Round

Today I did something that made me prouder than pretty much anything I’ve done all year.

I had a stressful day

Despite the miscarriage of 2 weeks ago my morale is holding up pretty well & I’ve not fallen into a depression, but the constant wait-hope-wait-hope cycle wears me down and I know I’m not dealing with everyday pressure as easily.

Today I had stress coming from several directions today - although Work Stress dominated. A big project is in the crunch phase at work, plus discussions around what a next job will be are heating up, and before I’d even had coffee I got the news I didn’t get a job I’d interviewed for recently.

I ended the day with one Big Stress event

The specifics of the stress don’t really matter - what matters is how I reacted.

As I walked out of the meeting, I immediately thought to myself “I need to get to the gym”.

Not “I need ice cream”

Not “I need pasta carbonara”

Not even “I need to call a friend” (although I did, on my way home before hitting the gym)

Nope, I thought “I need to get to the gym”

Last year when I had REAL life stress (dealing with cancer & needing to have a hysterectomy when I wanted to have a baby) I learned to make exercise into a stress-management technique.

But I went off exercise in early April and have only been back in the gym a handful of times in the past few weeks (when I slowly & gently went back to exercise).

So I was pretty surprised (but quite pleased) that my reaction was “‘must work out” instead of “must stuff my face” which is how I dealt with stress for most of my life.

Cool Huh?

What do you do when you are really stressed?

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?

Well, no one expected it to be all good news, right?

Once again the majority of Spring Focus participants had a really good week. But of course, the devil is in the details, and those who faltered (including myself) didn’t help the group numbers at all.

62% Making some or all of their goals

This week we had the highest number of people not making their goals since we started. Of course with a holiday weekend that’s not a huge surprise.

Progress, Not Perfection

Guess who pushed us into the positive as a group? Those who were being SOMEWHAT successful in their goals. Those who did great were canceled out one to one by those who missed their goals by a wide margin (sorry for that!) and it allowed the room in the middle to be the shining stars!

I’m a big believer in Incremental Improvements in life in general (and weight loss in particular) so this was great to see.

I issue a challenge to all Spring Focus Participants (and everyone else too)

Let’s ALL get at least PARTLY to meeting our goals this week.

• One meal on plan.
• One day of exercise.
• One day with enough water.
• One day of recording your calories.
• Whatever YOU make for your behavioral goals, let’s meet at least a part of them.

Most of us will fall short of Perfection, but all of us can make PROGRESS, right?

PROGRESS, not Perfection has been my motto for many, many years - here’s a chance for all of us to put it to the test!

My hope is that ALL of us can report in for this week either “YES” or “Partly Yes” for meeting our behavioral goals this week!

There are still 5 weeks left in Spring Focus - that’s a good chunk of time to make progress & make sure you’re set up with good habits for a good summer - so join in by commenting here!

I’ve been emotionally a bit rocky this week, which of course I expected due to the heartbreak of the miscarriage.

Thank you all for the outpouring of support.  It helps.

For the most part I’ve been doing well on diet & exercise - as some of you have seen, over the years I have learned to react to great stress in life by showing I can control something - my weight loss behaviors.   It’s also what leads me to “low stress weight loss” by the way - there is so much in life that stresses us out, some of it we choose, a lot of it we don’t.  Making choices while losing weight that ADD to those life stresses is just not part of what I consider possible these days.

Of course, I’m still pretty fragile (as is my husband) so last night when he ordered dessert - but not the one I would have picked - he ordered the one I had suggested for me to have (I ate 2/3).

Frankly, that’s almost the worst I can report for the past few days in terms of bad weight-loss behavior.  There have been other instances like that, but nothing like throwing myself into a vat of wine or a pile of cookies, so I’m putting myself firmly in the ‘handling this well’ category.

Work & travel have been very busy (which will continue for the next month) which at times like this can be a blessing because it keeps me occupied and keeps me distracted from some of the “poor me” thoughts.  Still, I have my moments and yesterday afternoon was particularly hard because both my husband & I hit “down” feelings at the same time.

I will report in tomorrow on my week, and will close the Spring Focus reporting-in at midnight on Tuesday (to allow you Memorial Day celebrators to participate). Spring Focus results are planned for posting on Wednesday.

I am very, very sad.

Our gestational carrier (surrogate) had another ultrasound on Tuesday and there was no heartbeat left in our little embryo.

We are crushed.

I am sad.

My husband is sad.

The carrier, A, is sad.

My mom is sad.

It’s just a really sucky situation.  We’ve been though so much to try to have a baby and now having another miscarriage just feels so unfair.  I really tried to keep my hopes in check through that first ultrasound, and decided after that to go ahead and let hope live, and it feels now like I was sucker-punched.

Spring is wonderful in so many ways, but for those of us participating in Spring Focus it’s also been a really great way to get ourselves focused on losing some weight right now.

We’re doing great!

We didn’t have as complete a response as last week, but I didn’t chase people down like I did last week either.

Over 19 pounds gone last week

Despite my pulling the group down by GAINING instead of LOSING weight this past week, the group still posted an impressive -19.5 pound weight loss for the week between May 17th-24th! Amazing!

That brings the total weight loss for Spring Focus Participants to over 60 pounds since our “official” start in early May.

87% are making progress towards goals

87% of Spring Focus participants who reported in said that they had achieved some or all of their behavioral goals! In fact, those who didn’t meet their goals this past week had met their goals in the previous week (and I’m confident they’ll hit them again this week!).

To show that it’s not all about the scale, this week’s badge shows progress towards goals!

Want to Join Spring Focus?

You don’t need to have joined early on to benefit from being focused! Our only objective is accountability & helping each other make Progress. Our group is in effect through July 4th, which means there is more than a MONTH to go (5 weeks in fact). We’re a pretty open bunch so if you think this kind of accountability will help you, just drop a comment here.

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My personal Spring Focus check-in

1. Healthy Eating : okay.  Starting to accept that next week I’ll probably start writing things down…
2. Exercise : Yeah! Went to the gym, had a good workout, also had a long walk
3. Focus on Relaxing : This went well most of the day - nice teas, tended the roses, cleaned up our living room (after having dumped all our weekend stuff there), read a few chapters in a book.

This past week had one major significant diet event, and it wasn’t my weight loss.  It was the feeling of “settling in” to dieting life which came peacefully over me.  Welcome back, is all I can say to that!

Strangely enough, this occurred as the scale went up, not down.  I’m up 2 1/2 pounds this week for what is probably a mix between TOM bloating, heat & a little bit of overeating.  I’m not stressed about it, because I don’t think the weight increase is a good reflection of what’s been going on.

Assessment of the weekend :

This long holiday weekend I didn’t get in any exercise but I did eat on plan 90% of the time.  Of course we all know in dieting 90% ‘on’ and 10% ‘off’ can be insufficient to actually lose.  We went out to one really nice dinner on Saturday night, but actually almost all the choices were healthy (but again that word ‘almost’).  And Sunday evening we were invited to a friend’s house and most of the meal was manageable for me but one thing was not, and I turned down dessert (that & cheese are the only things you can politely refuse in France).

Still, despite the scale (which I can explain a few different ways) I feel good about my efforts on diet & exercise & I’m pretty confident that I’m on the right track.  I struggled a lot to get back on track for a few weeks after my extended break, so being back to this way of living being my “routine” feels good, no matter what the stupid little square wants to say.

Assessment of last week :

I do think it would be really nice to see the scale drop again this week, and that’s going to be a bit of a challenge, as I have travels & a short week.

1) Eat healthy but not write things down.  Report all deviations in the blog.   Sort Of. I didn’t report all deviations of the weekend on the blog. Want to hear them? 1/2 a caramel, about 8 bites of dessert, some zucchini tian casserole,

2) Weigh in daily. OK. But I didn’t like it

3) Exercise three times this week.  I did 5!!!

Goals for this week :

1) Eat healthy without writing things down : I’m doing this minimal level of food awareness one more week.  I’m guessing next week I’ll increase the awareness by switching over to writing things down, but I’m willing to give this approach one more go.

2) Exercise 4 times this week : a stretch objective for sure - it will require me working out every day that I’m home plus one of the days I’m coming or going.

3) Focus on Relaxing again : I do better with my weight and my overall life stress when I can link Pleasure & Relaxation to the process of losing weight.  I’ll report in on at least 3 Pleasures or Relax items per day, and I’ll try to add to my 100+ Things That Make Me Happy list this week too.

Gone are the daily weigh-ins, by the way.  It’s strange because at times it’s been really helpful to weigh in daily, but right now it has felt like a burden.  I’m back to weekly weigh-ins for a while.

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Spring Focus update :

Being away for a few days to our place in the South of France also meant a few days away from the internet.  I wasn’t posting or reading email and unfortunately I didn’t get it together to send out the reporting form for the week before I left (I did send it last night).  I’ll report on group progress on Wednesday.

Since next week is a long weekend in the US we’ll be on the same schedule next week (although I’ll send the email on Sunday night or Monday) so reporting in through Tuesday, group results Wednesday.

We are off on another holiday weekend tomorrow.  A good friend is joining our little family trip to the South of France.  We have Monday off as a national holiday, and we all took Friday afternoon as well so we can travel slightly ahead of the crowds.

The Plan for the Weekend

For my weight loss efforts I suspect the trip might prove challenging, so I’m doing a quick check in on my plans & goals for the weekend.

Food : will be generally healthy & on plan.

• I’ll need to be careful on the train (down & back) as good choices are often hard to find onboard.
• I will report back on transgressions
• I will do the best I can in social situations
• I will push my husband to get to the store early so that I have healthy choices available (we sometimes eat out & put off going to the store for several meals…)

Exercise :

• I’m sure we’ll go on at least one long walk, as there is a very old chateau that’s an hour loop walking from the house that we’ll no doubt show our guest.  I’d like to do more, but we’ll see.

No weigh ins

• No scale!

This week has gone smoothly, as expected

Being home without a whole lot on my agenda has been incredibly nice.  Even more so as I look into the coming 6 weeks which are just back to back travels.  I am doing my level best to limit myself to no more than 3 cities a week, and there are weeks where that’s proving difficult.  It’s going to be nuts for a while - I’m going to stick to healthy eating, blogging & trying to lose weight.  I’m not sure how much exercise I’ll be able to realistically fit in & that’s bugging me since my main Spring Focus goal is actually about fitness.  The busy period has one upside - it should be a good way to keep me distracted from worry as we go through the first trimester.

Progress on goals for the week :

1. Eat healthy without tracking : Wednesday - done, Thursday - done.  Eating at home makes it easier.  We ate out Thursday night but good choices were available, no worries.
2. Daily weigh ins : Thursday morning was up another pound to 194 but I suspect it was a combination of extra exercise & high sodium in the stir-fry I made.  Today was XXX.
3. Exercise at least 3 times this week : The goal for the WHOLE WEEK is already met! I am really hoping we will go hiking again this weekend, but I didn’t want to count on it for my exercise goal (because we could potentially just decide to have a very lazy weekend instead).  The incredible enjoyment I had walking around town in the early part of this week has continued.

Here’s a picture from one of my walks :

One of my favorite things of Europe is the architecture.  The history of the buildings, and the details they contain. What I liked about this set of doors is the old, weathered wood, the symmetry and the multiple levels of carving.  The brass panels on the bottom are there to protect the wood from kicks & scratches.

A Very Good Start

Wow, the Spring Focus group success was better than I’d expected, better even than I’d hoped for. It was good for me (I actually had a full week on plan!) but it was good for almost everyone who signed up too!

Beyond Weight Loss

Our Spring Focus group checked in on Monday with how they did on their weight loss journeys last week. And we checked in on just on pounds lost, but also on the underlying behaviors that we all struggle with.

Behavioral Changes for weight loss & control

We all know that certain behaviors help us lose weight, others don’t.  Most of us have been working on our weight for a long time, so most of us know what we’re “supposed to” do.  The challenge for most of us isn’t in learning what the behaviors are - the challenge lies in actually implementing those healthy behaviors.  Add a few healthy behaviors together and we should see weight control, add a few more healthy behaviors, and we should see weight loss.

So one of the things people (including myself) are doing during Spring Focus is setting specific behavioral goals.  Either for the whole period (May 4th - July 4th) or a week at a time (like I do).

Last week, 89% of participants had success with their behavioral goals!!! Some had less-than-perfect success (”yes, partly”) and some full-out, but I focus on PROGRESS, not Perfection so anyone who didn’t report “No” gets counted a success for me!

I’m tempted to stop the reporting of success right here, because honestly what you do day to day to move towards healthy living & weight loss is MUCH more important than what the scale says.  (In fact, some Spring Focus participants are only checking in on behavior, not on weight at all).

Impressive Weight Loss of 22.5 Pounds in One Week

The collective weight loss for ONE WEEK is 22.5 pounds!!  The week measured was from May 10th-17th, although some people report in for a slightly different period based on their own weekly weigh-in day.

Spring Focus is about Weight Loss Accountability

The reason I started Spring Focus was to boost weight loss accountability. My own & others.  I needed to start back, and I needed to commit to a long-enough period that I could build some momentum, but not so long as to be put off by the task.  Two months seemed about right, and July 4th as an end date had a nice significance to it.

I’m really pleased with how Spring Focus has worked for me & for the community.  If you want to check in on anyone to see how they’re doing on Spring Focus, the blogroll is on the right ?.

Want to Join?

You don’t need to have joined early on to benefit from being focused now & through June.  We’re a pretty open bunch so if you think this kind of accountability will help you, just drop a comment here.

Reporting on my goals for this week

1. Eat healthy without writing things down : this is going well.  I bought my husband macaroon’s from Pierre Hermé yesterday as a treat, but had the presence of mind to buy a nice box of gariguette strawberries
2. Daily weigh in : 193 again.  Whatever
3. Exercise : a super-long walk yesterday.  It was a lovely day, going for a walk was a great choice!  I enjoyed it enormously.