One Step Forward, 1400 Calories Back

After last week’s ginormous loss, I didn’t expect much of a loss this week, if anything. In fact, I was half expecting a gain. That said, I was pleased to see the following numbers when I stepped on the scale this morning:

249.5lbs – 247.4lbs = -2.1lbs

So… not a giant loss, but totally respectable, and one I can live with and be grateful for.

Unfortunately, however, I did suffer a bit of a setback this afternoon. In the end, while I didn’t go over my calories by much, I’m bothered by how easy it was for me to overeat when given the chance. I posted more about this over at the Food Confessional, but the long and the short of it is that my husband and I went out to lunch with some friends today… and while, naturally, I had the best of intentions, by the time the meal was over, I’d not only eaten more than I should have, but I’d also kept on eating long after I was full. The part that really troubled me was how easy it was for me to “binge” with so little provocation. I didn’t feel pressured, I wasn’t upset, hormonal or otherwise emotional. I just wanted the food and I ate it. A lot of it. (Thing is, if you just look at the numbers, it might seem silly to be upset, but it’s really not the calories that qualify what happened today as a binge… it’s the fact that I continued to shovel food into my mouth, long after I was full).

*shrugs*

Anyway, rather than dwell on this setback, I’m trying instead to look forward to tomorrow as a new opportunity to do better. One thing I am proud of is the fact that I didn’t use my fuck-up from this afternoon to continue to overeat later. There have been many, many times when I would have just thrown in the towel and followed up today’s binge with, at minimum, a hot fudge sundae. And I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.

Speaking of being grateful, my loss this week qualifies me for some new bling, and you better believe I’m gonna take it. :)

I am weak.

I’ve been undone by fresh strawberries and lightly sweetened whipped cream (the real stuff).

Not just tonight.
Not just last night.

But three nights in a row.

I am weak.

So, so weak.

Healthy You Challenge — Update 1

*drumroll please*

258.3lbs – 254.0lbs = -4.3lbs

4.3lbs in a week is a *huge* loss for me. 2lbs a week, *if* I do what I’m supposed to all week, is usually the most I can hope for and is what I’ve come to “shoot” for as a result. Anything else is gratis.

I guess getting “back on track” after a few weeks of only half-heartedly doing this has made a difference. Plus, and I’m sure you’ll agree… marking a loss is always a great motivator. For me, seeing a loss on the scale is *always* so much more motivating than seeing a gain. I read some bloggers who say that they need the occasional “kick in the ass” of a gain to get them back in the game… but not me. A gain only serves to make me feel more defeated. I find that, for me, one loss begets another loss and so on. That said, I hope this marks the beginning of a roll.

It was a lovely weekend here, and we took full advantage of the good weather by moving our exercising outdoors. On Saturday, I did a 3 mile walk around an area that the locals call “the loop.” I live right across the bridge from a set of barrier islands that are nestled between the mainland and the Atlantic ocean. “The loop” is a public footpath that starts on one side of the islands, travels across one bridge and over the intracoastal waterway, runs parallel to the ocean, then back across another bridge and then back around. It’s really quite lovely, and although I was really more focused on my walk then the view, I did snap this picture along the way, so I’d have something to show you guys. At this point, I was just about to cross one bridge, and if you click on the picture to make it larger, you’ll see the *other* bridge that would bring me back around, far off in the distance.

Then, on Sunday, my husband and I took a walk through a park that’s right in our neighborhood, but that we’d never been to. It was beautiful, overlooks a marshy area and then a different part of the intracoastal waterway that I got to traverse the day before. In the end, we surely marked that spot as a good “picnic place” when the weather is really nice, but it wasn’t much of a “walk” so we decided to walk the same “nature trail” that we did last week. By the time we reached the last mile of the trail, I’d walked *at least* 6 miles in two days, and I have to admit I was feeling it. I wasn’t *nearly* as out of breath as my two dogs though who, in the main, seemed to be as glad to be outside as I was.

Anyway, it felt so good to be outside and I couldn’t help but feel that all this walking was doing more for me than the exercise I’ve been able to do while cooped up in the house all winter. My husband and I are “talking about” buying tennis rackets and then trying our hand at that once the weather really settles into spring and then summer… but we’ll see. Neither one of us is particularly “sporty” so I imagine such an effort would be good for a laugh, if nothing else.

One last thing. I’m really having trouble keeping up with my food and exercise journals. I’m still, absolutely, counting calories and sticking within my limits (as evidenced by my loss last week) I just haven’t had time to record them. For some reason, I feel racked with guilt over this. Part of me feels like I’m “cheating” by not writing all this stuff down — while another part of me feels like that’s ridiculous because, prior to starting this blog, I *never* kept a food or exercise journal. The thing is, I don’t want to get so bogged down in the administrative details of this that the pressure of having to write everything down knocks me off course. On the other hand, I don’t want to start slacking and sliding *because* I haven’t held myself to account by writing everything down.

It makes me wonder, because I read a lot of weight loss/health related blogs and I don’t really see *that* many food/exercise journals. Do you guys find them necessary or even helpful?

Anyway… I’m off to face Monday.
Happy new week everybody!