Week #58 - 117.0
Our Weight Watchers leader-extraordinaire, Kim, has recently been teaching us about the domino effect...how one small bad choice leads to another and then another and another until our whole day of trying to eat healthy and stay within our points is shot.
But the converse is true also...one small good choice leads to another and another until we've made it through the entire day eating well and staying within our points. String enough of those days together and you get a week where you've lost weight/maintained, whatever your goal is.
I already knew that, for me, starting my day with a run or walk is a GREAT way to get going on another day of healthy eating and living and maintaining my desired weight. And I almost always do this, 6 days a week...thank You, God, for the ability and opportunity!!!
Kim's first "good-domino" of the day is to eat her Good Health Guidelines: these are the things Weight Watchers nutritionists have determined are the minimum required to feed our bodies the nutrition they need for optimum health. Weight Watchers point system is based on this...it's all very fascinating!
Anyhow, here they are, in case you're interested:
- 2 to 3 servings of dairy
- minimum of 5 servings of fruits and vegetables up to 8 servings...with fruit servings equal to or under vegetable servings
- 1 to 2 servings of lean protein
- 6 to 8 glasses of WATER a day
- whole grains...it doesn't give us a recommended number of servings
- 2 teaspoons of healthy oils
- activity...not going back and forth from the tv to the kitchen...some kind of working-out = )
So she told us that if she's craving a treat food, she'll make sure she's checked off all of her Good Health Guidelines (GHG) before she eats her treat. I've started making that be a focus for my days and it's AMAZING what a difference it makes!
Kim's been talking to us about the GHGs for over a year but for some reason, it just now clicked for me. I really do love how Weight Watchers is so focused on good health and helping us to be a good healthy weight!
Another little insight I became aware of after my weigh-in this week: I can see an aspect in myself that I imagine is present in people who suffer from anorexia: I feel like a failure if I don't see a lower number on the scale every time I weigh in. Not so much at home because I'm used to my weight fluctuating on my nightly weigh-ins. In fact, if my weight is up but my body fat percentage is down, that actually makes me happy!
But for the weigh-ins at the Weight Watchers meetings, somehow I feel like a failure if my weight is higher than last week's...even though last week's was lower than it should have been (remember the mega-sweating episode after my run?!). I feel like I'm letting myself down, letting down the person who is weighing me, and letting down all my WW-buds who are cheering me on to keep maintaining.
Now my logical head knows that there's NO WAY I can keep weighing less and less and less each time I weigh in. I can't keep losing until I die! But my heart feels sad when I don't weigh less and less and less...does that make sense to anyone?
I so enjoyed my minimum body fat - maximum muscle days...I loved the way I felt, the way I looked, the way I ran, the energy and strength I had. I guess I've conveniently forgot about sticking to that strict way of eating with very little room for "treats"...hahaha
Anyhow, I guess because I feel like that is my optimal healthy body, this body right now feels fat...or at least pudgy = ( And maybe that's why I so enjoy seeing lower and lower numbers on the scale and a higher number upsets me...because I know lower and lower numbers leads to feeling the way I felt when I weighed 98-100 pounds.
But I know I'm not going to strive to return to that weight. I think my WW leader would have something to say about that! hahahaha
And I can hear voices out there saying, "the number on the scale doesn't matter! it's whether you are healthy or not!". I don't disagree...but I don't agree either. I do think a number on a scale CAN give you useful information and is a good indicator to track in trying to live a healthy life.
I had a friend call me this week to get information about healthy weights for small, medium and large framed women...generally speaking. In talking with her, I did point out that it's possible to weigh more than some "chart" says and still be very healthy...loads of muscle mass, for one thing! But if our wiggly-jiggly belly is distracting us while we work out, I'm here to say we're carrying excess fat on our body and we're not what I consider a healthy weight!
I've also seen women who were so proud of themselves for being able to lift a certain weight or run (slowly) a certain distance and were promoting themselves as healthy and at a healthy weight when they were really a good 50 pounds overweight.... fat pounds...the wiggly-jiggly kind, not total pounds.
I guess what I'm trying to say is we should use ALL the tools in our healthy-weight toolbox: the scale, the mirror, a food journal, body fat calibrations, a favorite pair of jeans, the time on the stopwatch, activity trackers, Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, etc., books, magazines, whatever motivates us to GET HEALTHY and STAY HEALTHY!
That's what I'm aiming to do for the rest of the life God gives me = )
