In which I sound like a shill for a diet plan, but have a serious point under it all
So, I haven't been around much lately. (I'm sure all six of you noticed.) Work continues to be insanely busy, my personal life experienced a short-lived but dramatic uptick in activity, and I really just find political and legal developments too depressing to even talk about.
But there is something I've been meaning to write about for awhile, so here goes...
One year ago, on March 7th, I got up and registered with Weight Watchers. The morning before I had caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized that I just could not live with how I looked a second longer. I had always been resistant to the idea of organized diet programs, believing that I could do it on my own using common sense food choices and portion control. The problem was, of course, that I'd never actually used that common sense to lose any weight.
Being a technology lover and resistant to anything involving meetings or expensive food programs, I decided WW was the right option. For a monthly fee, I could enter my daily food and exercise into the tracker and it would calculate my daily and weekly point limits. I wasn't terribly busy at work at the time, so I quickly realized that the more I worked out, the more flex points I could save up for the weekend. I had bought a treadmill 3 years earlier but never used it, so I decided now was a good time to start. I walked on the treadmill while watching on DVD entire seasons of TV shows like Dexter that I'd been meaning to watch. Every other weekend, I'd try to do a longer walk (perhaps with less incline or at a slower speed) while watching a movie. I got to the point where I could do a 7 or 8 mile walk every once in awhile, though the last mile or so was usually pretty brutal. I had never been a regular exerciser, and I came to really enjoy it.
I also figured out that I could eat anything I wanted, as long as I planned for it. A week of fruit for breakfast and Lean Cuisine meals for lunch would mean I could eat relatively "normal" dinners and still have my 35 flex points saved up for one weekend day of drinking and eating bar food with friends. If I went out to dinner, I just tried to either have points saved up or only eat half of whatever I ordered, and I started looking up point values on the internet if I wasn't sure. I switched to Amstel Light, which is terrible but is the most widely available light beer that I can stand to drink. As a friend remarked to me recently, it wasn't even that noticeable of a change for my social life, since I could still go to the same places I always did, but just had to be careful about what I chose.
I lost 20 pounds and dropped a dress size in 5 months from March 7th-August 15th. That was a huge milestone, but about 15 pounds from my goal (which would put me back where I weighed in college.) That might sound huge to some people, but when you're 6 ft tall, 20 pounds is a mere drop in the bucket. But it still felt good to have people notice. It felt good to have my jeans become too big to wear because they were falling off and baggy in the butt. It felt great to wear a bikini in New Orleans in July for a bachelorette weekend and not feel completely self-conscious about it.
About once a month, I also went off the wagon for a few days entirely. First it was a trip to New Orleans in late March, then it was Easter Sunday with my family in April, then it was my birthday in May, then it was a conference in Vancouver in June, then it was the bachelorette in July. Every time, as long as I limited the damage to a few days and got right back on plan afterwards, I avoided any real backsliding. It slowed down my progress, but also kept me sane.
Then, in September I got busy again at work. I recall that over Labor Day weekend in Biloxi, I ate whatever I wanted and didn't work out at all, but I also was only eating one real meal a day so I didn't gain anything. I had no time to work out, though, so I knew I would stall out. Then I got sick at the end of September, and ate whatever I wanted while I was recovering. I got sick again in October, and again in December, and again last month. I might have worked out maybe 5 times in that time span until last week, because between billing 200 hours a month at work, the holidays, and constantly struggling with illnesses, I just couldn't muster the energy or the time. I also used my busy-ness at work and the holidays as an excuse to go off the wagon on tracking my points. By the new year, I had gained back 10 of the pounds I'd lost.
By last week, my one year anniversary, I'd decided I had no excuses left. I worked out 4 days last week, and I got back to calculating my points. It was hard (particularly because of some personal life drama that decided to emerge late Friday night and make me want to eat all of the fried food and chocolate in the known universe) but I stuck to it. And I'll hopefully keep sticking to it, because in 3 weeks I need to be able to wear a swimsuit in Vegas without wanting to cut myself.
I'm not writing this as some sort of testimonial for Weight Watchers or seeking a pat on the back. I'm writing this because up until a year ago I was one of those people full of excuses and distrust when it came to diet plans or my ability to get anywhere with something like this. I said I "only run when chased," I talked about my bad knees and back, I made fun of the cultishness of WW meetings. I said I knew everything I needed to know to be healthy, but food was just so delicious. I was a skeptic of the highest order, and yet a year later I have been proven wrong. And I know so many people who are in those same shoes--making excuses, doubting they could ever do it, giving all the reasons why the mere thought makes them so uncomfortable. But I want them to listen to me and think about giving it a try.
And I'm hoping that by this time next year, I'll weigh less than I did in college. Which would be awesome. If I meet this goal, I'll post a picture of myself in a bikini as proof. I make this promise to you now.
I'm also thinking of running a half marathon. Yes, really.
