Positive Shifts

As I've mentioned before briefly, I'm doing Weight Watchers. I have joined it literally 30 times. Seriously. No exaggeration. Sometimes I would wonder why I even tried. God knows how much money, time and energy I've put into it. So I rejoined WW back in October. I lost 10 pounds pretty quickly, and then have essentially spent the next 4 months gaining and losing 5 pounds. I was playing games. I'd still go to meetings, and go off-program, make excuses, and try again "tomorrow." Uh huh. That was working well. Not! About 3 weeks ago, something clicked. I got tired of the games. I belong to a great WW message board called Bootcamp Buddies which is a group of people doing WW without the whining and games that you see on the official WW message boards. On the BCB boards I found a buddy who also has 100+ pounds to lose, and we email each other daily to check in and be accountable, in addition to our posting on the boards. Making it more personal with an individual has helped a lot in terms of accountability. So the two of us have had really great weeks. For those of you not familiar with the workings of Weight Watchers, they calculate "Points" for all their foods. Essentially, the higher fat and lower fiber an item is, the higher the points will be. You have a certain amount of Points you can eat per day, and then you get 35 extra for the week, to spend as you like. And you earn more Points for exercise that you do. Last week was really tough for me. I know that I enjoy eating out, and on the weekends especially I like to have a much looser program filled with treats. So I tend to spend a majority of my 35 weekly points and my activity points on the weekend. That means I can go out and eat some big, sloppy meal somewhere, or a big piece of cheesecake (which could be 15+ points in itself). I enjoy that, I fit it into my schedule, and I lose weight. Perfect. Except for last week. Earlier in the week I had some mini-binges, which means I ate a lot more points than I have in a given day. Which means that they had to come out of the weekly points. I was annoyed with myself, but I was being honest and tracking all of it and deducting the points. But what this meant was that I hit the weekend with just about nothing extra (maybe 5 points, instead of the 40+ I'd normally have). I wanted to go check out this new Italian restaurant here in West Seattle, Cafe Revo, but I couldn't because I didn't have enough points to get what I wanted to eat there. Instead I ate some nasty Costco sushi that I didn't want. Then we went to Elliot Bay Brewery Pub and I wanted a burger, but had to settle on grilled chicken for a lower point option. Both times I felt so deprived, so angry with myself. But then I decided to reframe my attitude. I wasn't being deprived; I had simply decided earlier in the week to make different choices. I still got my 40+ extra points - I chose to use them before the weekend. Did I like this choice? No! Do I now know what to do to make sure it never happens again? Yes! I was very proud of myself that I got through the weekend (and Monday - my weekly points reset Tuesday morning) without eating anything I wasn't entitled to eat. And boy, was I tempted! On Monday night I had 1 point left for the week. I wanted cookies SO badly, but it was 2 points. In the past I would've said screw it, it's just 1 point, who really cares. And then I decided that I care! And I said to myself, if you want that cookies, you need to get on the exercise bike for at least 10 minutes and earn it. So that's what I did! I was laughing at myself, that I was bargaining exercise for cookies, but my partner actually told me that it was admirable that I was doing it this way; that's big praise from him. I showed up on Tuesday for my WW meeting, feeling pretty good about how I handled my week when all was said and done. But I was unprepared for the result - I lost 2.8 pounds in the week (for a total of 16.8), and I got another 5 pound loss reward (gold star) - I'd been trying to get past that 15 pound hurdle for months - and the best part was that I finally earned my 5% award: once you lose 5% of your starting weight (in my case, 14 pounds), you get a big yellow star with your name on it that they post on the wall of the meeting, and everyone gets to congratulate you for your goal. I don't normally go for these type of corny acknowledgements, but for some reason I felt like I'd won a marathon. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face, and I wouldn't tell anyone why I was so happy, because it felt a little silly. (Plus most people don't even know I'm on a diet.) Even when I generally don't give a crap what people think about me, I guess it's still nice to get a pat on the back and be told "good job!" I honestly get that so rarely, and I think that's what resonated with me so much. Being acknowledged for a good job. We should all get that so much more often than we do. I'm hoping that this is the start in a positive shift that will stay with me, and maybe I will have success this time in losing weight and keeping it off. Maybe the 30th time is the charm. :)