12.19.2007

Up and downs

I haven't posted here for 2 weeks because that's how busy I have been. There has literally not been 5 spare minutes in my life.

I really should have made time to post, though, because last week was hard. I had stuck to my plan but when it came time to weigh myself I was 1 pound heavier than the week before! Holy shit! How did that happen? I was blown away and felt so upset. It seemed pointless to stick to the diet and I ate crap for the rest of the day.

But by the next morning I realized that if I continued to eat crap there was absolutely no chance the numbers on the scale would ever go down, so I went back to the plan. And luckily this week I was 2 pounds lighter.

The pace of the weight loss is making me a little depressed. I've now lost a grand total of 5 pounds in about 2 months. How can it be that slow? How do those people on that reality diet show lose 15 pounds in a week? OK, intellectually I know the answer: they are severly overweight and they are cutting their calories by a huge amount. It doesn't seem fair, though. I would be happy with a steady 1 pound a week weight loss. Anything but this one step forward, 2 steps back thing.

12.02.2007

Sloooooow

After a week away from the city and 2 weeks away from the scale, I lost not quite a pound. That feels painfully slow. I only managed to fit one run into our vacation (which is sort of odd because I usually try to use vaca as a time to work out a bunch but we had three days of traveling in a one week trip, which sort of made the tip short).
Our first full day in San Fran we had a lovely time walking around the city with friends and I allowed myself to indulge in a bunch of salt water taffy. At the end of the day I estimated the number of pieces (something crazy like 17!) and added the points up and realized that it wasn't a big deal. It was sort of shocking to find that out. And I ate more pieces of candy on Thanksgiving (while everyone else ate pie, which I don't like at all) and it was fine. But I felt fat without working out. And on our second to the last day we hit a mall with a candy store. When I saw it and said how much I wanted candy Bri told me that when she went to W Watchers they were told that they could take a weekend break and not gain weight. Either I was feeling cocky (after calmly eating taffy) or just feeling greedy and I decided to load up on sour balls, Swedish Fish, gum drops, and other sugary goodies. And then I just gave up on counting the points. I ate more candy the next day while being stuck in the airport and by that point I stopped worrying about it.
The idea of taking a "break" made me feel relieved but also incredulous. How can you basically eat a bunch of crap for two days and not gain weight? That seemed impossible. And then I started to feel angry that she told me that because if I hadn't known that maybe I wouldn't have splurged so much and would have lost more weight. Wouldn't it be better if I just stuck to the plan perfectly?
I get so torn between the perfectionism and having fun/ letting go. And that's true in all areas of life. I hate that our house is a complete disaster right now. I have moments where I just want to attack all the crap and dirt and unpack as many boxes as possible. But when I get home from work what I really want to do is play with the baby. And so I tell myself the house will get organized. And I try to convince myself that it's pointless to really get much organized now since in a few weeks our renovations will be over finally and then we can really get everything organized and unpacked. But then I still feel a little guilty and angry at myself for not being more productive. And I berate myself for eating all the candy and therefore getting a pathetic number on the scale.