Just a little crazy

I'm a little bit disappointed in my weigh-in this morning, but I know why it's not better than I expected:

My last Weight Watchers' attempt in 2015:

Feb. 23, 2015 weigh-in:  233.4

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2017

Jan. 5, 2017 - Jenny Craig weigh-in:  222.0 (the real start of mindful eating)

Jan. 6, 2017 - canceled Jenny Craig, but stayed on track.

Jan. 8, 2017 WW weigh-in:  218.4

Jan. 15, 2017 WW weigh-in:  215.4

Net Loss:  3.0 pounds for the week for Weight Watchers, but in reality a good 7 pounds are gone.

At least I'm not all the way up to the 2015 weight which was scary. That was close to my all time high of 240 back in 2007.

I love my new Weight Watcher Sunday meeting! It gets me out of bed and gets the day started right because I have to be there before 9am to weigh in. It's sort of hard to do, but it's worth it. The leader, Cathy, is wonderful. I just love her! Plus a Sunday weigh-in keeps me from overindulging Friday and Saturday since I don't want to ruin my weigh-in.

This isn't easy, that's for sure. It's as hard as it is every time I have to go down this road. For some odd reason, I feel a bit more relaxed this time. I'm not being as crazy about it as I've been in past attempts.  Just a little crazy, just enough to keep me tracking every bite I eat. My boyfriend - skinny guy - doesn't understand this tracking of food, it's foreign to him).  He thinks I'm a little nuts, pulling out my WW app every time I eat. If that's crazy, oh well! At least I'll be crazy AND skinny!

We're back in the saddle again!

I made the 9am Weight Watcher meeting today. I really just wanted to stay in bad in sleep in, but I remembered my promise to myself on Saturday. New year, new start.

I wasn't surprised when I weighed in. I'd just weighed at home, fully dressed and knew it was going to be ugly.  I weighed in at 218.4. My last weigh-in was 7/13/2015 at 205.8. If you're doing the math, that's a gain of 12.6 pounds. Ouch.

One thing I know for sure, Weight Watchers works. Last year when I started Weight Watchers on 2/23/2015 I weighed in at 233.4. When I stopped going in July I had lost 26.6 pounds. I really wish I had stayed with it.

Note to "Anonymous" who left a rather snippy comment on my last post about giving up Jenny Craig (after five hours and two meals) and startingWeight Watchers:

1.) If only it was as easy as just eating the right foods. You sound like you must be pretty darn perfect and don't need any help from anyone. Good for you. I'm happy you have such a fabulous life. It's not that easy for everyone. Some of us need support, and for me, that's where Weight Watchers comes in.

2.) You obviously don't understand the Weight Watchers program. They actually encourage eating whole foods. I don't eat any of their packaged/processed foods. I don't like them because I can taste the fake flavors. Weight Watchers actually encourages their members not to eat processed foods. Yes, they sell them but you don't have to buy them. They're crazy expensive and full of sugar and chemicals. I don't buy them, and never have.

3.) Yes, Weight Watchers is in this to take our money. They're a company in the business of making money. So are organic grocery stores. Whole Foods = whole paycheck. Everyone is in "it" for the money.

I'm just happy to be eating better, even if it's only day two. I feel like I'm back in the saddle again and it feels good!

Jenny Craig - a big FAIL!

My new plan to lose weight was the Jenny Craig plan. Yesterday I made it a total of five hours on the plan, one breakfast, one snack, and one lunch. I'm no longer on the plan. 

The food tastes like garbage, it's highly processed and contains all sorts of nasty ingredients. The lunch, Chicken Street Tacos, contained fractionated palm kernel oil - who eats palm kernel oil anymore? It's one of the main causes of the destruction of rainforests. And "fractionated" just means they made it into a complete saturated fat. Some articles claimed it's the equivalent of partially hydrogenated oil. This is the picture on the box and their website. Trust me, it didn't look anything like this picture. There weren't any pieces of chicken and the main ingredient was soy something or rather. I wish I'd taken a picture of it so you could see what it really looked like. I took one bite and threw it in the trash.

The breakfast bar had corn syrup as the main ingredient, followed by sugar, then cane sugar. What the heck?! I literally felt sick just reading the ingredients.

I was on the Jenny Craig plan in 1990, when the real Jenny Craig herself was in charge. The food was really good and satisfying. I actually enjoyed it. I lost 40 pounds, and it was relatively easy. The company was sold several years ago to Nestle Foods and again in 2013 to North Castle Partners. They have ruined the company. 

Not only is the food awful, but my consultant was equally as bad. She was loud, obnoxious and couldn't answer most of my questions. She kept running to her director's office to get more information. I almost walked out but thought I'd only have to see her once a week, and I could handle it. 

Then there's the price of the food. The monthly fee is only $19.95. The first week of food was $184.00. In addition, you have to buy all your fresh vegetables and fruit from a regular store. If I remember correctly, I think a week of food in 1990 was $80 - $100. I expected it to be expensive and was willing to pay the price. Unfortunately, the quality of the food is substandard. 

I'm done with Jenny Craig. I'll go into their office next week and cancel my membership. They were so disorganized they didn't even have me sign a contract. It's supposed to be month to month so I'm out my monthly $19.95, hopefully just for this month. The food will go into the trash today. In hindsight I should have tried the 3-day sampler pack of food you can order online for $39.95. I should also have known the food would be different, nothing stays the same, especially after 27 years. 

Next up, Weight Watchers. I was planning on attending a meeting today at 11:30am. I just checked and their last meeting was at 10am. I'm signed up on their site and have the app on my phone. I tracked yesterday and today's food (funny - Jenny Craig food from yesterday entered into the Weight Watchers app). I'll attend the 9am meeting tomorrow. I've always loved Weight Watchers.

Hello 2017 - an Update of my life

Since it's been over six months since I've posted anything, here's an update of my life:

1. I'm 61 1/2 years old - the 1/2 is important because retirement is in my future!

2. I've spent years of yo-yo dieting, going from 135 up to 240, and losing and gaining hundreds of pounds. I've been very successful at times, but I always gain the weight back. In the past three years I've manage to get close to my highest weight of 240. I'm currently at 222 pounds. The last time I was near my goal weight was in 2009 - 155 pounds. Not good!

3. I've been divorced for three years after a 26-year marriage, which was miserable from the start. I'm so happy to be out of that mess. I'm currently in a wonderful, stable and healthy relationship with a really good man, Charles (who is 6' and weighs 165 pounds). He never comments on my weight and says I'm beautiful no matter what the scale says (yes, he's a keeper!).

4. I work for a large airline as a computer programmer. I've been with this company for 33+ years. I've been in IT for the past 17 years. I sometimes love my job and sometimes hate it. It's a really good company and it has paid my bills for a long time, but after 17 years in IT I think maybe I went the down the wrong path. It changes continually and quickly, and as I age, it has become more difficult to keep up.

5. I don't have any children, just one sweet, angelic kitty. She's 14 but don't tell her, she thinks she still a kitten.

6. People always ask my hobbies, and things I used to do don't really apply anymore. In the past 10 years when I was at a lower weight (even at 190), I was into active things like hiking and biking. As the the weight has crept up, my activity level has decreased. Now I'm more into reading. My last book that I finished last week was TheBazaar of Bad Dreams, by Stephen King. It's a series of his short stories. I haven't read anything of Stephen King for years, but I loved this one. A really quick read even though it was almost 700 pages. I'm currently reading two other books, My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult and Trouble Maker by Leah Remini. Both great books, but both are sort of sad. My hope is to lose some weight and get moving again. I don't like a sedentary lifestyle.

This post is already too long, so I'll go into the details of my latest weight loss endeavor in my next post. I just started it yesterday, but I already have an opinion about it. Please stay tuned for the latest chapter in my weight loss challenges.

July 2, 2016 update

Just stopping in with a quick update. I'm down a few pounds from a couple months ago, 14.4 to be exact. I just updated my profile from 227.0 to 212.6.

The weight is coming off slowly. Some weeks I've had a .2 loss, then a couple weeks ago a 4.4 pound loss. It varies a lot, but on the .2 loss weigh-ins it's really a miracle I didn't gain weight.

Exercise:  I'm back at the gym and walking a lot, aiming for the 10,000 steps a day.

Weight loss plan:  I'm attending Weight Watcher meetings with my girlfriend and am sort of following the plan, but actually using My Fitness Pal to track my food. I really don't like the new Weight Watcher plan. I eat mostly what they say to eat, but I track all my calories and nutrients using myfitnesspal, which I highly recommend.

I paid the yearly fee for my fitness pal of $49.95 so I could see the nutrients I'm consuming. It was really eye opening to see how much sugar I was getting from fruit, and the massive amount of protein. Thanks to Weight Watchers drastically lowering the Points on lean protein, I was eating a lot more protein than I should have been eating. Weight Watchers also allows free fruit, with really is stupid. Fruit has calories, you can't eat all you want.

My recent yearly physical came back great, with the exception of arthritic knees. That's the big push for me to lose weight right now, to take the pressure off my knees. One of the joys of being obese and old. The knees can't support this amount of weight forever. They give out and mine are on the verge of needing to be replaced within a few years if I don't drop a significant amount of weight.

Speaking of walking, the sun has finally come out, at 3pm, so I'm heading out for a walk. I'll take a few pictures today so I have something to post tomorrow. I'm really going to try to get back into blogging. At least a few times a week. I really miss it.

Rewiring my brain

This is a real switcheroo in my behavior. I went to Weight Watchers on Monday night, and I have tracked every bite of food for three full days, stayed within my Point allotment and actually walked two of the three days.

Today I even went for a 3-mile hike through the woods during my lunch hour (with a girlfriend from work). I'm working up to getting back to the gym, but at the moment the extra walking is all I can do. I'm easing myself back into more activity. Tonight my knees, hips, and legs ache. Getting back into shape is more painful than I remember. Perhaps being almost 61 years old has something to do with it.

I've been thinking of something a friend of mine that's a Chemical Dependency Counselor told me about people that are alcoholics or drug addicts. Many overweight people I know say they're addicted to food. I hear it all the time in Weight Watcher meetings, and I've said the same thing about myself many times. That food is my drug of choice.

I asked my friend what is the trick to getting off of drugs or alcohol. How does someone addicted let go of that thing they love so much that's destroying their life? He said it's a matter of rewiring their brain. The brain is very powerful and when it gets something that makes it feel good, it wants more of it. It will continually nag at you and do anything it can to make you get that thing that makes it feel good. Even though it knows it's not good for you, it still wants it. You have to stop that type of thinking and take control of the brain.

I realize this sounds like we have two brains in our head, but in a really weird way, I get what he's saying. My brain is an addict to sugar. It always wants sugar, telling me how good it'll make me feel. Even though I know it's not good for me, I hear the voices in my head tell me it's okay, you can quit tomorrow. A bag of cookies today, then we'll call it quits. Ha! I know that doesn't work.

Right now, I'm trying to rewire my brain. It is not easy.

Here I go again

I've had so many false attempts at losing weight, that I was just about ready to give up. Forget about the whole thing, the "thing" being losing weight. Seriously, I'm just tired of trying and failing.

Then a couple things happened. A dear friend that had the sleeve weight loss surgery has lost 150 pounds and is still losing. I had a twinge of jealousy when I saw her recently. She's one-year post op and almost at her goal weight. I don't envy her not being able to eat more than a bite of food at a time or the loose skin or sadly the wrinkles in her face that I'd never noticed before. I do, however, envy her skinny thighs. I envy how she doesn't even think of food and forgets to eat.

Another friend, that I went to New York with about two weeks ago (part work, part fun), is doing the Kettibility program (only in Seattle). A mix of an intense boot camp kettle ball workout with "Russian" kettle balls, the Whole 30 eating plan, submitting daily food journals (via Facebook) and weekly weigh-ins. I've never seen this friend so excited about weight loss. And yes, she's doing amazing.

So what about me? I went back to Weight Watchers tonight. It's been a while, probably a couple months, since I even attempted to watch what I was eating. I was surprised I'd actually gone down a few pounds since my last weight. I think I was 224 last time I weighed in, and today, at my 6:30pm weigh-in, I was 219. I told the Weight Watcher gal to wipe out my account, and I was started new today.

So yes, here I go again. Another attempt at losing weigh. No grand plans here or ideas on how I'll really make it happen this time. Just a short note that I'm still here, and I haven't given up.