Back in July my boss offered to get me in to a weight loss contest which was about to start among management within my company. I JUMPED at this opportunity since I had been feeling absolutely horrible about myself and downright desperate to find something that I hadn't previously tried during my many decades of weight struggles and yo-yo dieting.
The first weigh-in was on July 30th and by the November 26th weigh in I had lost 10 lbs. Not stunning progress, but progress nonetheless. I was working out 3 or 4 times a week at the Y and I was counting calories on FatSecret.com.
The contest ended on November 30th and I finished 4th out of 13. Not bad. I didn't win anything but I didn't care. For the first time in a VERY long time I didn't feel completely hopeless and doomed to a life of ever-increasing obesity and health problems.
Then I had surgery, and I couldn't go to the gym for a month. The fact that this month was DECEMBER made the moderate damage that could be caused by laying around and recouperating turn into massive damage when combined with holiday eating.
I gained back 7 pounds and lost any semblence of momentum.
By Mid-January I had managed to take off some of the holiday/recouperation weight. When a new contest began on January 17th I weighed in only 1.6 lbs above where I ended the previous contest. It's been slow-going, but to date I've lost another 10.6 lbs, for a total of 20 pounds since I started in August.
Eight months to lose 20 lbs seems torturously slow. But I looked back (I've kept a detailed history of my weight since 2004) and it took me almost three years to put those 20 lbs on, I guess eight months isn't too bad to take it off.
Back when I was on Weight Watchers I used to cherish the ribbons and little gold adhesive stars they gave us. It was the stupidest thing, but it was something that I could bring home and show off and keep on the refrigerator as a reminder that what I was doing was hard, yet I was succeeding. I still have my ribbons and stars, packed up in a box somewhere. They represent eighty-six pounds lost over the course of two years. Fortunately for me the Weight Watcher's police don't come take your ribbons and stars away when you gain the weight back.
Since I don't have a ten pound ribbon adorned with ten little gold stars, I feel the need to do something to reward myself. The "diet experts" recommend this, but it's really, REALLY hard to think of anything that doesn't cost money or calories. At ten pounds I rewarded myself with a massage, purchased with my credit card's reward points, but I don't have anything like that now.
So I've decided to take a day off work and spend it doing nothing I don't want to do. I'm taking next Monday. After I drop The Boy off at school I'm going to go to the gym (something I actually WANT to do, bizarre as that feels to me) and then I'm going to do whatever I feel like doing until 5pm. I'm not going to clean, I'm not going to cook, I'm not going to do anything for anyone but me. Mneh.
Today's lunch...the typical homemade salad that I've posted pictures of so many times before.
But here's something kind of wierd. Last night I made two salads. One for dinner and then one for today's lunch. I had some light ranch dressing in the cupboard and since I had watched the calories well throughout the day and had a good workout I splurged and put a decent amount of it on my dinner salad. And it really wasn't good. I've been eating various vinaigrettes for so long that I think I've grown accustomed to the ....I guess the lightness of it. Ranch felt heavy and greasy. I didn't enjoy it at all. Today's salad had all the same ingredients except the ranch was replaced with Panera's Asian Sesame dressing and it was SOOOO much better.
That's progress if I've ever seen it!
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