Persistance Not Perfection

I had a FB memory pop up yesterday.

 

I’m due to celebrate my 39^th birthday next week and the FB memories of my 30^th birthday have also been surfacing.  I actually love seeing all my birthday celebration memories because you know how much I love my birthday.

My starting weight was 304.8 pounds.  My goal weight was 175 pounds and nine years ago I got down to 165, which was an all-time low.  I had officially lost 139.8 pounds and 46% of my body weight.  It felt great.  Look at the collar bones!

 

 

Fast forward nine years and I am currently 46 pounds over my goal weight.  What is absolutely worth celebrating is that in July of 2016, I was 88 pounds over goal.  There are still times that I try and rack my brain on how I let myself get 88 pounds over goal.  I swore I wasn’t going to gain the weight back.  I knew I would be able to keep it off forever.  I had safeguards in place after all.  Then…life changes.

What matters right now in this moment is that I am not still 88 pounds over goal, or a more terrifying thought, that I have not gained all the weight back.  What matters in this moment is that I realized I needed to take control of my weight gain and have a hefty pep talk (pun intended) with myself about what needed to change. 

The thing with weight gain is that it is depressing.  When you are losing weight everybody is celebrating your accomplishments and giving you compliments.  When you are gaining weight, all of that stops.  Nobody really wants to give you any honest feedback about your weight gain.  Really what could they say to me?  I was already my own worst critic.  Feeling depressed about it just made eating those feelings 10x easier.  It is a vicious cycle.

Instead, of looking at the past, I chose to look at today. I have lost 83.8 pounds over the last nine years.  That is definitely a cause for a celebration.  I’m always down for a party!

We never know what life will deliver.  The ups, downs, and sideways can be the hardest to navigate.  It is exhausting trying to be perfect all the time.  Instead, I’ll keep working on persistence.

Thursday Fun At The Farmstead

My days off were split this week with Monday and Tuesday off (well, part of Tuesday) and then off again on Thursday.  It was low key but enjoyable and I always love when I get days off with Kenyon.

We are starting to redeem free birthday meals and there are a lot of them.  We started with Red Robin yesterday and this evening we will go to Tucanos.  I’m working really hard to balance the meals out and pre-plan so I know where my points are going to be at for the day.

Red Robin has a ton of low point options and they have points calculated for you in the WW app.  I knew I was having their Oktoberfest burger, which was back for the season.  It had ham, caramelized onion, Swiss cheese (which appeared to have been left out), mustard, and a pretzel bun.  I did some WW pre-planning and doing my best estimate.  I also ate only half and had a side salad in place of french fries as well as a refill of salad.  It wasn’t quite as delicious as I had hoped for the amount of points I spent on it but I still enjoyed the burger.

 

I had a low point breakfast, 0 SPV snack, and am having a low point lunch to offset Tucanos this evening.  I also have plenty of WSPA available if I need it. 

Kenyon and I planned to take my nieces to The Farmstead since we got them season passes for Christmas and they had not yet redeemed them. Hailey decided not to come so Emma invited a friend.  We had the best time with these two little girls.  Emma is just a hoot and has always had the best personality.

 

She didn’t want to leave when it was time to get home and rounded up for bed, school, and work.  She said, “I don’t want to go to stupid school tomorrow.”  I told her, “I don’t want to go to stupid work tomorrow either but I don’t have a choice.”  Kids!  I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything especially when they whine, argue, and complain.  But when they are behaved, kids are pretty fun.

Okay, time to get back to “stupid work”.  Ha!

Weekly WI: Double The Meetings & Chnages to WW

It feels as though I had a double WI since I went to a meeting on Saturday last week and then again on Tuesday.  I had hoped going to a meeting on Saturday I’d learn more about the new Wellness that Works (WW) message branding that rolled out recently.  I didn’t really learn anything new that I hadn’t already read about in the emails I had been getting.  But, I was able to ask about the milestone charms and confirm they weren’t going away.  That is good.  And, I also had some questions about why I wasn’t getting any “wins” for tracking my weight/going to my “workshop” meetings.

So, for anybody that isn’t aware of the changes to WW, you still count points and are still doing the Freestyle program.  The only major change is that you earn “wins” for tracking your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and activity.  You also earn “wins” for checking in at your meeting, which is now called a “workshop”.  There are more changes in that our meeting room looks less…people…and more subdued.   I noticed instantly when going to my WW Center on Tuesday that the poster changed and have more of a solid color look like if you posted on Facebook or Instagram.

A “win” is a series of points awarded that can be redeemed for products.  There is a list of products and how many “wins” it takes to earn them.  I spotted these cute wine tumblers so I’m going to work on earning those.  When you redeem your “wins” for items, they are sent to your home with no shipping costs.  I figured it will take me about 6 months to earn my wine glasses.  Yippie!

I have a slight snag in that I am a Lifetime Member over goal and instead of subscribing to the Monthly Pass, I have been paying for my eTools separately from my weekly meeting fee.  This has also been costing me more and I have not been getting “wins” credit for entering my weight each week.  So, I signed up for the Monthly Pass since they were offering 30% off and waiving the $20 joining fee.  For the next three months, it will be costing me a lot less than I had been paying.  I am also hoping I’ll starting earing my “wins” again.  So far, I don’t see the change.  And, when I called WW of Salt Lake City, she told me our system isn’t integrated with the WW International system yet.  So…we will wait and see.

Our substitute meeting leader (I just can’t get used to calling them workshops) was asking what we thought about the new WW changes.  I really miss not celebrating the weight loss milestones.  I loved getting 5 pound stars and celebrating with other people as they lost weight each week.  We had a good chat about rewards and how you make your achievements special to you.

Oh…I should have told you that I lost 0.8 pounds.  I’m on my way to getting back into the 220s.  Yippie!