Disappointed But Not (Very) Discouraged

I gained 3 pounds this week for a total loss of 18.8 pounds. Phooey. I've said phooey a lot recently.

My leader asked if my three-pound gain was worth it. No, it wasn't. I didn't stick exclusively to Core and I ate too much.

I had an interior dialogue with myself about what's going on. I haven't solved it but I do have some insight. Despite my best intentions to track, I just can't stay with it. Some of my resistance is to the measuring that's involved, some of it is to the detail that's required, and some of it is probably depression.

Still, after continuing my dialogue, I fired up SparkPeople and estimated what I'd had for breakfast. I was horrified to discover that I'd had close to 600 calories for breakfast.

Prevention magazine has been promoting a book a couple of its editors wrote, called The Flat Belly Diet. In the February 2009 issue they interview people who've lost weight and inches on the diet. The pitch is that the diet enables you to lose weight from your belly, which is bad for your heart. Looking closer at the diet, I realized that people lost weight primarily because they were limited to 1600 calories a day. If they are healthier it's because they lost weight and because the diet encourages healthy eating.

The diet requires four meals of 400 calories per day. That's what got me to thinking about calories. I might be able to follow that kind of eating plan. I've tried to eat a snack mid-morning and another snack mid-afternoon, but I rarely eat the mid-morning snack. I'm busy at work or full from breakfast.

I first went to Nutrition Data, which is a helpful site but required to much effort to get a quick read on my calorie intake. SparkPeople has a nice display that makes it easy to see calories, carbohydrates, fat, and protein. I suspect that I don't eat enough protein, so this is a good way to find out.

Nutrition Data and SparkPeople, by the way, are both free.

Weight Watchers' Points Tracker works well for tracking but it doesn't provide any nutritional analysis. And my experience at SparkPeople made me realize that Points don't have meaning for me the way calories do.

I hope this insight is meaningful and translates into controlled eating on my part. I'm going to plan my meals for the work week and count calories. At some point (no pun intended), I'll translate those meals to Points.

The weekly Weight Watchers meeting is essential for me. I'm struggling mightily right now and if I weren't going to the meetings I'd have said to hell with it and given up on losing weight. I wouldn't have given this much thought to why I'm struggling so.

Back to Core, er, Simply Filling

Two weeks ago I gained 1.2 pounds, for a total loss of 21.2 pounds. I was distraught. Well, that might be overstating it, but I was definitely upset by it. I had tracked, although I had not counted Points.

So I resolved to knuckle down and record everything I ate and count all the Points and measure and weigh everything, etc. That lasted for three days.

I hated it. I started to feel like my entire life revolved around what I was going to eat, when I was going to eat, how much I was going to eat, how I was going to prepare it, and recording what I ate. Arrrrgh!

Back to Core for me, which I prefer as a name over Simply Filling because 1) it's shorter, and 2) it reminds me that it's a whole-foods diet.

I get what Momentum is trying to do for people. And I like the greater flexibility in food choices that it provides (Flex was a good name but Momentum is OK, too). But my food choices lead me back to Filling Foods almost exclusively.

I rarely eat meat. I rarely eat processed foods. I almost never eat fast food. My meals consist of grains, vegetables, and fruits. I get dairy from fat-free yogurt and the occasional slice of cheese. Protein comes from dairy, legumes, and grains. I stay away from sweets. I sweeten with Splenda (and artificial sweetener) or erythritol (a sugar alcohol), although I do cook with sugar, honey, maple syrup, or molasses now and then. Stevia is too bitter for my tastes.

Where I deviate from Simply Filling is that I allow myself 100% whole-grain breads, pasta, and crackers more often. And I don't track my Weekly Points Allowance. I am now more convinced than ever that I have to find a way to lose weight without tracking/journaling/writing things down!

This weekend I made a batch of slow cooker vegetarian baked beans. Yum! It's hard to abuse beans because they fill you up so quickly.

This week I lost .6 pounds for a total loss of 21.8 pounds. I still have a long way to go to start losing regularly and to get back to my highest total of 27.4 pounds lost . . . and then to continue losing.

I'm still committed to Weight Watchers and weekly meetings. Without them, I'd have given up by now and put all the weight (and more) back on.

New Momentum?

As I'd hoped, I did not gain weight last week. I lost .8 pounds for a total loss of 22.4 pounds. My current goal is to claw my way back to a 25-pound total loss.

Writing everything down made me more aware of what I was eating, as well as how much. I've started to measure again, although not everything. As I suspected, I need another week of tracking without Points before I can start working with Points again.

An interesting result of tracking has been my realization that I'm ready to give up Core. I think that a good part of my poor eating was due to depriving myself of too many things that I enjoy. I'm back to accepting that I cannot eat sugary foods; last night at a potluck I had a second helping of macaroni and cheese rather than indulge in dessert. In today's newspaper there was a coupon for Laughing Cow cheese, something I'd given up for Core; I clipped the coupon and put Laughing Cow back on my list of OK foods.

Maybe Momentum will be work for me after all.

Phooey

I've gone from plateau to weight gain. Something about Momentum did me in. In the past two weeks I've gained 4.4 pounds, for a total loss of 21.6 pounds.

Momentum threw me for a loop, so my group leader gave me the Week 6 booklet, which re-introduces Core under its new name, "Simply Filling." It didn't help. I was completely undone. Clearly, I'm suffering diet fatigue or winter blues or sloth -- maybe all three.

Between Christmas Day and my weigh in, I gave my next step a lot of thought. Because I obviously couldn't get back on Core, I needed to do something else. I knew that if I tried to count and measure and weigh, I'd fail once again. Remembering what I'd read recently about willpower, I decided that rather than trying to make a wholesale change all at once, I'd set my sights lower and start with a small change.

This week I've been tracking. I have not calculated or recorded any Points; I have not recorded my satisfaction level; I have not checked off any of the Good Health Guidelines. I have carried my Tracker with me and written down what I've eaten. I have also paid attention to how full I feel throughout the day.

I got on the scales once this week and was surprised at how much I weighed. It wasn't a pleasant surprise, but afterward I realized that I hadn't weighed myself at home during these awful weeks of weight gain, so the scale was just reflecting what I already knew.

It doesn't matter what the scale reads on Saturday, although I think I'll probably have stayed the same. It hasn't been easy to track everything so I'll probably spend at least one more week tracking before I start counting Points.

This has been discouraging and disappointing and upsetting. And when I get really down on myself I recall that I haven't missed a meeting since I joined Weight Watchers; if there's one thing I've learned in all this time it's to tough it out and continue attending meetings. That thought actually cheers me because I know that as long as I attend weekly, I'll eventually find my way back to an eating plan I can live with and that will enable me to lose weight.

Until then, though, it's going to be a long slog through deep snow.