The Downfall of the Points System

I am so frustrated that I gained half a pound this week. I know that sounds crazy since it was Christmas. But I really tried hard to stay within my points allowance, and I finished the week 5 points UNDER it!!! At the same time, I know exactly what I did wrong. I have been giving myself a larger allowance for nursing the baby than the system recommends based on how hungry I’ve been, and have been losing about a pound a week. But last week, I wasn’t as hungry through the day and kept ending up with 10 points leftover. Being my reckless self, instead of eating a smart snack when I got hungry in the late evening and leaving points unused, I used the rest of my points on ice cream and Pepsi and cookies, etc. :P

So, lessons learned: First, the downfall of the points system is that if I misuse it instead of listening to my body, I won’t get anywhere. Second, using a lot of points on ice cream and Pepsi isn’t the wisest thing. Yeah, I know, go figure. Third, if I'm not as hungry as I have been, it's time to scale back the points I allow myself a little.

I stand by the Points system though. See my post: Why I Love the Weight Watchers System.  I don’t think I mentioned that, used correctly, it brings a healthier balance to my diet. The way points are calculated basically penalizes me for eating foods high in fat and rewards me for eating foods high in fiber (in my case, especially vegetables).

Technically, This Post Could Be About Food…

An odd thought struck me the other day. I’m sure I’m not the first to have it. But did Mary worry about Jesus? In the last few years, I’ve struggled and I’ve watched my friends struggle as we try to figure out how to care for our children. Starting with pregnancy, “am I eating the right food, did that x-ray at the dentist’s office expose my baby, am I gaining too much weight, am I gaining enough weight, should I have a c-section or an induction or an epidural?” Then the baby comes, “should I nurse or formula feed, is she eating enough, is he sleeping enough, why is she crying, maybe he didn’t get enough milk, is she growing fast enough?” Then they get older and a whole world of questions about safety and health and discipline is discovered. Now I realize Mary didn’t have the choice of an epidural or need to worry about x-rays. But can you imagine nursing the Son of God?  That alone would have been a lot of pressure. Did she second guess herself when He refused to nap, or woke up early? As He grew, did He refuse to eat His fish for dinner? I wonder if God gave Mary complete peace that Baby Jesus was ok, and if she gave up her human worry for confidence that God would provide for all of Jesus’ needs. I’m not sure if these are productive contemplations, but there they are. I know that we can have the Peace of God in our lives, but when the baby is crying, I still have to figure out what she needs, and that is not always easy. At the end of the day, I can rest assured that God will give me wisdom if I listen and that my babies are blessings from Him that He loves and will provide for too.

Please God, quiet the swirling questions in my heart. Thank You for loving us all enough to send Your son to be our Savior. It’s just a few more days until Your Son’s Birthday! Amen

Changing Already

After a couple of my recent posts, I noticed some changes in my attitude and commitment this week. First, partly because I really want to hit my New Year’s goal, I determined we would eat at home and make good choices. This week, with Al working very late every night, would typically have been a lost week. I normally don’t think to fix dinner if he’s not home. But I knew ahead of time that he would be gone and I forced myself to do the grocery shopping and fix dinner for me and Bethany, leaving leftovers for Al. There may have been a little stress eating this week, but not too much! In the last 19 weeks, this was my 2nd lowest week in point consumption!

Second, I started talking to Bethany about foods that are good and bad for us. The times she asked for a third cookie or more chocolate and I told her no, I explained that those foods are made of sugar and sugar is not good for us, so we have to limit how much we eat. Then when I put turkey and vegetables in front of her, I explained why those things are good for us. She seemed to understand.

Third, we had a huge breakthrough with Bethany and her eating habits. For about 2 years now, she has refused to eat most foods. She loves cheese, tortillas, fresh fruit, granola bars, chocolate and cereal. That’s been breakfast, lunch and snacks for a long time. We have always offered her whatever we were eating for dinner, and when she refused, she was not offered anything else. But to no avail, she’s been happy to skip supper completely. We’ve tried different things, a variety of rewards and discipline. Nothing had worked and we had just let it lie. Then this week on Super Nanny (I’ve only seen a few episodes), they taught a 3 year old boy how to eat his dinner. They simply offered him small portions of whatever the family was eating, told him he couldn’t leave the table until he ate his dinner and used timeouts if he got out of his chair. I’m pretty sure we’ve done this before, but I was ready to give it a try again. So Wednesday night, it was just me and the girls. The day had been great, with everyone on schedule, sleeping normal and obeying well. I cooked(!) turkey, mashed potatoes (another of Bethany’s favorites), and green beans. As we sat down at the table, things were so peaceful. So I calmly explained that the rules were changing and told her that she would need to eat her turkey and green beans before she could be excused from the table. We talked about why those foods are good for us. That night she didn’t even fight it! She ate her potatoes first, of course, and stalled a little, but then she ate the rest of her food! Thursday and Friday were a little tougher, but in the end she ate her food before I was done with the dishes. My favorite quote came at lunch on Thursday. Normally she eats the same combo, cheese, a tortilla, and fruit, for lunch everyday. But that day I put turkey and green beans on her plate and explained the new rule again.  She exclaimed “but it’s lunchtime!”  Yep, mommy is messing with the preschooler’s routine.  But she ate it!  Three days and counting!

On To the Next Generation

Carrying the lesson from my previous post forward, what are we teaching our girls about food?  I think we have the tools we need to teach healthy eating habits: knowledge of healthy foods and portions, money and desire to buy and prepare healthy foods, and willingness to set good examples.  Did I miss anything?  Of course, we are still honing our tools.

But what about eating out?  I grew up on the extreme of eating out maybe 4 times a year.  Bethany is growing up on the opposite extreme of eating out 4 times a week.  My family dined out to have fun.  We dine out now for convenience. Obviously, I know we have to cut back.  But how do we handle eating out? Should it be a common thing?  That is not physically healthy.  Should it be rare? What are good reasons to dine out?  How often is it ok?  How do we teach our kids to handle eating out so they don’t grow up craving chicken nuggets and French fries when they are sad or stressed or want to celebrate something?

And what about junk food?  My family rarely had junk food in the house, but now we almost always have junk food in ours.  That has scaled back considerably since I’ve been on Weight Watchers again, but I’ve discovered Hershey Kisses are low in points, if only due to their size, so I keep them in the house all the time. I noticed the other day that they have become our regular afternoon snack, coupled with a granola bar.  I don’t want to banish junk food from the house, lest it becomes forbidden fruit, but we shouldn’t need a chocolate fix every day either.

So how do we avoid eating out and junk food becoming an issue for our kids?  Oh wait, I know that one! We need to develop a healthy attitude ourselves and then model it for the kids.  Now what is a healthy attitude?
Hmmm….

It’s Not a Party Without…

I had an interesting conversation with my sister the other day.  She had read my “About Me” page, and the part where I list out my favorite foods rung a bell for her. “I love Sonic, and Pepsi, and chocolate, and ice cream, and mounds of mashed potatoes and…”  She thought “Sonic, ding! Pepsi, ding! Chocolate, ding!” and so on.  All of those things have been comfort foods for her too.  Being 8 years older than me, she remembers life when we were little and our parents had no money.  Eating out (always at Sonic) was rare, and considered a family fun night.  Pepsi, Ding Dongs, and ice cream were *the* special treat we sometimes had, and always went together.  And we only had mashed potatoes with a roast, and that was the special/celebratory meal that mom cooked for us.  These all represent what we remember as “Party Night at the Readers!”  There’s one mystery solved.  I love those foods because there are many happy memories associated with them.  So now to overcome the thought that it is the food that makes me happy and remember that it is the time with family and the fun we have that warms my heart.  And that true happiness only comes from the hope and love I have found in Christ.

First Fitness Goals

In the absence of Bob & Jillian, I decided I should set a couple of fitness goals at the gym to motivate myself.  They are probably laughable to anyone who knows anything about fitness, but I have to start somewhere, right?  Baby Steps…

#1) Finish a mile in under 15 minutes.  A good walking pace for me is a 17:30 minute mile.  It gets my heart pumping and any faster would require a jog.  But I remember from high school that a 15 minute mile is a basic fitness test, and I remember that I barely passed that test.  So earlier this week I did a 16:30 minute mile and last night I slashed my time to 15:19!

#2) Leg raises - 3 reps of 10.  The equipment at the gym requires me to hold up my body weight while trying to pull my knees up to my chest using my abdominal muscles.  So far, I can do 3 reps of 2.

I feel pretty good about my leg strength.  After all, they’ve been moving my 200 pound body around for years.  So after the treadmill, I do the circuit of machines that work my arms, back and abs.

Thank you, Biggest Loser, for giving me the courage and motivation to go to the gym!  If they can do it, so can I!  And if I can do it, so can you!!!

6 Hours Later…

So, 6 hours after my last post, I felt much, much better.  Bekah finally fell asleep, then she woke up and I fed her.  Bethany was already awake so we loaded up and went to the gym.  I skipped the solid food Bekah should have had because we were running out of time before the childcare closed.  Al got off work and met us there.  We worked out for an hour and then decided to get Wendy’s for dinner, but we both made healthy choices, making the meal just a little more than a normal meal at home.  I went from feeling lethargic, nauseous and depressed to energetic, healthy and happy.  Weird.  I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed exercise altering my mood that much.

What is wrong with me?

I have been stress eating this week.  Al is working long hours to hit a major deadline before Christmas on top of us both having a lot of commitments.  Bekah decided to stop napping in her bed and sleeping through the night the last two weeks.  The duplex seems to be getting smaller, and I’m stressing over when we will get to move and where we will live next.  So, we hit Wendy’s and McDonalds because I didn’t feel like cooking.  Then Applebee’s last night so we could have a little fun time with Daddy before he had to get back to work.  And Chinese food with friends on Sunday and Italian today with my girlfriends, all of whom we haven’t seen as much lately.

But why?  Why is food so comforting to me?  Why don’t I deal with the stress and pressure in more productive ways?  On the upside, my gym finally opened its new facility and now offers inexpensive childcare.  So a couple of days this week, I “escaped” to the gym.  But now I am out of excuses not to get to the gym and pressuring myself to make the time.  But timing a trip to the gym while childcare is available when Bethany and Rebekah are not eating or sleeping (or supposed to be sleeping) is proving difficult.

I struggle with depression, and I feel myself slipping.  So here I am, forcing myself to post on the blog asking for accountability, as I listen to Bekah cry and fight another nap.  And when her nap is over I’m going to feed her, get Bethany up and head to the gym again.  I will pick up and continue on after all my lapses this week.

Oh no, I better get my workout clothes into the dryer if I want to use them in an hour…

Eating Healthy and Travel

I just realized this is timely for many people who are traveling this upcoming holiday, but it’s on my mind because we just got back from a weekend trip.

Travel is another hard area for me.  I love traveling and part of the fun for me is eating out and picking up gas station snacks.  Plus when we are visiting friends or family, I don’t have control of the menu.  Here are a few tips I have picked up and ideas I’ve had (though we won’t talk about well I implement them):

• Water, drink more, and buy it if you have to. *Anecdote below
• Take snacks with you.  This trip, I took along granola bars and Hershey kisses (the lowest point chocolate I’ve found).  It definitely helps me with the temptation to buy candy bars.
• Take healthy food with you.  I take cereal that I always eat at home.  I hate using points on breakfast.  I don’t love most breakfast foods, and the ones I do like are high in calories and fat.  Depending on the length of the trip, I pack a cooler and take sandwich stuff, carrots and fruit along too.  That gets complicated with replenishing ice and if you are stopping at more than one location, but sometimes it’s worth it.
• McDonald’s Ice Cream Cones.  Yummy, low-cal, low-fat, inexpensive and the cone seems to cleanse the palate so that you are not left craving more.  We get plain sundaes for Bethany because they are less messy.  When we’ve been on the road a long time and nothing else sounds good, these hit the spot.
• Grilled chicken sandwiches and salad.  I like Wendy’s (their Grilled Chicken sandwich has a low point Honey Mustard sauce) but most fast places have these now.  Just make sure to get reduced fat dressing and small salads that are primarily vegetables, not fattened up with cheese, eggs, bacon and other yummy things.
• Control your portions.  When you don’t have control over what you are eating, try to control your portion sizes and load up if there are fruit or vegetable dishes.  Now, when it comes to my grandma’s chicken noodles and mashed potatoes, this advice flies right out the window.
• Set yourself up for success.  Do some research on your route, and plan your stops.  Beware of what you buy at the grocery store ahead of time, trying to save money.  I have shot myself in the foot by buying snacks that I know we’d like on the road, disregarding the fact that they are high calorie/high fat foods I wouldn’t keep in the house.  A bag of chips might be cheaper than French fries but it’s isn’t any better for my diet. :P
• Discipline and Endurance.  I need more of this when traveling then I do at home.  There is so much more temptation driving down the road then there is at home, where I would have to load up the girls and seek it out.  Decide before you go to make good decisions, and plan a couple of splurges if it will make the trip more fun for you. ;)

Feel free to chime in with your own favorite ways to cut calories or dollars while traveling.

*Buying water – I personally feel compelled to buy something if I stop at a gas station to use their restroom.  My mom says she taught me this because we usually traveled on minor highways and several times she saw signs at the gas stations that said “If you want us to be here the next time you are, please buy something”.  (That’s probably not a direct quote, but you get the idea.)  For years I bought a Pepsi, even if I didn’t really want one.  It finally occurred to me that if I really wanted water, it is ok to pay for a bottle.  At some point my health needs to matter more than money.  When I travel with Al, we try to utilize rest areas to avoid extra expenses, or fill up the gas tank instead of buying snacks.

Breastfeeding and My Weight Loss – Totally Cheating

***Disclaimer: Every woman is different.  If you choose to breastfeed, you will have to balance your individual needs.  My attitude on this topic is totally derived from my current experience with my own diet.***

In my case, losing weight while breastfeeding is incredibly easy.  My status as “milk cow” raises my metabolism significantly.  (I am very grateful for my supply.  Finally, my body excels at something physical!)  When I decided to go back on Weight Watchers a couple of months ago, my friend recommended that I be aware of cutting back my diet too drastically for fear of jeopardizing my milk supply.  So I tracked my diet for a couple of weeks once my weight had stabilized, just to see how much I was consuming.  Then I cut back a little until I started losing 1-2 pounds a week.  Since that’s a healthy amount to be losing, and my milk supply is good, I am comfortable with the amount of points I am using.

So, just for fun, I checked to see how many points I should be allowed at my current weight if I weren’t breastfeeding.  Are you ready?  24 daily, plus 35 weekly flex points.  How much am I actually allowing myself?  50 daily, plus 35 flex points.  This is why I’m totally cheating.  This is also why I am not going to feel guilty about eating some of that leftover cake.

Now talk to me in 7 months when I am done nursing…  That is going to be one hard transition!

Can I Afford It? Food as a Status Symbol

I grew up in a family of 6.  My dad was a pastor and my mom was a stay-at-home mom.  We had no money.  Really the churches provided houses and we always had food and clothes and school supplies and things beyond our basic needs.  But junk food and eating out were not in the budget.  Then my oldest brother started working a part-time job, and with some of his hard earned money, he would bring home Ding-Dongs and Pepsi.  Or Ice Cream and Pepsi.  And, oh my, what a party we had!  Somewhere along the line, I developed a mindset that the only reason we didn’t eat out or buy junk food was because we couldn’t afford it.

So when I started making money, food became a status symbol to me.  I could afford to eat out or buy donuts and Pepsi for breakfast on my way to school.  It reminds me of times past, when being overweight was a sign that a man could provide himself and his family as much food as they wanted.  Overcoming this attitude is difficult for me.

This is a double whammy issue for me too.  When we talk about our budget and say we don’t have any more money to eat out, it stirs my emotions and makes me want to eat out all that much more.  I don’t even want to think about how much of our credit card debt came from eating out when we thought we could afford it.

It should not matter if we have money to eat out.  For the sake of my health, I can not afford to eat out all the time or keep a lot of junk food in the house.

Why It Seems Normal: Eating Out

When I was in high school, I worked at Wendy’s.  When I was in college, I waitressed at a steakhouse.  I saw a constant stream of people eating hamburgers, fried chicken, French fries, steaks, ribs, “Texas-sized” plates of yummy food.  Eating out seems very normal to me.  Doesn’t everyone eat out every day? What? No?  Huh. Weird.

And then there’s the Gilmore Girls.  Gilmore Girls is a fun TV show featuring a mother-daughter relationship.  These two beautiful, skinny women are portrayed as eating out every day and lacking basic cooking skills.  They eat pop tarts for breakfast and frequent the local diner.  Eventually the writers acknowledge this impossibility by having other characters commenting “how can anyone eat like that”, “they should be 500 pounds”, and “they must have incredible metabolism”.  There is also an odd dynamic with the diner owner, who chooses a very healthy diet for himself, but serves his costumers typical diner food.  He often tries to discourage the Gilmores from ordering hamburgers, French fries and other unhealthy food on his menu.

Not that the writers of Gilmore Girls are alone.  The media bombards us with food.  Movies and TV shows of skinny-mini people on the go, whose “important” lives do not leave them time to eat healthy.  Commercials for restaurants serving every yummy food imaginable.  But then they tell us we are only beautiful if we are a size 2 dress.  No wonder so many of us have issues with food and body image.  All I can say is Praise God for the Biggest Loser.  It’s about time someone addressed these issues so boldly. But that’s a topic for another night.

Because eating out was so normal to me, imagine my surprise when I found out that a regular size combo at all of my favorite fast food places contains an entire day’s worth of calories and fat.  And my favorite DQ Medium Blizzard is almost an entire day’s worth of calories and fat all by itself.  Crazy. That is Crazy.  Needless to say, I have had to realize that eating out should not be a regular part of my diet.

*Note: I have not given up fast food and Blizzards entirely.  We seems to go through phases where we eat out a lot and then phases where we don't eat out much.  It's one of my harder issue, both from a healthy diet view and also from a financial aspect.

Why I Love the Weight Watchers System

I should clarify.  I am not officially on Weight Watchers.  I use their calculations for points and track everything in a spreadsheet.  

I love the WW system for several reasons:

• Some people seem to naturally know how much is too much food.  I have never been one of them. WW gives me a framework for deciding how much to eat every day.  
• I never knew that 3 mounds of mashed potatoes (~ 3 cups) was not “1 serving”.  Calculating points makes me very aware of standard serving sizes.
• What? I can’t eat McDonald’s for lunch AND Wendy’s for dinner? Using points encourages me to eat lower point meals before or after a high point meal.  *See anecdote below
• Adding points to 25 is a lot easier than tracking calories to 1500 in a day, especially with my (self-diagnosed) dyslexia.

Other good elements of the official program:

• Accountability – Weekly meetings give you an opportunity to talk about how the week went and receive encouragement that helps you keep going.  I have a friend that’s been through WW, and I made her my accountability partner just by bringing up the topic whenever we happen to be together, which is often because our kids play really well together.
• Official Weekly Weigh-ins – This helps keep you off the scale all day every day and alleviates stress.  After the first couple of weeks, I realized my weight fluctuates during the day and throughout the week.  But only the official weekly weight counts, so I stopped obsessing all week when it didn’t really matter.  I picked a day of the week to always take my official weight, and that’s the only number that I keep in my records.
• Tips and Recipes – Again, this is where my friend substituted for the official program.  She is really great because she helped me brainstorm foods I like (have I mentioned I’m *cough* kinda picky…?)  and helped me figure out how they could work within WW.  I’m guessing WW recipes wouldn’t be too helpful to me, because I don’t like cooking and I don’t like to try new foods.  I know, this is something I need to work on still.

* One of the first weeks I was serious about my weight loss, my mother-in-law came for a visit.  It came time for supper on the first day of the week, and I had used all my points earlier when we had eaten out for lunch.  I was hungry again, but I didn’t want to blow my diet so early in the week, so I decided to be creative. My mother-in-law still teases me about this “meal”:  

     ½ can of green beans (0 points)

     Mustard (0 points) spread over 2 slices of bread (½ point) then rolled up

     16 oz of tea sweetened with Splenda (0 points)

In my defense, the mustard rolls were a snack my brother Phil created when we were kids, so it was a sweet memory for me.

My Weight-Loss Journey So Far

  

May 2009

Weight: 219 lbs

Dress size: 18W (a tight fit)

This was the most I’ve ever weighed, outside of pregnancy.  

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September 2009

Weight: 199 lbs

Total Loss: 20 lbs

Dress size: Still 18W, but very loose fit

These were taken right before I “fell off the wagon”.  But a few weeks later I became pregnant, so I’m glad that I wasn’t on a strict diet.

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October 2010

Weight: 189 lbs
Total Loss: 30 lbs
Dress size: 16 (Misses again!)
During my 2nd pregnancy, I only gained about 20 lbs.  Within a week of delivery (via C-Section), I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight!  Over the summer, I lost another 10 lbs.

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Next Goal:

A couple of weeks ago, I made a New Year's Resolution to lose 10 more pounds by New Year's Day, which was 10 weeks away.  I've lost 3 lbs in 2 weeks so far!

My Weight-Gain Journey

1995, Size 8

I have never felt thin or graceful or athletic.  Growing up, I dreaded P.E.  I didn’t enjoy walking, much less running, and I wasn’t very good at sports.  I wasn’t overweight until college, but even as a size 8 in high school, I thought I was fat.  I know that is crazy.  Looking at my pictures from back then, I can see I was thin.  But when I already felt fat, it was easy to not care about 5 more pounds, or 5 more pounds, or 5 more…etc.  When I was 19 years old and dating Al, I was a size 10.  When I was 20, my wedding dress was a size 14.

1997, Size 10

When I was 24, I quit my restaurant job and gained 10 lbs in a month due to decreased activity.  That put me over 190 lbs and I was a size 16.  I had my first baby at age 29, lost all my baby weight in the first 6 months, but gained a lot of it back when I stopped nursing.  That put me around 215-220, size 18 Women’s.  That was when I heard a friend's weight-loss story, and with her help and inspiration, I started my weight-loss journey.

Top Picture: Dancing with my Dad at my brother's wedding. It was a great day! (Not to mention the best hair day I've ever had, hehehe.)

Bottom Picture: Al & I when we were first dating.  Notice my dark blue nail polish? You have to love fads.