I'm Lovin' It!

I'm a daily weigher--a "scale hopper" as some call it here. For me, it's important to weigh myself daily. I know from long experience that if I avoid weighing myself (as I did the last couple months of 2009) I'm putting on pounds. It's a head-in-the-sand kind of avoidance of what I know must be happening. I read that in a study of people who have lost and kept off weight for at least 5 years (yes, that study, I can't remember its name), anyway, I read that successful losers who kept off their weight had many similar habits that they had despite the program they followed to lose their weight. One of the top similarities was that they weighed themselves daily.

My own plan of choice, WW, does not encourage this. They want you to weigh only once a week at their meetings. They say they're afraid you'll be discouraged by the vagaries of the normal ups and downs of one's weight. Doesn't make sense to me. Maybe those vagaries will make my WI day one of the "up" days and I'll go all week long thinking I've blown it somehow. More sense to see the pattern of how my weight reacts to what I eat, to my body rhythms, to how well I sleep, to my exercise, etc.

Anyway, I'm not out to change anyone's mind here. I know people feel strongly about this. For me, though, weighing myself daily (and recording that weight in my journal) work. I love seeing a picture of myself where I think I look pretty good and then going back to my journal and seeing how much I weighed that day. And when I see my sister next month, I can quickly check and see how much I've lost since I saw her in November. Cheap thrills, I know. Maybe some day I'll get the courage to post my current weight on my blog posts. I know I love seeing other people's progress this way.

And my title today--I'm loving' it because my daily scale is on a nice downward trend. My new year's resolution, weight-wise, is to lose 10 pounds the first month (5 week months), 8 pounds the second, and 6 pounds for each of the next three months to get to my goal. I'm in the middle of my 5th week and have lost 8 "official" pounds so far. My trusty scale shows 1.5 additional pounds lost so far this week!

Do you think I'm gonna be "good" over the weekend? You betcha! How about you??

Baby Jack Inspired Me to

go and do some yoga. What can I say? I'd love to be that flexible!

Victory, Victory

I reached two nice milestones this week. First, when I checked into the Fitlinx computer at my gym, I got a congratulatory screen noting that I've now lifted over 5,000,000 (5 million!) pounds. That's since I first started going, about 4 years ago, but I wasn't always as faithful about going regularly as I have been in the past year and a half. Then, today, when I registered my morning run on my nike+, I saw that I've run over 500 miles since I started using the nike+ last October. I'm pretty proud of that one--that's about 100 miles farther than running from my home in Virginia to NY CIty and back again.

I'm claiming those victories and feeling good about them. The news at the scale today was not so good. A gain. Again. I dug out my old square week one WW booklet--the one that offered the Core program--and reviewed the details about following Core (Simply Filling's predecessor for those new to WW). I saw some things I'd forgotten about (like the fact that you can't have more than one pasta/potato/rice meal per day) and am going to try to follow those and get myself back on track. I'm going to focus on those activity successes and keep them going while I get the food plan going agin. Semper Speranza.

Water, Water Everywhere

It's raining today. I woke up during the night and heard the patter of rain on the roof. I love that sound. This morning was the first day of school and I felt a little sorry for the hordes of little kids and parents jockeying for parking places on our street and juggling with umbrellas, brand new back packs, and keyed up kids. The rain continues--not a downpour, but steady. It's a good day to curl up with a book, a blanket and a cup of tea. I'm trying to resist that, though, and get myself moving. Not a great day for running or biking.

We went on a great hike in Great Falls yesterday with some friends and then had a gourmet, fairly WW, picnic lunch. I stayed within my weekly allowed extra points, but evidently overdid the salt. I was up two pounds this morning and my WI is tomorrow. Today has to include some aerobic activity, my regular Tuesday gym session and LOTS of water. I need that water inside me, not outside on the grass and pavement. So, for now, I'm nixing the book, blanket, and tea option and am going to go find one of my dusty Sweating to the Oldies DVDs and a giant mug of ice water.

How do you exercise when it's raining?

Three Sticks o' Butter

I managed to overcome my restless wanna eat feeling yesterday and am happy to report a 0.8 loss at my WI today! This may not seem like a cause for great joy, but it IS. I've never been a fast loser, but I have steadily lost weight. I've lost 46 pounds since March with only one week where I had a gain, 0.2 pounds. I'm now within 10 pounds of my goal weight and all my weight loss mentors say the last 10 are the hardest. The WW site has a little sidebar that encourages people with under one pound losses. A stick of butter weighs 0.25 pounds. This week, I whittled more than THREE sticks of butter from my frame. Take THAT, Paula Deen!