Its All About the Weight

Inspired by friends, family and famous people all on Weight Watchers, I joined their online program. Today is my second day. I'm starving. But in a good way. Let's backtrack though.

I'm down to my pre-pregnancy weight of 140. But thats not enough. I have not been able to work out at all, so thats a 'soft' 140, not a lean mean built 140. And while places that got thin from my horribly sick 1st trimester - like my legs and face - look pretty good, my stomach is still bigger than pre-pregnancy. And since thats the largest part on me anyway, even though I'm back to my 'normal' weight, I dont fit in all my old clothes.

Whats more is that since high school, I have been slowly creeping up in weight to where I am now. The lowest I ever remember being was 104, when I was a freshman in high school and was wrestling. Of course this was, for the most part, before real puberty. I was about 117 when I graduated high school. I was extremely fit, as I was active in sports all year round. From there, while in college I maxed out at about 147 during the worst of my pizza at 2am + no exercise days. I got active again after that and dropped back down to about 133, which is where I was when Ryan and I got married. Since getting married and having kids, I've settled back down to the 140 I am at right now.

Well that is not ok with me. I dont want to continue gaining a pound (or more) a year, and end up obese by the time I'm middle aged. I want to still be fit, healthy and sexy when I am (gasp) middle aged, only 10 years from now! I want to still be active with Ryan, be able to do the kind of backpacking and hiking we did when we first met, and still feel sexy enough for a romp on the trail (as opposed to feeling like a beached whale struggling to flop up the mountain).

While I can't really do too much about the exercise right now - that is whole other story - I CAN do something about my intake and therefore my weight.

I also have another reason to care about the food I eat: It is also the food I prepare for my family. Ryan is a lost cause (he grew up on cereal for 2 out of 3 meals a day, and his mother tricked his dad into eating soy beans by calling them 'baby lima beans'. As far as he is concerned, vegetables are a waste of valuable stomach space that you could be filling with carbs), but I CAN teach my girls about what real (vs processed) food is, and how to prepare and eat it. And more importantly, how it fuels the body and gives it all the nutrients it needs to be strong and vibrant.

I'm proud to say that Rory cooks dinner with me every night now, and probably can name more fruits and vegetables by sight in their raw, natural state than many adults across the nation today.

But....

I know the portions I eat are too much. I know that I eat things that even as I am eating them I think dont taste good enough to be worth eating - and I still eat them anyway. I know that I eat past the point of being full many times just because it is on the plate. I know that I go back for second, third or forth servings of something really deliciously bad at a weekend event even though I KNOW it will cause me to gain back every pound I fought so hard to loose during the work week. I know I still cook with a little too much butter... too much cream... too much cheese... too much of the yummy bad stuff. My weight proves there is improvement to be made in these ways. So when I looked into weight watchers and found out that I could do it online for only $20 a month, and Ryan was supportive when I talked to him about it, I jumped on it.

Why do I think this will work better than a journal or any other diet? Its all about an allotment and tracking. See its impossible if I make a pasta dish for me to calculate out how many calories are in my one serving. And by the time dinner rolls around, all I have is my stomach to tell me if I have already had a lot to eat that day and need to go easy on dinner (not so reliable when it sees that Ryan makes double batches of brownies for breakfast on his day off). So Weight Watchers is perfect, because they have this really great "recipe builder" tool on their site to calculate that all out for you. Granted its not the easiest thing in the world but its good enough for an internet savy person to find what they need and figure out the point values of what you are eating given some time. And nearing the end of my second day, it's awesome because I now have a hard LIMIT to follow for how much to eat. I can do that!