Sloooooooooow weight loss....Day 21

Well, it was weigh in day again and I went and found that I had lost .2 which seems like a very small number.  In fact, it almost seems worthless but, is it really?  I mean it's only been three weeks since I started Weight Watchers and in total I am down 12.4 pounds and that's good, right?  Well heck yes, it is!

The problem is that I wanted to lose so much more than a "mere" .2 tenths of a pound but it really is slow and steady that will win this race.  Huh, what race?  Well, the weight loss journey i.e. race that is a part of my new lifestyle change, you know what I mean?

It doesn't help that my own mother thinks that I didn't do well this week by losing "just .2"  Yikes, now them's some fightin' words!  LOL  Seriously, I can't listen to my own mother about this or I might want to quit right now because who cares anyway?  I don't want to fall into any of those old traps and self-defeating attitudes so begone I say!

And really, I've been sick this past week and still managed to stay on track with my eating and I still lost weight so I am thinking that I am pretty darn awesome!

So in that spirit I want to say that I lost .2 tenths of a pound for a grand total of 12.4 pounds lost!  Yay me! I am down to 389.2 and I only have 7.6 pounds to go to reach my goal of losing the first 5% of my body weight.  Yay!!

Running Behind.....Day Sixteen

I have been sick with a cold and that makes it hard to function.  Amazingly enough, I have been able to continue on the weight loss journey.  I admit, I haven't been quite the stickler I was when I first started but I also haven't gone crazy and eaten everything in sight. 

I made myself go to super Walmart to buy convenience foods, i.e. TV dinners.  I picked up the ones I like and that I know the Weight Watchers PointsPlus values for and that's almost all I have been eating this last week.  Since my adult daughter has been sick too, it makes it even harder for anyone to do any cooking in the house.  That would be the bad part of living with five other people, when one kid gets a cold, the rest of us are almost sure to catch it, especially since I have a compromised immune system (the diabetes).

So I had to make myself go to the Weight Watchers meeting on Friday morning.  My cold had me feeling pretty low but I felt like I needed to go just to keep me on track.  I am glad I did because I found out that I had lost another 4.2 pounds!  I am now down to 389.4 pounds AND I earned another 5 pounds lost star!  heehee

I am now on week 3 of Weight Watchers PointsPlus program and while it isn't easy peasy, at least it is not miserable, even though having a cold and being sick really is quite miserable!

Getting a Cold.... Day Eleven

Unfortunately I am coming down with a cold and I feel absolutely horrible.  It makes eating healthy a whole lot harder and I feel even MORE hungry than I did before. I thought when you were sick that you didn't get hungry as often?  Well, that's a lie!  LOL  And it's the pitts too since, like I said, not feeling real well at all.  So my choices for food have come down to whatever is the easiest to get.  I am still following the WW plan but, not quite as stringently as I was.  Until I feel a bit better though, I don't know what else I can do so, I will do the best I can!

Still Hungry.... Day Ten

Oh my gosh, I have been so darn hungry this week.  At least right now I am full and I hope to be able to make it all night long without eating anything.  Being diabetic, it is very hard for me to make it through the night without eating something or drinking a Glucerna shake for diabetics.  Those have 5 Weight Watchers PointPlus points.

I was eating a can of Campbell's Minestrone soup to keep me going but I am out of them.  The whole can has 6 WW PointsPlus points and it tastes good, has a mix of protein, vegetables and carbs plus I like the flavor of it right out of the can.  It makes a cheaper snack than the Glucerna's, which are expensive at $9 for 6 bottles.  The soup is $1 for each can and it lasts me longer than the Glucerna's do.

Today I tracked everything I ate but dang, I was hungry, even after eating a meal.  I have got to start making recipes instead of relying on frozen dinners.  

As hard as it has been this week, I don't see how I will lose any weight.  Of course I thought that last week too.  I don't know, I guess I will see when I hit that scale on Friday morning at the Weight Watchers meeting.  This week really has been a lot harder, more real life intrusions and plus we are all getting sick.  I've been coughing and having a runny nose, just like the kids do.  That would be the problem with living with all these people, all those germs.

I think I will make a big pot of healthy chicken vegetable soup tomorrow, plenty of vegetables with zero points, some chicken and some whole wheat egg noodles.  I would prefer brown rice cuz I like it but my daughter doesn't like it as much as I do.  It's okay though cuz the noodles are good too.

I made eggplant this afternoon.  I took one eggplant, diced it, used 3 tablespoons of bread crumbs, two teaspoons of olive oil and fried it.  Then I used 3 tablespoons of tomato sauce and 1/4 cup of grated cheese and it was tasty.  I would have liked to eat the whole eggplant but I had to share it with my daughter and our roommate since we are all on this Weight Watchers journey together.

I Wonder.... Day Nine

I'm still hungry and having that whole problem with eating, as in, wanting to eat lots more than I need.  Of course that's how I got to weigh 400+ pounds.  I think eating healthy is great and I still have a strong desire to do so but.... I wonder why this week isn't as, well, easy, as my first week was?  What's different this week?

I wonder if it was a bad idea to eat a pastrami sandwich on a regular roll and some tater tots on Friday after weigh in and not track it.  I gave myself permission to eat and not track what I ate but I still ate healthy-ish.  The pastrami was turkey pastrami and I had dill pickles and mustard on it.  The roll was a regular sandwich roll with 4 or 5 points on its own, the pastrami had 5 or so points and the tater tots were 9 points.  So I know what the points were for the lunch but I didn't write it down.  I wonder if my body wants to continue eating like that?  I don't know, all I know is that I am hungry and have been for two days and I don't like it!

And I kind of want another pastrami sandwich and tater tots too, darn it.  :-(

Eeek, Slow Start to the Second Week.... Day Eight

After I weighed in yesterday and found out that I'd lost 8 pounds, well, I thought it would be simple to just continue to track the foods I eat and stay on the straight and healthy (in a manner of speaking).  What I found though is that I am hungry, more hungry now than I was when I even started!  How can this be?  And WHY is an even better question?

This week I get 56 PointsPlus each day instead of 57 but that's just one point and really shouldn't make a difference, right?  The problem is that I am finding it harder to eat healthy stuff like plenty of vegetables to fluff out my points so I don't get hungry.  I can eat the vegetables along with my meal but darn it, I am hungry still or again right away.  I am not sure if this is all mental or emotional or what but I don't like it, not one little bit!

This week though, I have to say that real life is intruding and not in a pleasant way.  Emotions are swirling around, I'm generally crabby and tired so the kids think I don't like 'em and they'd be right most of the time, poor dears.  It's not always a good thing to have me living with them because I am a very cranky granny. I don't mean to be and I sure don't want to be but yet, here I am, crabby and cranky, tired and in pain and not the most friendly of people.  But I don't think I could live alone at this time because I don't feel well so often and I am not fully functional most of the time either.  So for now, staying and doing the best that I can with what I've got, cranky and all.

All I can do about this emotion swirling around and real life intruding though is to just track as much of the food I eat as I can.  I keep wanting to eat more and more but I have not let myself do so yet.  If I have to, I can eat a can of fruit packed in fruit juice.  I'm not supposed to eat all the fruit I WANT but I can eat all the fruit I NEED to feel full and stay on track.  So that's what I will do.

The First Weigh In.... Day Seven

OMG, I weighed in today and lost 8 pounds!!  LOL heeheehee I was stunned to say the least!  I mean, yes, I tracked every bite of food I ate and yes, I ate healthier choices but still, I thought, oh sure, maybe 4 or 5 pounds but 8 pounds, WOW!

I am as giddy as a little school girl!  LOL Seriously!  And I got my first 5 pounds lost star sticker that Weight Watchers gives out.  I am very happy right now.

And now I weigh a mere 393.6 pounds.  But I can't think about how much that total is because otherwise I might give up.  Weight Watchers has us thinking of a 5% weight loss or down to 380 for me as our first goal.  So that is my current goal, to lose 5% of my body weight.  That means all I have to lose is 13.6 more pounds!  Yay!

Week 1 on the Weight Watchers PointPlus plan has been a complete success  And now, on to week two....

Writing Down Everything I Eat.... Day Six

I have been writing down every single  bite of food that goes in my mouth which I wrote about in Day Three.  I get 57 Weight Watchers PointPlus points each day and guess what?  I am not hungry and sometimes I have a hard time getting in every one of my points.  Isn't that amazing? 

I guess my thinking is stuck on the word "DIET" and I think I have to suffer to lose weight.  LOL  But now my problem is that I don't know if I will lose weight because, well frankly, I don't feel like I am on a "diet."  But I guess that is the beauty of Weight Watchers, you are NOT supposed to be on a diet as much as you are on a weight loss change for your lifestyle.

Did you know that you eat anything you want on Weight Watchers?  You sure can, as long as you track the points in the food and keep to your daily totals.  So, one chocolate chip cookie has 5 points and 20 tater tots has 9 points.  Heck, one small frozen cheese pizza has 9 points and 17 slices of turkey pepperoni to throw on top of it only have 2 points plus.  Of course the Weight Watchers chocolate chip cookies only have 2 pointsplus and they taste delicious!

All in all, I am eating according to the WW PointsPlus plan, writing everything down on the WW website using the e-tools and I am feeling pretty good about myself.  Now, if only I can lose some weight to see some proof that this only thing works!

Why Start a Weight Loss Journey? Day Five

Seriously, why didn't I start this weight loss journey a long time ago?  I weigh over 400 pounds and I can barely walk, why the heck didn't I do something about it before now? 

I reached an absolute low point when I was taking a bath at my parents house.  Bathing has become a major chore for me.  It usually involves tons of physical effort, lots of discomfort along with some pain and a bucket or two of tears.  Yes, I did say tears.  I end up crying nearly every time I bathe.  The effort to bathe or shower kicks my behind so hard that I don't bathe often enough.  This is a deep dark secret that currently only my family knows but now, everyone will know.  I don't bathe often enough because I'm scared. 

Scared to bathe?  Sounds weird I know but afterwards, I am so exhausted, I almost feel like I can't go on.  So I get depressed and I cry, sometimes I start to hypervenilate and have a full-blown anxiety attack.  It is AWFUL and I hate it!  So I do a lot of the so-called "spit bath" with baby wipes and a cleansing spray they use in resthomes.  It isn't the same though but I do the best I can with what I've got.

But the last time I took a bathe, I could not find the energy to even make the attempt to get up to get out of the bath tub so I sat there and cried.  That was the defining moment for me and THAT'S when I joined Weight Watchers to do something about my weight.

Just didn't quite feel like writing... Day 4

I'm just so tired and not getting much of anything accomplished.  I CAN say one positive thing though; I am following my Weight Watchers PointsPlus food plan and tracking everything I eat online.  I'm hoping it gets easier with time and familiarity because right this minute, I'm just too tired to really care much.  I have the blahs unfortunately and that makes everything just that much harder.

Write Down Everything You Eat.... Day Three

I am so tired!  I mean physically tired, so tired I just want to sleep and sleep and forget about tracking the foods I'm eating.  Unfortunately, tracking food still sucks as far as I am concerned.  I am doing it though, everything that goes into my mouth, I write it down.  That's partly what the Weight Watchers meeting was about, writing down everything you eat.  Evidently it helps you to stay aware of what you are eating and keeps you on track in your weight loss journey.

Ok, I can see that and I know it's true because I know what I've eaten in the last three days that I did NOT write down.  I ate two raisins out of the box and did not write that down.  LOL  Seriously, I only ate two raisins, oh, I wanted more than that but I wasn't sure how many pointsplus they had at that point so I just ate two and put them away.  Since that time I have looked them up and raisins have a PointsPlus value of 3 points for 1/4 of a cup.  I find that funny because I almost never eat an entire 1/4 cup because I like them in my oatmeal (or oatmeal raisin cookies) and you don't need all that many.  This morning I had oatmeal with my full serving of raisins though and it was delicious.  I even put margarine in it, 1 Tablespoon of "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Light" and it was one of the best cups of oatmeal ever.  I must have oatmeal more often because 1] it tastes good and 2] the fiber is good for you (keeps you regular, you know?  heehee).

Harder Than I Thought it Would Be.... Day 2

Well here it is day 2 of my weight loss journey and I have to say, not a lot of fun, really.  Blah.

I am following the Weight Watchers PointsPlus plan and I get 57 PointsPlus points each day.  Honestly, that's a lot of food and fruits and vegetables have no points so, in theory, you can eat tons of them.  In reality, you are only supposed to eat what you need to not feel hungry.  That's what our leader told us at the last meeting.  She had a person in one of her groups that gained weight because he was eating A LOT of fruit, too many, so she had to tell him.  "You can eat as much as you need, not as much as you WANT."

So what's my problem then?  Well, for one thing, it is a lot of work to track your foods, I don't like it.  I feel like all I ever think about is food, more than before I started this whole weight loss journey.  I do know that part of my problem is that I don't feel well.  My body hurts, especially my joints.  I guess age (49) and weight (401.6) are really catching up to me.  Well, that's the whole reason for the weight loss journey i.e. plan.

Actually though, I am doing well.  I am making food choices that are well within my points total of 57 points per day.  I just need to juggle them better so I am not feeling that diabetic crash thing that happens and then I sit there and cry and can't think of what I'm supposed to do about it.  I hate it when that happens!  Plus I feel even worse physically.

I wish I had unlimited money or at least, more money so that I could buy better food choices.  I would like more fresh fruit and some vegetables but I have to limit myself to what the budget can afford.  There are 6 of us living here; me, my adult daughter, her partner and my three grandsons and it takes the combined incomes of all of us just to pay the bills and have food on the table.  That's just the reality of things and sometimes it gets in the way of having good food choices.

I am doing the best I can with what I've got.  I think I might come to really hate that saying!

I drew this picture with MS Paint on my computer.

And the Weight Loss Journey Begins.... Day 1

First day of yet ANOTHER weight loss journey for me, though admittedly the first one in many years.  I joined Weight Watchers on Friday, January 7th, 2011 and attended my first meeting along with both my mother and my adult daughter.  Yay me, I have "buddy" support during this weight loss journey.  Did that sound sarcastic?  Well, much as I love the two of them, I'm still the fattest one of the three of us.  Guess I'm just sort of jealous maybe?  Not sure but I definitely hate being the fattest one of the group. 

I started this weight loss journey because of one reason, I had no other choice.  I could either lose weight or I could die.  Yeah, sounds silly when I say it like that but it's true.  I weigh 400 pounds at this point and I can barely stand or walk or do personal hygiene things.  I'm diabetic and I take both pills and insulin to keep it  mostly under control.  Sometimes my blood pressure is a little high, not too bad, thank goodness, but I do take meds for it.  I have high cholesterol and take meds for that every night.  And worst of all, I almost NEVER feel good.  And I have to say, that really sucks big time!

So, I have joined Weight Watchers and I am now counting, or rather, TRACKING, the foods I eat and their PointsPlus point value.  Because of my weight, 401.6 pounds, I get 57 PointsPlus points each day.  I am using the etools available on the Weight Watchers website which you can check out at Weight Watchers to help me out.

I started this blog to follow my weight loss journey because I am hoping it helps to keep me on track and maybe my experiences can help others to lose weight too.