Everything happens for a reason…

I have, I’ll sadly admit, not been going to meetings much lately. This is the first time in 10 years I can say this, and I’m not happy about it. But life got in the way. I tried to rearrange my schedule so that I could have more weeknights free, so I started going to meetings on weekends. But then I was either traveling or had house guests every weekend for months. Literally. I’ve managed to get in my monthly weigh in, but I have stayed for precious few meetings.

Enter POINTS Plus.

I learned the other day that WW has totally changed the POINTS program for the first time in my 10 year tenure as a WW (my anniversary is coming up – 4/3/11!). I’m reserving judgement until I hear all the details at a meeting this week, but I can’t help but wonder if someone up there didn’t put this change in my life at this time to re-energize my committment to healthy living and eating. I love mastering new things, and as a self-appointed WW expert I’m now back at the beginning with a whole new set of rules. It’s going to become harder for a while – I can estimate old PTS in my head without even trying. That skill, though fun at parties, will no longer serve me. And I don’t think I”ll be as easily able to figure out the new formula b/c it’s more complex (fat/carbs/fiber/protein instead of calories/fat/fiber).

Stay tuned for more about my adventures in re-learning the WW program. I still believe that the old tried and true principles of Eat Less, Move More apply, and that Filling Foods are always the best choice. I’m curious to see what changes I’ll make to my own staple diet as a result of this, too. I look forward to sharing the journey along with you!

It’s Marathon Monday!

Today is Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts, which means its time for the running of the Boston Marathon.  I volunteer at the Marathon every year to support the amazing runners who participate on behalf of Dana Farber’s work to eradicate cancer. It’s always so inspiring to see the work that they’ve put into the race – both training and raising money.  Right now most of them are more than halfway through the course, and I’m sending them strong thoughts and prayers as they push through to the end.

And to bring this around to weight management, here’s a scary fact.  A 150 lb person running for 4 hours (a pretty average time for many DFMC runners) would earn a whopping 29 Activity Points!!!  Man the ice cream I would eat after that.

Good luck/congratulations to all the marathon runners on this crisp spring day.  You’re showing us all how powerful activity can be in your own life, and the lives of others.

Inspiring TV: Ruby

Tonight there was nothing on TV, so I checked out On Demand.  I was delighted to see old episodes of a show I have come to love on the Style network called “Ruby”. Ruby is an amazingly funny, bright, beautiful person who has been morbidly obese for most of her life. She is losing weight, and the show chronicles her efforts working with a doctor, trainer, nutritionist, and therapist to finally face down – and defeat – the demons that have kept her locked in a food addiction. The show is powerful and moving, but at the same time lighthearted, upbeat, and funny. Seriously funny. Side-splittingly funny.

In the episode I watched tonight, Ruby faces a huge milestone for her – getting under 350 lbs (she started at 470 and has been as high as 700 lbs in the past).  It’s a weight she hasn’t seen as an adult, ever. She’s also auditioning new personal trainers and trying all sorts of new exercise. I was particularly moved when I saw her riding a bike for the first time in forever. I could see the sense of freedom and lightness on her face. It practically brought me to tears (yes, I’m that sappy).  Riding a bike is something I’ve been afraid to try again but if a 350 lb woman can do it, so can I.

Ruby is fearless, yet at the same time afraid of so much. She is determined. She is kind. She is sweet. She is an amazing inspiration to all of us, not just on how to lose weight, but how to embrace life.

So if you need a boost of motivation, or just want to smile, check out Ruby’s show on The Style Channel (ch 211 on Comcast) and her blog on mystyle.com.

GOAL!!!!

I went to my meeting tonight planning to use a “No Weigh-In” pass. I was sure I was up because of some unfortunate emotional eating over the weekend (happens to the best of us!).  My friend Chris convinced me to face the music, and when I did I got the shock of my life – I had lost 2.2 lbs, which meant I.WAS.AT.GOAL!!!

I was floored.  Shocked.  It felt bittersweet because I knew my behavior had not been the type of behavior that should get me to goal. But I am going to take the gift and use it to propel me into a new phase of consistent, healthy behavior. On maintenance I get an extra 4 PTS to start, so I will now be planning days for 29 PTS (20 + 4 + 5 WPAs). To be honest I have always struggled to stay satisfied on 25 PTS so I’m hoping it will be easier for me to follow a 29 PT plan.  I think it will be because in the past when I tracked the PTS I was eating without any plan I averaged 30 – 31/day without thinking.

This is not my first time on maintenance so I’m not terribly concerned about the changes (really just the extra PTS). And to be honest I still have 5 lbs of loss to get to where I really want to be. But for now I’m going to savor the scale victory and focus on a successful 6 week maintenance period.  My hope it to chronicle the whole process here so stay tuned!

The hardest part is walking through the door

Tuesday night I (re)learned a lesson that many people already know, and yet somehow need to be reminded of over and over again.  I learned that the hardest part is walking through the door.

For some, this applies to their first Weight Watchers meeting. (Or their second, third, or fourth “first” meeting!).  For me, it was the gym. I had been on vacation, and had been so involved with a fun decorating project at home that I hadn’t made it to the gym all week. Then I got a cold, so another few days passed when I didn’t exercise.  And I’ll be honest – I really, really, really didn’t want to go back. I like exercise. I like how it makes me feel. But for some reason I was afraid of going back and having lost so much strength, endurance, etc. It’s silly because it had only been like 8 days. But I was in such a place of low energy that it was physically daunting to think about a workout.

But I knew that exercise would help the low energy, so I forced myself to take that first step – driving to the gym. I used the season premier of The Biggest Loser as motivation (I find it wrong to watch BL sitting on the couch, so I usually hit the gym and watch it on the elliptical or treadmill). I told myself I would just walk at a leisurely pace on the treadmill to ease myself back into it. That’s all. Nothing strenuous. Just a little light walking.

A funny thing happened when I got to the gym, though. I looked at the treadmill and said “I can do better. I can do the elliptical. I won’t push myself hard, but I’ll do the elliptical for 30 min.” I got on and set it to resistance 8, which is two notches below my normal level 10. 

I don’t know if it was the endorphins, the motivating stories of the Biggest Loser, or a combination of the two, but I suddenly felt a surge of energy. I upped the resistance to level 10, and did the full 30 min! It wasn’t my most strenuous workout, but I felt great afterward.

There was just one problem…the season premier was 2 hours!  It was only about 9:10 at this point, and I didn’t want to miss part of the show driving home from the gym. So I hopped over to the treadmill and did that leisurely walk I had planned, for another 45 minutes!  It was such a boost, I was really proud of myself.

And tonight, I went back. Again, nothing too strenuous. I hopped on the recumbent bike for 45 minutes so I could read a book that I have to return to the library in 7 days. (Wouldn’t want a late fee!) But it was so much easier to go tonight than last night.  And Friday morning’s spin class will be a little easier. Slowly but surely (and maybe even not that slowly) I’ll remember how great it feels to exercise, how much I love the classes that I do, and I’ll be back into my normal routine.

So if you want to start something but feel a little overwhelmed or daunted, just ask yourself this – what’s the very first, next thing I need to do to get started? Is it making an appointment with a trainer? Picking a date and time for your first WW meeting? Whatever it is, promise yourself that you’ll just show up. You’ll walk through the door. I promise that if you do that one thing – hard as it is – the rest will fall into place.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

The title of this post is a famous WW saying:

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

I decided to post this topic today because I am starting down the barrel of a very, very challenging week, already up a pound from last week.  I know that planning will be key to getting through this week without negatively impacting my weight loss efforts.  My schedule will be very uncertain most of the week, and I won’t be at home for much of that time to do my food prep and packing of lunch, pre-cooking of dinner, etc. So I need alternative strategies. I know that I know these strategies, and the time has come to dust them off and put them to good use.  Here are a few of them that I’m going to try to put into practice this week:

1) Exercise.  If I can’t plan my calorie intake as well as I’d like, I can sure plan my calorie outlay. Tomorrow’s schedule will not allow a workout, but I will definitely run, elliptical, or bike Friday. I’ll be visiting friends this weekend, but both are trying to lose weight themselves so I’m hoping to be a good influence and get them to at least walk with me. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I should also be able to get in a run or other cardio. It will be a hard week to fit weights in, but I am going to try to bring at least one Self Magazine workout sheet with me and get a short strength training session in after a shorter cardio workout.

2) Breakfast.I’ve posted this tip before, but for the days I’m traveling I plan to bring my own cereal with me in a Ziploc baggie with a collapsible bowl. I know I am going to be tempted to eat a bagel or other food at the event that I’m going to, so I may make the cereal portion smaller and allow myself that “treat” (or at least half a bagel).  But it’s good to have a plan for starting my day in a healthy way.

3) Snacks.  This can be a double edge sword, bringing snacks with me on a trip. Sometimes I eat for non-hunger reasons if I have food with me, but on the flip side if I DO get hungry it’s better to have something I can control and track to curb the hunger. I went to the store and bought a box of TLC Honey Almond Flax chewy granola bars and plan to carry them with me and focus on eating them only when physically hungry. I’m also going to bring some plain almonds in small sandwich baggies. They have good fats so even though they’re small, they stick with you. And they’re just so darn tasty!!

4) Keep it simple.The WW Core plan no longer exists, but it’s a good philosophy for eating out which I’ll be doing alot of this week.  I can’t do it all the time, but for a few days I can stick to grilled chicken, potatoes, even steak. I have a sense of where I’ll be eating most nights, and I have some say a few nights, so I can do a little advanced planning and pick out entrees that will allow me to stay within PTS.

5) High level planning.If I can’t plan my exact meals, I try to block out PTS values for each meal or snack.  I am going to aim for 5 PTS for breakfast, 7 PTS for lunch 9 PTS for dinner, 4 PTS of snacks.  That’s 25 PTS. It will be hard to do lunch and dinner for that amount of PTS (lunch will be especially hard), but I’m going to give it a shot!  

6) Real time journaling. I often find that journaling in real time helps me correct course mid-day, if need be. So I plan to carry my journal with me all day and sneak away to discretely write down what I’ve eaten after each meal or snack.  I’m hoping that the “If you bite it, write it” magic will keep me from eating for reasons other than hunger, which I am known to do (aren’t we all!).

So that’s it. Not as detailed a plan as I typically like, but it’s what I can do for now.  I’m also hoping that the motivation to really stay on track this week and come back next week with a weight loss will permeate my brain in those moments of temptation and help me make smart decisions.

(Note – I actually just remembered one of the WW tools for living that I had long ago forgotten about – Anchoring. It’s a tool where you take a physical object and touch it, hold it, rub it, whatever to remind you of something. I may try to choose an anchor to have with me this week so that when I do get tempted I will have something to focus on instead of food. Another part of the plan!)

My Revelation For 2008: It’s About Energy, Not Time

Like everyone else at this time of year, I’m taking some time out to think about what happened over the last 364 days.  The goal in doing so is not only to remember the good times, but also to make sure that what worked in ’08 carries over into the new year. 

I’ve reflected on many things when it comes to my weight loss journey over the course of this year, and at the WW meeting I went to last night my leader asked us to put some of those reflections down onto paper.  One of those stuck out as really the lynch-pin to all the success I’ve had this year.  It was so important, I decided to share it with all of you in hopes that it might help you as well.

My revelation came in two parts:

Part 1: I already know what to do. I’m just not doing it.

After so many years on WW, education is no longer the issue for me.  I know how many PTS are in most of the foods I’m most likely to come across, which restaurants have low PTS options, and how many APs I earn for a spin class or stint on the elliptical.  I know what  I need to do to lose weight.

The big question this year was – what aren’t I doing what I need to do?

I realized that until I answered that question, until I found the real root cause of my inability to re-lose the weight, I wasn’t going to be successful.

As part of the analysis I did, I decided that one of my big issues was not having time to do what I needed to do: plan meals, pack lunches, work out at the gym as often as I wanted to.  Like most people I set out to find a time management solution, and found one that told me to list out everything I had to do in a week and how long it took.

Boy, was I shocked.

It turned out that the things I had to do did not nearly total to the number of hours in a week, even with sleep included.  I don’t have kids, and while I have a stressful job I don’t have many extracurricular commitments outside of that.  So where was all my time going?

I started to lay out my time per week and realized that I had plenty of hours in the evening and on weekends to get things done, but I was so exhausted when I got home I wasn’t making good use of that time.  And when I had time on the weekends, it was being used to catch up on mundane errands and household chores that were necessary but not fulfilling, and not how I wanted to spend the bulk of my free time.

All of this led to my second revelation:

Part 2:  It’s not my time I need to manage better. It’s my energy.

I realized that the problem for me was that my time and my energy level weren’t aligned.  When I had energy, mostly in the mornings, I was at work and couldn’t do the things I needed to for my weight loss efforts.  When I had time at night and on weekends, I was tapped out mentally and physically.  I needed to bring the two into alignment.

I needed to find a way to make sure I had the energy to get up early to go to the gym, the motivation and required concentration level to plan out menus and meals for a day or week, and the stamina to pack lunches before I went to bed at night.  After some periods of trial and error, I found a few things that work really well for me.  I still haven’t gotten them down 100% of the time, but I can tell you that when I do these things my energy and productivity go up dramatically, and somehow all the other things I need to do just become easier.  It’s not magic, but it sure feels like it! 

My Tips For Managing Your Energy

1. Turn off the TV!

Every once in a while I come home from work and decide not to put the TV on for background noise.  Sometimes I put NPR on, or my iPod, and other times I let there be silence.  The impact of this on my energy level and mental health is beyond description.  I feel an amazing sense of calm and peace.  And I get a ton done because I don’t end up vegging out on the couch watching something that I’m really not even interested in.  When there is no TV to default to, I have to ask myself “What should I do next?”  The answer is always something like “well, I might as well knock off those bills that need to be paid,” or “let me put this laundry away now so I don’t have to look at it anymore.”  If there are no chores to do, it may be “I’ll spend some time putting those photos into scrapbooks.” 

Inevitably I end up looking at the clock thinking hours have passed, and it’s much EARLIER than I expected.  And yet I’ve gotten double the amount done compared to a night when the TV is on.  Time literally seems to slow down.

I end up going to bed feeling peaceful, relaxed, and highly productive.  As a result I sleep better, too, so I feel more energized the next day.  It’s a wonderful cycle that I am hoping to repeat more often next year (assuming my darling boyfriend will agree to leave the TV off!)

2. Establish a bedtime routine.

When I get too tired I am likely to fall dead asleep on the couch – fully clothed, contacts in, teeth unbrushed.   I eventually pick myself up and get into bed, but sometimes my contacts are too glued to my eyes to take out at that point and I basically sleepwalk through the rest of my normal nighttime routine.

On nights I take the time to take my contacts out (or my “eyeballs” as we like to call them), wash my face, brush my teeth, put on my PJs, and really “prepare” for bed long before I get over-tired, I find I sleep much better. I can’t say why, exactly, but the routine of doing all those things seems to tell my mind and body that it’s time to slow down.  I relax, and thus fall asleep more quickly and sleep more soundly.

Again, it’s unclear exactly why this is happeneing, but I’ve tried it both ways and all I know for sure is is makes a big difference.

If you’re like me and sometimes have a hard time breaking out of today to get ready for tomorrow, consider taking a tip that I got off of one of the many blogs I read (when I remember, I’ll link to it). 

 Set an alarm to go off at a certain time each night.  When that alarm goes off you drop everything and start your  evening routine. 

Get ready for bed, pull together what you need for the next day, put things away that need to be put away.  Whatever it is that makes you feel ready to go when you get up.  It doesn’t have to be right before bed, either.  I sometimes do my evening prep right after dinner so that nothing else gets in the way.  If I do get caught up in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or fall asleep on the couch at least I don’t have to get up and get ready for bed in the wee hours when it’s over.

3. Go to bed at the right time.

I don’t know about you, but I often stay up way later than I know I should.  Why?  I’m not really that engrossed in HGTV re-runs, after all.  And no one is posting anything new on the message boards I belong to.  So why do I force myself to stay up?

A colleague hit the nail on the head at a party one night.  She said “I stay up late because I’m procrastinating tomorrow. I don’t want it to come, so I stay up late so it won’t come as quickly.”

Wow.  That was deep.  I realized I’d been doing the same thing, and that it was creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I stayed up late b/c I wasn’t looking forward to the next day, but then because I was tired the day was even worse than it would have otherwise been.

Now I try to remind myself that tomorrow will come in the same number of hours whether I’m asleep or not.  And that I may not be able to avoid or control some events but I can at least make them a little better by getting enough rest before I have to face them.

So there you have it.  A few thoughts and reflections on 2008, and on how to focus on the root cause of an issue rather than just the thing that seems most obvious on the surface.  I hope it gets you thinking about your own challenges and successes as we launch into 2009.

Wishing everyone a safe, happy new year and hoping to see less of you in 2009!

The Power of Proverbs

Last week, NPR did a whole show about proverbs.  The guest was an author who wrote a book on proverbs from around the world.  They went through many of the tried and true favorites, like “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and “A fool and his money are soon parted.” 

I realized how many “proverbs” I use in my daily life, to either communicate meaning quickly and easily, or to make a point in a simple yet sophisticated way.  Many of these sayings are things I picked up at Weight Watchers over the years, but I’ve found them to be applicable in so many parts of my life. 

Consider the following phrases, what they might mean for your weight loss efforts, and for your life in general:

“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”

Are there certain patterns of behavior or eating that always trip you up, or things you do that impede your weight loss?  Have you changed those behaviors, or do you keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (which is, by the way, the definition of insanity)? 

“It’s about perseverance, not perfection.”

This has become my motto. I am NOT perfect, especially when it comes to weight management.  But I’ve refused to give up on my desire to live a healthy life, at a healthy weight. I’ve paid the WW fee each week, even as the scale moved up.  I’ve cried, upset with myself for not doing what I know I need to do.  But still I keep trying. I haven’t given up. And I think that’s the reason I’ve kept 45+ lbs off for as long as I have.  I don’t expect myself to do it all right all the time.  But I do expect myself to keep trying every time to do a better job.  This is true in every aspect of my life.  This weight management journey has taught me how persistent I can be when I believe in something strongly enough.

“I’ve come to far in life to be taking orders from a cookie.”

This one is just funny.  The first time I heard it, I pictured a cookie in a little General’s uniform shouting out orders, starts on shoulder lapels and all.  And it just made me laugh.  Every time I feel a strong psychological craving or urge for food when I’m not actually hungry, I picture Captain Cookie and it makes the whole idea of food having that much power over me seem completely and utterly ridiculous.

“There is no failure, only feedback.”

For some reason, our culture thinks failure is bad.  But failure is really the only way to learn.  Sure, I’ve gained weight.  I’ve made really bad choices, some times knowing that’s what I was doing, sometimes because I didn’t have the information I needed.  I can either whine about those things and get down on myself, or I can use them as a learning experience.  I chose (or at least I try!) to do the latter.  I ask myself – Why did I make that choice?  What could I do differently next time? 

Those are just a few of the proverbs that come to my mind at the moment.  I’m sure I’ll write about more of them later, but what I really want to know is what your favorite sayings are about this crazy journey toward healthy living?  What do they mean to you, and how have they helped you along the path?