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Day 4 on Core and I have to say, I am really, really enjoying it.
At first I thought it was going to be rather restrictive, since it’s one of those plans that gives you a list of foods you are allowed to eat (meaning there are some that you aren’t, unless you want to spend your weekly points allowance on them). The only other time I had tried a plan that gave you a list to eat from was when I tried South Beach for a week… which ultimately failed miserably because #1 I am mildly hypoglycemic and I had no energy to move without a decent number of carbs in my day and #2 I wanted to eat everything that someone told me I “couldn’t.”
However, after taking the plunge and getting some practical experience with it, I find it’s not restrictive at all, and it seems silly to me that I ever thought it would be. Sure, there are non-Core items such as bread, candy, and non-fat-free dairy, but you can still choose to eat these things if you want. You just have to limit your quantities of such items to 35 points’ worth each week. Which is totally reasonable. So far I have used my weekly 35 on toast, margarine, and three fig newtons. Mostly everything else I have eaten has been Core, and I finally feel like I am eating healthy, whole foods mostly.
On Flex you don’t have to make that distinction. I found myself eating smaller meals and having small snacks so that I would have a lot of points left for the evening time, at which point I would have a large dinner and as many snacks as I could round up. I would rationalize having cookies or a muffin during the day because “I had the points for it.” And sure, I can do the same on Core and just take the points from my weekly stash, but it can’t happen as often. Also, since one of the main principles of Core is to focus on your satiety levels and determining how best to meet your body’s needs, neither a cookie nor a store-bought muffin (read: closer to cupcake than anything) would fit my day, if I am being mindful.
According to my leader, we are going to see WW moving more and more in the direction of Core and its general principles in the future. WW has evolved greatly since its beginnings in the 1960s, and I think it is wonderful that it continues to change with new health findings and new member experiences and feedback. It is a company and of course shareholder interests come first, but WW really is dedicated to the success of its members.
Hoo, boy is all I can say about the past couple of days. Yesterday I ended up eating so much I literally felt ill. I jumped head-first back into some really nasty binging ways, including the ol’ “hiding my consumption of food because I know it’s terrible and I don’t want the husband to see.” I’m looking at you, box of chocolates consumed in the car. I’m also looking at you, entire baguette which was stealthily replaced before anyone noticed it was gone.
…yeah.
So of course I woke up this morning with an awful headache, a direct result of all the sugar and white carbs I had managed to shove down my gullet yesterday (and probably also the culmination of what has been a 3-day gorge-fest). My period did show up this morning, which definitely explains part of my propensity towards bitchiness and my desire to consume everything in sight, but another large part of it is inexcusable. I should know better than this, damnit!
So anyway, this morning I popped some Advil, sucked up the headache and general feeling of malaise, and got on the elliptical. I worked harder than I have to date, really pushed myself and kept my exertion level high. I came back home and had a bowl of oatmeal made with water and soymilk, with some cinnamon and a banana in it. And so my day begun.
It’s funny, all of you (wonderful people) who, a couple of days ago, were telling me that I’d regret it if I let myself jump off the wagon and eat and eat and eat were 100% correct. I didn’t need to do that to my body, and I am certainly paying for it now. I am thankful, I suppose, that my body has such a low tolerance for crap now than it used to, so it takes me very little time to realize I need to revert back to eating sensibly, lest I want to live under the cloud of irritability, lethargy, and headacheyness.
Today I commit to being back to it. I am not going to let myself find any excuses today.
I am pretty sure this is the second time I’ve posted to this blog with a title referencing David Bowie’s “Changes.” Maybe next time I should research a bit into other change-themed songs, I am sure they exist! Anyhow…
I had been doing very well with sticking to my eating plan and whatnot until about mid-August, when DH and I moved. At that point I had been on WW Flex for almost 8 months and had lost nearly 30 pounds. Somewhere in the past month and a half to two months, though, something inside my head stopped clicking – or it had clicked so often in the recent past that it just plain broke. I remember thinking that if I was diligent, I might be able to hit 30 lbs lost by my birthday (Aug 30)… I missed it by 2 lbs. I am still 2 lbs away from 30 lost. I got down to 186.2 (0.2 away from the 30 lb mark), and have had a couple of gain-lose cycles since then, leaving me currently at 188 even. The oreos and fast food speaking to me from the past two days say tomorrow’s WI results will tell no other story.
So something has to change, obviously. Two things, I think, in particular:
1) Points are driving me nutty. Measuring, weighing, counting. Guessing when I don’t know for sure, second-guessing myself when I’m afraid I’ve guessed wrong, stressing over minuscule amounts of food, feeling guilty for going over by the smallest amounts, feeling like I have not been given the tools to deal properly with natural fluctuations in daily hunger levels. (Sure, if I’m extra hungry one day, I can use some flex points. But what about the days where I am genuinely not hungry? Do I follow my own oft-prescribed advice and eat up to my base target every day, no matter what? That’s so counter-intuitive!)
2) Focusing on my weight is leading me to put emphasis on the wrong part of this journey. I went through this back in March or so if I remember correctly, and I am going through it again. I become intensely dissatisfied with my progress when it becomes all about my weight. There are other things I need to be paying attention to – my satisfaction, my energy levels, what I choose to eat. The process becomes more clinical and detached from being a lifestyle when I get really entrenched in the numbers and not the less measurable outcomes.
Last time #2 happened, I gave away my home scale and all was right with the world again. This time around, I’m afraid that won’t be enough. I feel I need to cut back on my weekly meeting weigh-ins. Now, I don’t want to give up on meetings – not at all! I love my meetings and find them essential for re-orienting myself and getting my head back in the game at the end of each week. So I am going to talk to my leader tomorrow morning about skipping WIs even when I do go to the meetings. I think I am only obligated to WI once a month to maintain my membership. I am not sure if I can go a whole month without weighing, but I will not know until I try it!
As for being sick of Points, well that’s easy now that WW has the second program to choose. I have decided to switch to the Core plan definitely as of Monday, though I may try to start implementing some principles of it this weekend. I really wanted to give myself a little breather for a few days before jumping head-first into Core, but I may need to implement it little by little over the next couple days. I have a few questions about it which I am going to ask my leader tomorrow. I think it’ll be kind of tough mentally to transition to Core but I might find it to be a much more intuitive system to work.
I am a little afraid of not having boundaries on how much I can eat aside from my own perceived feelings of satiety. That kind of boundlessness is not something I have ever played around with, since the only diet I have really ever been on has been WW Flex. It is going to be a change not counting things, but I think it has great potential.
I guess I won’t find out for a while, either way. I am going to have them weigh me tomorrow though I will probably ask them not to tell me. (I’d just like a record of where I stand before starting Core, and will check on my starting weight once the first two weeks are over.) I will then WI Nov 1, which is a span of two weeks. That will give me a good idea of how I am progressing, without letting so much time pass that I will feel like it was a waste if it doesn’t work out. As for weigh-ins after that, I may try to go up to a month without weighing… and I may not. I look forward to this two-week break at the very least.
