One of the things I love to talk about is weight loss and weight in general. I have such a long history of losing and gaining weight. I think the first time I successfully embarked on a weight loss campaign was toward the end of my freshman year of high school. That time I used Slimfast and being really busy and doing workout videos. I remember this one the most vividly:
(I could probably pop this video in and muscle memory would take
over and I would do each move perfectly, 26 years later).
Anyway, I followed SlimFast perfectly and it worked. But I was young and didn't understand that it took a lot of work to actually maintain weight loss, so naturally the weight came back on before too long.
For now I'm going to skip over the 25 years since then and describe where I am today. I (re)joined Weight Watchers (WW) in January of this year. I have, like many others, gone on and off WW over the past decade and I find that I just do better when I'm on. I'm not always super-committed and I experience many plateaus and gains even. Still, I am currently down 16.8 pounds since the end of January, with my loss yesterday of 1.8 lbs.
Whenever I think I should be down more, or when someone who joined at the same time as me is lauded for a loss that is double what mine currently is, I simply remind myself that if I wasn't doing WW I'd be up those 16.8 pounds and probably more. It's the weekly weigh-in that keeps me moving downward, even if it's a slow decline.
The things that are working for me this time are that I'm following (yes, actually tracking) SmartPoints, which IME is basically low carb eating. WW would probably never say that it was low carb, but when you look up the Points in different things, you realize you wouldn't get to eat very much at all if you ate mostly carbs. I eat a lot of lean protein and vegetables, thanks especially to my Paderno spiralizer.
(Holy crap, I love this thing! More on this later.)
And the other major secret of my current success is going to the gym. By "going to the gym" I specifically mean locating one of the two remaining models of elliptical that I love and hopping on for about 45 minutes while watching TV with closed captioning and listening to Pandora, 4-5 times a week. In other words, I need a lot of entertainment to get me through my workout. I don't actually hate exercising, and in fact I love getting sweaty and just feeling calm when it's over. But I do get bored pretty easily.
Let me tell you, in my 26 years of weight loss attempts I have truly tried just about everything in terms of diet and exercise. And not all of them were bad or unsuccessful. But for now, this is a routine I can live with and can help me move forward. As my life circumstances change, it is likely that my go-to's will as well.
I look forward to sharing my wins and losses on this plan and any future plans I follow.
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