It's Delle!

Someone on the WW boards mentioned they read my blog (news to me, I didn't think anybody stopped by here aside from my best friend!), so I thought I should put a little blurb about me. I made this journal so I can keep track of the things I'm doing and how I'm thinking and feeling as I journey along the road to getting thinner. It's not intended to be written to an audience, it is honestly something I am writing to myself, and I find it so helpful to be able to look back even 4 months ago and see what kinds of things I was experiencing...so many of our experiences in life slip through the cracks, and I want to remember as many of them as I can in relation to my weight loss; the good, the bad, and even the oh so ugly ones!

So many people say they've struggled with their weight for years, but this is not tue for me. I've been overweight from my earliest memories, and morbidly obese all of my adult life, but I was not the type to yo-yo diet, so in that sense I was not struggling. I don't know what my highest weight was because I didn't have a scale to weigh myself when I started getting set to lose weight. In the year before I started WW I started trying to eat less junk food and to get a little activity into my routine. When I started WW I was 288 lbs and wearing a size 22, and I know the year before I was wearing a size 26 (which was tight on me), so I'm guessing I was easily in the low 300 lb-range at my highest weight.

For the first year of my weight loss journey I was incredibly focussed and motivated. I was keeping my weight loss a secret from my family back home in Newfoundland, and my goal was to surprise them on my trip home in July. Needless to say it was quite a shock to a lot of people when I showed up over 100 lbs lighter without any warning!

Right now I am getting back on track after my trip back home. I wasn't following WW for a while due to comp issues, not to mention life issues, and I've gained back some of the weight I had lost. I got away from journalling, but I'm back at it again and am using it to help me get my focus back. I also like using it to keep track of my activity, although I've not had an organised execise regime for a few months now due to an injury. I'm getting back into my activity, however, and I will be updating all my numbers soon.

As I said, I don't write in this blog with an audience in mind, but if anyone had any questions or comments on anything here, please don't hesitate to post!

BTW, the name of my blog came from a comment my supervisor at work made one day when I was in the middle of a full-blown rant about something I had to do that was infuriating me. He interrupted me and said something to the tune of, "Don't worry about it you don't have to do it. And my goodness look at you! Where are you going, everytime I see you, you're smaller! It's crazy, you're the incredible shrinking woman!!" The moment was funny and unexpected and seemed to sum up my life right now, so I came home and re-titled my blog.

Now all I need is a cape...

Monday, February 23, 2009

The Monday after

I had expected to be back here before now, but I've had some things distracting me the past couple of weeks, and I'm still trying to ease back into things gradually instead of setting tonns of goals and determining to be perfect. I noticed that I had comments on my last post, I was so surprised, as I'm not used to that! I was touched that people took the time out to read my words and to go out of their way to comment.

I've not been on the scale since about last Wednesday or so, but I've been weighing pretty regularly, every day or so, overall. The scale was showing up again, even though I had been strict with my diet for over a week. It will take time for me to get a feel for things and how the scale is going to react. I had such a strict routine last year that I knew what the scale was going to do from week to week, but now that I am making different decisions I have no way or predicting. I'm not too worried about what it is doing week to week, I'm going to be looking more at what it is doing month to month, since that will be the true tell as to whether things are working. I'm being reminded at how weight loss takes so much time, but you can gain so much weight in just a few days of binging.

I haven't been tracking since last Wednesday either, I've not been home most of that time, and usually didn't have access to a computer. I knew that I was going to be unable to track for at least two days, and that I would be eating out. I also took that into account in my food choices early in the week. I know I could have done better over the weekend, but overall I'm not displeased. I wasn't perfect, but I still kept a measure of control. It was tempting to go all out, but I weighed each decision before I made it, and ultimately I denied myself permission to binge. Again I worked on cutting back instead of cutting out; I had cheese with a few meals, when last year I would have had none, but for the meals where it was a condiment (what is the proper term?? it is escaping me at the moment), I kept the amounts very small. I also had a little bit of dessert with one meal, but I shared with another person instead of having my own.

So it wasn't a blow-out weekend, but the days of un-tracked/unplanned meals lasted longer than I had expected, as I'd thought I'd be home by Friday night but didn't get back until Sunday afternoon. I did choose to eat what I liked last night without tracking, when I could have, but I decided that it was what I wanted and that I would pay the price. The price of course is that I'm having some cravings today, but I can handle it. I'm wishing I had some junk food (craving chips and chocolate, in no particular order), but all I have to do is endure it, since I have no junk in the house to eat no matter how tempted. I do however have lots of wonderful veggies, since the friend I spent the weekend with (JB) took me shopping yesterday before dropping me off, and I stocked up on good things. I bought a big bag of red peppers, green onion, carrots, romaine, apples (I never never eat enough fruit, something else I keep trying to improve on), mushrooms, green beans, celery, my fav frozen veggies, and a big bag of zuccini. I also got other essentials like whole wheat pita, yogurt for baking, tuna, and diced tomatoes/sauce for cooking. I am actually pretty excited when I look in my fridge and see the zuccini, it's been months since I've bought any, I've not seen any at my regular store that have looked fit to buy. These ones are firm and big and oh so pretty! I bought a bagful, and now I need to decide my next two meals for the day and see if I can incorporate the green lovelies, using my WW tracker of course. Definitely got my veggie mojo going!

Monday, February 2, 2009

Hello February!

I'm not going to make any grand pronouncements. I'm still where I left off last time, trying to get a routine back into my life. I have been putting a lot of effort into getting my eating back under control over the last month, and I'm finally having success with it. At first I started cutting out the junk, and eating more of the foods I ate consistently when I was OP, then I started working on portions sizes. This is my second week I believe of counting points every day, and I'm feeling pretty good. When I was last posting here I was having a lot of dicculties with cravings, but I'm not having near the same struggles now. I'm starting to see the extra weight begin to come off and it's doing me a world of good.

Earned 1 AP today: 20 min brisk walking.