Saturday, October 4, 2014

Back in the weight loss saddle and why I call my scale a douche

I'm going to start with this: The scale is a douche
Now I'll wind my way back.

When we found out we were moving, I was doing pretty good in my quest for weight loss. I was on week 5 of Couch to 5k, and doing weights at home. I was tracking my food on My Fitness Pal (quallsy, just in case you wanna bff me on there) and the scale was budging. Barely. But budging.

Then we found out we were moving in a month and I went a little nuts in my head. For a few weeks I had to be reminded to eat, which, in my entire life, had never happened. I just concentrated on painting and getting my kids where they needed to go and all the work needed to move. When we did eat, it was for convenience. Easy meals, lots of cleaning out the pantry so we didn't have to move a ton a food to move. So-spaghetti, sandwiches, breakfast for dinner, hot dogs, and more. I was putting in like 5+ hours of painting or cleaning or lugging around boxes, so despite the fact that I was eating off norm, I still could feel pants getting a little looser. I packed my scale at some point, so I had no idea what I really weighed.

When I got to Fayetteville, I was down 7lbs from my highest weight. Suh-weet! But, we weren't done being a little crazy. The day we moved took most of a Monday, then the movers drove to Fayetteville and stayed in a hotel, to bring our stuff the next day. We had our townhouse, and the stuff we'd shoved into our two vehicles. Then came moving in day. Then came family. A lot of family. And friends. A lot of friends. Everybody that we missed all the time that we desperately wanted to live by was right here. And every one of them wanted to go out to eat. And we had just moved to a new town that is total foodieville.

Our first 24 hours here this happened:
Dinner: Noodles (I shared Bacon Spinach Ravioli with my sister and partook in bread and salad and an alcoholic bev.)
Breakfast: Briar Rose (Rob and I shared Biscuits and Gravy and a Cinnamon Roll)
Lunch: Smitty's Garage (I had Fish Tacos and a few french fries)
Dinner: Firehouse Subs (at this point my stomach was about to blow up, I had the low fat chicken salad only)
Yeah, that was a rough 24 hour patch. It wasn't always that bad, but for about two weeks, we went out to dinner every other night or so and it was at new fun places, so you know my butt didn't choose wisely.

Life has settled down. We've both started jobs, the kids are both in school, and our pantry and fridge are finally restocked. I'm back couponing (not as well as before, never thought I'd miss Kroger so bad) and trying to stock us up with healthy stuff and have myself a plan so I don't fall prey to the easy fix of someone else making us dinner.

The scale caught up with me. For a few weeks I kept losing weight and I ridiculously convinced myself that the gym workouts were offsetting the bad eating. I've lived in this body for 34 years and a big part of that has been spent trying make that dang scale go down, so I should know that bad behavior takes forever to show up on the scale and good behavior takes EVENMOREFOREVER!!! So the drop on the scale was my efforts with running in July, the forgetting to eat during moving, the five hours a day doing squats while repainting my house, the walking around the zoo, museum, and Rivermarket ONE LAST TIME, the jumping at the trampoline park ONE LAST TIME,  and the seventy five boxes that I packed and moved to a storage unit.

So, here I am, in early October. I have been going to the gym 3-4 days a week and wogging 1-2 days a week. I am logging like a beast in My Fitness Pal and paying attention to carbs and fats and proteins more than I ever have. It feels like I should have lost 14 lbs in a month. Instead, I'm almost back where I started. Its sad times. I am being punished for bad behavior in August. If I continue my current plan (working out, eating within my calorie range) I should see this reward in a couple of weeks. It might be 2015 before then, but we'll see.

You know on Biggest Loser where everyone loses like 10-30lbs in the first week? If I was on the show, I would lose 1, maybe gain 2, and get kicked off week 1. Remember when Rob and I did a cleanse and he lost 10 and I lost 3? I followed it to a T and he had a nacho buffet and alcohol on Day 3. The scale is a douche. Its fine.

The good news, is that I can see changes not involved with the scale. I measured myself and I had lost 3.5 inches. Rob was impressed when I flexed for him. And I think my head is in the right place now. Food is tricky for me. It is hard for me to not see food for being just what it is: nourishment. To not think of it as a reward, a therapist, a cheat, an enemy. To just simply think of it as a way to energize my body to get me through a busy day. I feel like my head is going in that direction and exercise isn't a way to 'burn off all the cheats' but to build a strong body.

I've joined a weight loss challenge group and weighed in and measured myself October 1. September was spent getting used to our new life and getting a schedule of sorts set up. October is all about implementing what I know. Water like a fish, logging food, exercising like a beast.



No comments:

Post a Comment