lose 2.2 pounds the first week even after tracking everything that I was doomed! What kind of craziness is that?!

Instead of driving up to the nearest McDonald's, I ate one of my Weight Watchers Mini Caramel treat things for 1 point and drove home to have my Weight Watchers Santa Fe Rice and Beans frozen meal for lunch. It's excellent by the way, and very filling. Crisis averted.

Before I could get really depressed about my "unsuccessful weight loss number" I Googled a photo of a pound of fat. I've done that before but I needed to see it again. As I looked at it and realized that I'd lost the equivalent of half a bag of sugar I came to understand that I had indeed lost weight and that I was doing alright.

So, here I am in week 2 and doing pretty well. I've stepped on the scale every morning and can see small weight loss daily. That keeps me motivated. Here's to weigh in day on the 5th...