Monday, August 3, 2009

My plan

Well - I've not been following what I said I was following in my last post. I have, however, been holding my own. I do fairly well during the week and not too awfully on the weekends and am managing to keep my weight in about a five pound range. I have a friend who's been much more successful at losing the weight this year, and it's been really helpful to have her to talk to about this. She's lost weight before and regained it and has now lost most of it again, so she really gets the hard part of this in a way not everyone does. I haven't seemed to be able to flip the page to the "I'm losing weight now" place, but am feeling pretty good about not being on the "I'm gaining weight" page.

It's summer and frankly as you all know, it's just plain hard to start losing weight in the summer; I'm really trying to cut myself some slack over that. Every single week we have some sort of event or often a variety of events to go to - and for me - it's just not working to get it started with all that temptation. Just this weekend alone - we had my company's crab feast on Saturday and the end of season swim team party on Sunday - oh and it's my son's birthday on Wednesday so there will be cake on that day as well as on Saturday for his party and then of course on Sunday for his best friend's party (the parents are good friends of our and we'll be there too).

The worst place for me to be mentally is in this awful cycle of.. eat poorly - feel like a failure - eat poorly for comfort - feel like a failure - etc. I'm not there and feel good about just that. I'm disappointed that I've not been loosing all this time, but it's more important to me that I not fall into a bad and destructive place mentally.

As has worked for me in the past - I've set a date in the future that is getting closer every day that I'm going to suck it up and do it. The date is the first day of the school year. I actually don't know the date, because I'm not looking at a calendar, but it's the Monday before Labor day; the last week in August. When I lost weight so successfully a few years ago it was through a supervised plan, but ultimately it was eating Medifast and another company's food - higher in protein and lower in carbs - not no carbs, but lower in that area. That worked for me, and kept me from being hungry. I've just learned that Medifast is not far from me and you can buy directly from them. I think you can do it online too, but I'm not sure.

It's my plan to start on virtually the same plan I was on a couple of years ago and work with that until I reach the halfway point or so - maybe a little further if it's still working and I'm not bored. But something I want to do this time, which is different, is I want to switch away from that and over to Weight Watchers when I still have 20 - 40 lbs to lose. I do think that the WW plan is a plan for the really long haul. The kind of thing you could do for the rest of your life. I am even going to find a meeting and go to it. Over the years I've been to a variety of WW meetings and have not ever gotten a damn thing out of the meeting part of it - other than torture - as in it's the price I have to pay kind of thing - and I guess somehow - paying that price sometimes keeps me in line. So I'm going to do it, so I can have a place - a public place - to weigh in on a regular basis.

A couple of years ago - I talked about setting up things for when I hit my goal weight that would keep me motivated to stay there. Like continuing to weigh myself regularly and having a range with the concrete knowledge that if I go over the high part of the range, then I will take immediate steps to jump back into "losing weight eating" vs. "maintaining weight eating". I never, however set up things for how to keep myself motivated - or at least willing to keep doing it - along the way, and I think this idea of switching to WW is one of those things - an along the way thing.

A coworker has gotten me a Medifast pamphlet and I'm planning on reading it and ordering the food and whatnot, so I have everything ready and waiting for me when that start date comes around. (Asking the coworker is a big step for me, it's a sign of how serious I am about this to let someone know I'm at least thinking along these lines). We go on vacation in a couple of weeks and then have a week home before school starts so that last week, I'll lay out my food in little daily groups. (that's something I did last time - there was something - I don't know - calming - or matter of fact - or resigned - about doing that. This is what I'm eating and only this. Or this and a salad with some protein).

I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.

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