Round

My next weight loss goal is 189.

It’s hard to write that number as a Goal because a few months ago I was safely below that and reaching for 183 (my wedding weight).  But the truth is, I’ve been hanging out in the 190s for over 2 months and I can’t wish that fact away.  I can only accept where I am and deal with it from here.  So the next goal is 189, last Monday I weighed in at 193 so it’s probably a few weeks away.

I want to pass to 189 and never pass back over the 190 mark again.

Do you reward yourself for weight loss?

Years ago I gave myself a reward every single week that I stuck to my diet.  Over the course of 18 months I think I didn’t reward myself 3 times.  The rewards were based on the right behaviors, not on the scale.  And even then, I was focused on “PROGRESS, not Perfection”.  I sometimes also added bigger rewards for weight milestones.  I bought my first iPod for that kind of reward, for example.   The weekly process rewards were usually a CD, or something else that cost around $15.  I figured I’d be willing to spend that much at Weight Watchers, so why not spend it directly on myself?  That thinking worked for me for a good long time.

In the years since I’ve been living in France I’ve not been using weekly rewards.  I’ve tried a few times but it hasn’t motivated me much.  One thing I have done a few times is to link something I want to a bigger milestone reward.  A few years ago I had a nifty spring Green purse that I bought myself as one of those rewards - and I felt guilty that Spring because I hit my target & then promptly regained 10 pounds. Still, I remembered that it helped me strive to get some pounds off.

Sometimes I need a nudge to focus on weight

I generally put my focus on living a life that I enjoy.  I have a long-term goal to lose weight, but an even bigger goal to do it in a way that is Low Stress, and for me that means that I accept a slower rate of loss than some people (I also have a body that hates to give up weight, so part of that acceptance is just pragmatic).  That does mean that I focus on the process - the good behaviors I want to reinforce, the less-good ones I want to change.  But I don’t put dates to weight goals - I’ve learned that that is diametrically opposed to Low Stress Weight Loss for me.

Sometimes I just want to hit a number

But sometimes I just want to hit a number, and that’s where rewards can play a role for me.

Look at my (future) new purse

This will be mine at 189! It’s actually already in my house - my husband bought it for me (isn’t that nice) but I won’t let myself use it until I hit 189, because that is motivating me.  I want the purse.  I want some more weight gone.  I put these together & focus.

Do you give yourself rewards?  For the process or for the numbers or some mix of the two?

What if you were paid to do what you want to do anyway?

Companies are starting to pay their employees to successfully lose weight, exercise & do other healthy behaviors. This article says that the money involved is between $100-500 a year - which isn’t enough to pay for a family vacation, but it could easily offset some of the cost of a gym membership, diet coach or more fresh organic produce.

Wouldn’t it be great if you paid by the calorie?

I don’t have such a thing on offer - no one is offering to pay me to lose weight - and I’m not somebody who is very motivated by money - but the idea of being paid to do what I SHOULD DO (and want to do anyway) is quite appealing.

I’ve always thought that life would be so much easier if you paid for food by the calorie. Twinkies would cost a fortune, apples would be almost free. Bucket of fried chicken? Set you back $50, but a salad with grilled chicken breast only $3. Wouldn’t that be nice?

It would also be great if every time you lost weight you gained money. Get on the scale, -1 pound, +$10. Or even better as a motivator might be the reverse too - if you gain, you pay - that might keep me from going crazy on the weekend!

Alignment of purpose & weight loss synergies

Aligning various factors to make choices easier is one of the key steps to changing behavior

Aligning various factors to make choices easier is one of the key steps to changing behavior (any behavior). So if you want to lose weight, putting a lot of behaviors that will help you do that together helps. It also helps if you can think of those weight-loss behaviors as doing something MORE than helping you successfully lose weight.

That’s why adding a financial incentive to get you walking more or stepping away from the frosting could be a good motivator for a lot of people. Adding things together in the same direction creates Synergy.

I’ve worked on creating synergies for myself

For myself, one of the Alignments of Purpose I’ve created for myself is how I think about my weight loss journey. I now see taking care of how I eat & move as part of general self-care & self-respect. That means I’m doing it for more than vanity. I see it as integrally linked to my health. I see exercise as a big part of how I relieve stress. All of these help to align similar drivers to the same behaviors - which in turn helps me to actually do those things.

I’ve also reverse-engineered a few things too. Last year I started linking things I enjoyed - the small pleasures in life - to reducing stress. And then to my weight as well (since I’m all about Low Stress weight loss). Some of this is mentioned in my 100+ Things That Make Me Happy series, but it’s really related to aligning the purposes - enjoying my life fully helps me be more content in my life while losing weight, and that aligns the purposes I have.

What about you? What kind of synergistic goals do you have that help you align your life towards weight loss?

We are growing as a Spring Focus group, and that’s great!

There are now over 20 of us, and we’re committed to staying focused until July 4th (and beyond, of course). You’re welcome to join - we’ve had people joining every day so don’t feel like you missed out - just leave a comment here.

My own Spring Focus Goals

1) Get in shape to go hiking this summer

We are going to Alaska & I want to be able to happily hike in the Yukon wilderness.  I feel really out of shape right now, so my number one goal is to remedy that.

2) Be back on track with healthy living to stay the course during vacation

I was recently in the US for 3 weeks & went completely crazy & gained quite a bit.  I don’t want to do that again with the vacation this summer.  So the good habits have to be super-solid & I’ll need a realistic plan to manage our summer vacation.

3) Get the weight loss going again

I’m always a slow loser (and a quick gainer) and I emphatically don’t believe in time-based weight goals for myself.  I do, however, believe in setting lots of small goals & celebrating each and every pound.  My next milestone is 189 (out of the 190s) and then it will be 183.  I’m pretty sure I’ll make the first goal during the time of Spring Focus, and hope to get a good distance towards the second as well.

Spring Focus Goals from the group

I’m trying to summarize the goals here & link to a post that talks about them.  If I missed yours (it’s possible!) please let me know in the comments & I’ll fix it.

• Karen@WaistingTime is Focusing on Not overeating in the evenings
• Audri@FlipFlopMama has a goal Goal within 1400 calories a day unless she gets in more than an hour workout, plus she plans to get below 175
• Iniya@SongoftheRoad has a great list of goals for the first 3 weeks - water, sleep, dairy, carb, planned meals, working out, de-stressing & blogging daily!  Wow!
• DietBuddyDaily has a lot of great goals too - planning, tracking, exercising, blogging & not overdoing it with weekends & wine!
• Siobhan@MyLiveLoveLaughLife wants to lose 5 pounds
• Deanna@Cleaner,Meaner&Greener wants lose 10 lbs, eat out less, drink more water
• Anna@AdiosFatPants has just completed a marathon(!) and now is focusing on moving back to regular exercise routine and controlling her sugar intake
• Billie@FatAsMud’s goals are to establish an exercise habit and reach 193 lbs
• Brandie@It’sAllUpToMe is working on eating ONLY for hunger, and also plans to lose some weight
• Vladdie@IShallNotWant is focusing on getting more exercise, and hopes to reach 240
• Maryann@TheFinalCountdown is focused on not eating after dinner, and on not letting 1 bad decision snow ball into a bad weekend, as well as running at least 5 times a week
• Tish@IncrementalImprovements is working on losing 12 pounds during the Spring Focus period
• lackielack@ShowMeTheArmy! has set her sights on drinking water, hitting the trail & using her points
• Tiffany@MarathonMom has a goal to stick to her 100% Raw Vegan Diet

As you can see, a number of people are currently missing, but hopefully you’ll comment to let us know (and then I’ll edit it in)
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My Spring Focus Update

1) Eat healthy : on target, and feels like settling in.  Even adapted (downsized) dinner because I realized I wasn’t very hungry after a big lunch.  My husband & stepson were thrilled because they made pasta (which I never make for dinner) while I had something else.

2) Water : ok

3) Daily weigh in : 193

Extra : walking to several errands around town - it was a beautiful day & it was a real pleasure

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Spring Focus Announcements :

As mentioned above, it’s not to late for you to join (someone else joined yesterday) - just comment here.

Weight tracking will be collected on tomorrow via a form which I will email you.  I had hoped to post a link but it wants to embed it, so I’ll have to email the form instead.  Disclaimer : This is an experiment so if it doesn’t work we’ll figure out something else.

When I am first getting back on track for weight loss after a while off I have two major strategies.

1. Go hard & heavy, giving everything I’ve got & letting the whoosh of the scale motivate me to keep going.  This works well when I’ve only been off track for a few days or a week - with concerted effort usually within a week or so I can get back to the “before” weight even if the scale showed quite a jump
2. Make only a few very small changes, and only commit to doing so for a very short period of time. When I’m off track in a big way the “healthy” life is such a big difference from the “off track” version that the gap seems enormous, too big to tackle, and that fear of such a huge change paralyzes me.  But babysteps to weight loss & healthy living put me in the right direction & help me see that I can accomplish things, and soon the first steps put a few good habits back in place & I’m ready to take on more habits, more days.

In both strategies, I consider it part of what I call “low stress weight loss” - feeling like you can make it work, and gaining hope again after you feel hopeless because you fell off track (yet again).  Finding ways to put yourself back into a mindset & cycle of success is important, and the skill set to do this over and over in your life is what makes for long term success.  None of us will ever be 100% perfect in our diet & exercise forever, so knowing how to get yourself back on track after a step away is really important.

I was off track with exercise for about 6 weeks, and off track with food for 4 weeks.  Both were intentional and not just a falling off the wagon (I did IVF & didn’t want to be depriving my body of nutrients when we were on our final attempt to grow healthy eggs).

But getting back on track has been hard.

Strategy One failed - twice, so this past Monday I switched to Strategy Two.

On Monday I committed to 3 things for 3 days -healthy foods, lots of water & daily weigh ins.  That’s it, but it was enough to get me going in the right direction.

Today is Thursday & I’m ready to extend the commitment out through next Monday.

I’m going to keep the same 3 goals, but some minor modifications to adapt to the long weekend & short trip we are taking.

Goal 1 : Eat healthy foods but no tracking EXCEPT that I will report here any non-healthy choices.  Hopefully the potential guilt will make me choose better when tempted (we are going to a nice restaurant tonight, & tomorrow will be a hotel breakfast full of croissants & other French pastries)

Goal 2 : Water Drink lots of water & herbal teas

Goal 3 : Weigh in daily (but will skip Friday because we’ll be out of town)

Friday is the ultrasound.  My mom is going with our surrogate to the appointment & it feels really weird to not be there.  I’m a mix of nervous & excited, and so so want everything to be okay, but don’t want to get my hopes high & then crushed so I keep trying to put it out of my mind.

How to you handle Getting Back on Track?

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Spring Focus Update :

For my own accountability on my 3 goals

1. Healthy foods : yes.  Took a bit of self-control during afternoon munchies, but I did it.  I hid the organic blueberries from my husband so I could have them for dessert & suggested he open some cookies for himself.  Worked like a charm, we were both happy.
2. Water & herbal tea : yes
3. Weigh in daily : 192, the scale finally dropped.

The Blogroll is now up & growing - based on majority input, I’m
putting in first names so if I don’t have yours, please leave it in the
comments.

It’s not to late for you to join - just comment here.

Yesterday I was catching up on updating my weight log.

I have this recent goal of weighing in daily just to help keep me focused for the next few days, but more recently I’ve been weighing weekly.  Even when I do get on the scale daily I don’t write it down except for that once-a-week weigh-in.  That weekly weight chart is the document I keep - it’s simple spreadsheet where I see change that week & cumulative & have a spot where I can write what was going on that week (travel, anniversary, etc).  I copy that number also to Skinnr (see the weight page) because it makes a cool, updated graph without any effort from me except entering a number.

The interesting thing is the head games that the numbers pulled on me last week when I came back from Munich.  I’d been on the road, and dinner contained a lot of sodium (Asian stir-fry at the airport).  The next morning’s weigh in was 194 and somehow I felt like I was back at square one from my US food fest & that put me in the mindset that caving in to temptation didn’t matter anyway.  But you know what?  I was wrong. I weighed 198 when I came back from the States (IVF bloat & all), not 194, and that Monday I’d weighed in at 193.

Perception shapes reality

But in my mind 194 was my “coming home” weight so I felt like I’d wasted 2 weeks with no progress, which in turn had me digging into things progressively over the next few days - and avoiding the gym & getting serious in general.

Today looking at the document I realized I was only up one pound, and those who weigh daily know that one pound variations are usual - sodium, travel, fiber, air - this is normal variation.  But because in my mind it was a “failure” weight it became one.  And today when I saw the document I had a Homer Simpson d’oh! moment when I realized what I’d done.

My goals for this week are going well - and not stressing me out

1) Eat healthy & balanced foods : yes, although I was lucky to have some nuts stuck in a drawer at the office.  I took the time to have a good breakfast (although it made me 5 minutes late) and chose a nice salad for lunch.  I snacked on green beans when I got home & ended up not hungry enough for a full dinner, so we had cheese & veggies.

2) Drink lots of water & herbal tea : a challenge since I wasn’t at home, but I bought an extra bottle of water & at least hit the minimums, plus drank a lot when I got home.  Not ideal, but passable

3) Daily weigh in : yes, and this public log is keeping me honest.  The scale moved down a few tenths of a pound, but still rounds to 194 (I only use whole pounds in reporting weight to keep myself sane).

Has the scale ever made YOU do something stupid?

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Spring Focus Update :

The Blogroll is now up & growing - based on majority input, I’m putting in first names so if I don’t have yours, please leave it in the comments

It’s not to late for you to join - just comment here.

As for the weight tracking, here’s what I propose (based on the various replies I had via email).   Every Monday I will update with the COLLECTIVE weight loss reported by group members.  Some people weigh in daily, some on Friday, some on Monday.  If you don’t want to give your weight, don’t.  I’ll try to post the collective number on Tuesdays.  There is no contest against other participants.  Several of us categorize ourselves as “slow losers” (guilty!) and a few people don’t want to put a lot of focus on the numbers, so I think this is the best compromise.

Please report 2 numbers on Monday : pounds lost this past week, and collective pounds lost since signing up for Spring Focus.

As always, open for discussion in the comments!

I did well yesterday with my small babysteps goals.

Yesterday I announced 3 goals for the next few days, and not only did I do well on them, I even went a bit above and beyond.

1) Eat healthy, balanced, foods but not write anything down

I ate really well yesterday.  Made a healthy salad with some roast beef & a variety of veggies with homemade dressing for lunch which I ate on the sly during a teleconference.  Snacked on sunflower seeds.  Made a chicken dish with broccoli for dinner (which my husband really didn’t care for).

No pressure either - nothing written down, healthy foods stocked, veggies cut up already.   Easy and tasty, goal met.

2) Drink at least 10 glasses of water or herbal tea

I spent the whole day timing bathroom breaks, made 3 pots of herbal tea, plus green tea in the morning - this went well too.  This morning I peed for about an hour before getting on the scale

BONUS : Exercise

I didn’t even make an exercise goal, because I’ve been struggling too much so I didn’t want a goal I wouldn’t make or one that would make me feel resentful, but I did make it out for a 40 min walk, which felt great.

3) Weigh myself daily

So this is the problem.  Despite being such a good girl yesterday, and peeing forever before the scale, the darn thing stayed the same.  Not even one 0.1 difference, and I don’t even count the details of pounds!

I’m a realist with the scale

I’ve always felt it has a mind of it’s own, is often disconnected to reality, and is NOT a good barometer of what we do, especially on a daily basis.  On a weekly or monthly basis it can be a decent indicator, but don’t you think that we’re ALWAYS better off to focus on our Actions (diet, exercise, motivation, planning) and not the stupid scale?   How many times have you seen someone say that they went on a << vacation / food festival / binge / whatever >> and didn’t gain a pound?  Not that one transgression should show up on the scale, but sometimes we do something stupid & prolonged & then feel like we “got away with” something…

It would be lovely if our weight reflected just our current week’s actions.

Celery week, you weigh 110 pounds, Donut & nachos week you weigh in at 350…   Unfortunately (or fortunately) our bodies are much more stable than that - preserving weight preserves life, and losing in particular is hard for a body to do - especially if you are lucky enough to have the types of genes that would have allowed your ancestors to survive a famine.  You stock fat well, you hold on to it well.  That was once a metabolic advantage, today it means you bust the seams of your pants from time to time…

Anyway, I’m not worried about the one-day weigh in number, but I do think it’s the Danger of the Scale, because all my good effort from yesterday was eclipsed for a few minutes by the feeling of disappointment when I saw the number on the scale.  I suspect I won’t last long in doing the daily weigh-ins, and I’ll go back to weekly before long.

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Spring Focus Update :

The Blogroll is now up!

We are 15 women strong, but it’s not to late for you to join - just comment here.

I sent an email to the participants yesterday - if you didn’t get it please check your spam filter or comment below & I’ll try again.

It’s time to get Serious

A few posts back I mentioned that it seemed there were a lot of us talking about getting serious this Springtime.  Several people chimed in that they wanted to join in, so I’m trying to figure out how we can help each other.  You don’t need to be starting, or getting back on track — you can just want a bit of extra camaraderie for a few weeks.

How it will work

How about something simple, like making public goals for the week, and keeping ourselves accountable to how we do on our goals?

We’re all at different stages of our weight loss & our goals aren’t the same, so this way everyone can do what’s right for themselves, but we can all help cheer each other on & give a gentle nudge when necessary.

For myself, the period I’m focusing on is from now until the end of July (when I leave for summer vacation) but I’m thinking we should make it from now until July 4th just so we have a manageable period of weeks - that’s 9 weeks, and we should all be able to lose at least 5-10 pounds in that time (and some of you will lose twice that!).

Does that sound reasonable?

Join In!

If you want to join, let me know in the comments & I’ll put up a special blogroll on the side.  I figured out how to make a button (it’s the first time I’ve ever done one!) & it’s grab code (so you can install it too) :

Ahhh I am now back to weight loss mode. (and yes, still smiling!)

We landed Wednesday & I was actually back in weight loss mode immediately, but then my husband suggested we go to a fancy restaurant that night to celebrate the successful embryos & eat good French food & how could I resist?

My weight is up a LOT as I expected (actually even more than I expected - about 12 pounds).  I will keep on a very clean eating plan for the next 10 days and put my official starting weight at wherever it lands on Monday May 10th.  I suspect I will drop a lot of the extra pounds in the next week and I know if I do it’s mainly water weight so I don’t need to depress myself w the current number nor over-celebrate dropping water weight, so weigh-in will be Monday the 10th & I’ll just suck it up from there…

We are going to go back to the US for summer vacation (this time minus all the foods, thank you very much).  We’ve decided to go to Alaska because we’ve been thinking about it for years & this is a good opportunity - my stepson is 10 and really looking forward to visiting the glaciers, and we suspect this kind of trip would be tough with young kids, so this is the moment to do this kind of trip.  We leave on July 30th and that is Serious Motivation for getting serious about getting fit.  Before my break I was at the low end of “barely fit” but 4 weeks of mandated “no exercise” (and 2 weeks before that of being fairly lazy) put me back solidly in “unfit”.  Now the prospect of beautiful hikes in the Alaskan wilderness beckon, but I need to be ready for it.  So I need to get serious about hitting the gym & going on long walks in town.  Three months is enough time to get ready, but there is not much wiggle room for fooling about, so the exercise plan starts Sunday.

I had seen in prior weeks a lot of people struggling to get back on track, so anyone who wants to join me in a focused Spring weight loss effort please let me know.

Getting back on track for me is often a build-up process.  Eventually I have enough good habits back in place that things click over to mainly healthy & suddenly I’m back on track without much stress, but I’ve learned that the way to get there is just to figure out some of the smaller steps I’m willing to make & just make those & forget the rest (the stuff I’m NOT doing).

Right now, that’s meant just starting with drinking water.  Food journaling seems to ambitious.

Water drinking has been going well for the past 2 days.  I have a new pretty blue Sigg water bottle & I’ve been drinking from it constantly & refilling it during the day.

Yesterday we went for a nice walk & I’d really like to make that a daily thing.

I’ve been making some slightly better food choices - yesterday at lunch I ordered a chicken sandwich and ate it without the bun, and ordered a side salad instead of fries.  Now, of course we had also ordered a side of chili cheese fries, so it’s certainly not as though things are back on track, but it’s a small amount of progress.   Dinner was a similar story, we decided to just have salad so I went to Whole Foods to hit the salad bar for all the yummy things, but also bought TWO of my favorite ice creams that I dug into after my salad dinner.  So one foot forward as one goes backward, but at least there is that hint of forward.

My husband and I are sick of eating in restaurants & hungry for fruit, veggies & simple home-cooked food.  The “I want to have xxx before I go back to Paris” list is pretty short at this time, and I’m not going to have any problem getting back on track when I’m back home.  Still another week before we’re home, however….

Well, as is always the case when I don’t post my weigh-in results on a Monday, I didn’t like what I saw.  I give myself a weigh-in do-over on Tuesdays when the Monday number isn’t to my liking.  If Tuesday is no better, I suck it up and write it down.

This week I *did* see the scale move down.

But it wasn’t a nice one pound drop, and I have only been following full pound movement in my weight for the past year.   But I’ve been thinking about allowing for reporting “half pounds” for several weeks now, and this week’s weigh in pushes me there.

My weight was 185.4 on both Monday & today.  My scale actually measures in .02 of a pound, but you’re not going to see me following OUNCES when I know how much my body weight fluctuates, so half a pound is the smallest increment I can live with and stay sane.  I can also see progress, and it helps that the rounding off line is so easy.  I actually never take the rounded number - I make sure I’m safely arrived at a number before recording it, so 185.4 can be recorded as 185 1/2 but not as 185 in my book.  I still have half a pound to lose before I consider myself at 185 (185.0, 184.8, 184.6 will all be recorded as “185″ for me).

I’m making the switch to allowing half-pound increments to keep myself motivated, because my weight loss is slow.  It’s not newly slow, it’s not freakishly slow, but it is pretty consistently slow.  That’s okay, I’m in no rush, and as I commented to someone this morning, I strongly prefer to lose slowly and keep a high baseline metabolism instead of cutting my calories to freakishly low levels, losing a bit quicker, and then having to live in maintenance on 1000 calories a day.  No thank you.  Slow consistent weight loss is much better.

I lost half a pound last week while traveling for business most of the week, being really tired, not always having good food choices available, and basically making the best of it.  If I can lose half a pound during weeks like that, it’s not so bad, since weeks like that are only half of my reality.  The other half of weeks are easier.