Obviously I spent too much time working on that photo, hahaha– I forgot to take a photo of Jerry before he left for work, so I did. I even downloaded the Star Wars fonts (*sigh* I can imagine the targeted ads I’m going to see now for Star Wars!
Jerry and I had a good talk about weight loss today and he brought up some very insightful thoughts about trying to lose weight in general and the weekly weigh-ins. I’ve thought about it before, but what he said seems to make better sense with a simpler explanation. So here’s what he wrote about today…
Welcome back.
Every week it seems like I have a hint of weight loss. And that always seems like an excuse for my slow weight loss, but I don’t think it is. It’s more awareness and I’m learning something new all the time. So let’s just rip off the band-aid, 190.6. That’s up 0.6 from last week.
I did pretty well, or so I thought. I’ve been feeling heavier for the last few days and was a bit worried about what I was actually doing as far as my diet. But something dawned on me last night, and I think this could be true with almost anyone who does a weekly weigh-in.
While I always feel good during the week, I tend to spend a few days before weigh-ins trying to eat better because I don’t want to see the gains on the scale. So if I can do it a few days before a weigh-in, why can’t I do it every day? Why can’t I make this a lifestyle change as opposed to treating it as a temporary thing to meet the number I want to see?
On Sundays and Mondays, I’m stressed about weigh-ins and it doesn’t have to be. That said, I’ll be making another change in my eating and approach this week and we’ll see how well I do.
Also, I’m a firm believer that old habits die hard. Habits are similar to Carpathian Vigo from Ghostbusters 2. He was poisoned, stabbed, shot, hanged, stretched, disembowelled, dragged and quartered. Before dying, he said: “Death is a door, time is only a window.” I’ll be back.’ Those are my habits. LOL. Bad habits die when I work on them and then come back after a while.
I talk about bad habits because I have a couple. One standout this week was eating when I’m not hungry. “There are starving children inside.” [insert third world country here]’. Every kid has heard it growing up. Every child. As an adult, it turned into not wanting to waste food.
So I eat everything. Even when I’m not hungry, I still eat just because I don’t want to waste food. That’s stupid. So, a new way of thinking about it: don’t eat if I’m not hungry. This is definitely going to be the hardest thing. More than portion control. More than healthy eating. More than eating slowly. The hardest part will be eating when my body tells me I should and listening to it.
So I have my work cut out for me. Wish me luck.
I felt bad when Jerry said he was stressed out on Sunday and Monday because of the weigh in on Tuesday. I wanted this to be a fun series for her. I told him we can drop this series so he doesn’t think that way, but he wants to continue it. Hopefully, with the awareness he had about it last night, he can remember it this week.
I *try* not to have that mindset before my weigh-ins, and I’ve gotten a lot better about it. At first I was careful not to eat too much sodium the day before the weigh-in and not to eat anything too heavy etc, it’s pointless in the long run. It works great if you need to lose a few pounds in a week, but if you’re working on losing a lot of weight, it’s much less stressful to just make better choices every day rather than trying to “catch up” on the scale.
I’ve eaten really well this week and I hope to see that on a big scale tomorrow, but that’s not enough to stress about today worrying about sodium and food volume. I made a vegan version of chicken paprikash for dinner tonight and I had to keep adding salt to it, for a second, I thought. but I won’t worry about it. I didn’t overeat and the ingredients were healthy, so if I gain a little water weight overnight, it will go away in no time if I continue with healthy habits.
Jerry has always had trouble listening to his body’s hunger/fullness signals, so I hope this week goes well for him.