End of Week 8

Not good day, stuff going on beyond my control. What do you do?? I took a nap.

This morning's weigh-in was a good one but I just can't get excited about it..

28 Feb 2011: 204.5 lbs
21 Feb 2011: 206.0 lbs
14 Feb 2011: 205.5 lbs

so it took me 2 weeks to lose that 1 pound. meh.

Making Good Choices

Why the Gain??

Rather than losing any weight, I actually gained a half pound. I'm trying to keep myself accountable as to why I might have actually gone the wrong direction a little bit.

First of all, the past week I didn't do "Walk it Out" for most of the week/weekend before.. I was sick in bed from about Friday to Thursday this past week after Sean got released from Good Samaritan (we think I caught the flu somewhere). When I did feel better I tried to make up for it and did manage to get my walking in. I think I would have shown a bigger weight gain if I'd done nothing.

Along with the lack of exercise, my food choices weren't the best. I usually don't use my activity points or go in the hole if I can help it.

Thursday last week we had dinner at Starry Kitchen..


I thought I was doing OK but I got a wrap instead of a salad.. The "wrap" was a 13 inch flour tortilla which is about 10 points plus on its own!! Holy Cow.. I'm sticking with the salad from here on out.. That one mistake cost me a LOT of my accrued points.

Saturday I had a LOT of points left after going out to dinner at The Nickel.. (I ordered the 'eat your vegetables' without the mashed potatoes and it was still about 4 points plus (the buttermilk mashed potatoes would have cost about 15 points plus if I had allowed myself to have them). Since I had a bunch of points left over we headed to Big Man Bakes to get some minis.

I still don't know how many points the minis actually are.. but Sean weighed them at about 28g each. We guestimated them at 3 points plus.. I had 3. I was done for the day. I didn't use any activity points or weekly points. Still, that's about 9 points of minis vs. 3 servings of yogurt or.. 3 cups of cereal or 3 servings of Pop Chips or a tablespoon of guacamole and some chips, or a protein style In N Out burger. There's lots of things you can do with 9 points and I decided to treat myself to minis. Those are empty calories I just had.

Sunday night we had dinner at Urban Noodle which is like an Asian Fusion sort of place.. well it's a noodle place (not a Pho place) and I ordered Beef Chow Fun:

According to my tracker 1cup of Beef Chow Fun is 9 points plus.. so I measured that out onto my plate the best I could.. I also had a pork bun appetizer (which arrived after our dinner did) and that thankfully is about 5 points plus according to the tracker. I don't think what I had was very healthy but it was yummy.. and I have some leftover for today's lunch.

The weird thing is.. Sean & I would split the beef chow fun in the past (and have at least one appetizer) and I would manage to be full. I told Sean that I wasn't stuffed and I definitely could have eaten more.. so while the food is still good, having less of it didn't satisfy me and I blew all those points.

I think the thing for me would be to eat more salad or veggies and compliment that with some semi-bad choices. When I eat stuff like the chow fun, I should partner it with a side salad (assuming something like that is available) The good thing is Urban Noodle does have an Asian Chop Salad.. so I will give that a go next time..

and when I have something like 9 or 10 points left in the day I should probably lay off the mini cupcakes.. Once in a while is OK but having it be a 1/3 of my daily intake was not a good idea..

While I don't know if any of these choices were what contributed to me gaining weight it probably didn't help.. This whole thing is a learning experience though. I'm learning as I go.

End of Week 7

Another weigh in.. and I guess all that loss didn't completely stick..

02/21/11 206.0 lbs
02/14/11 205.5 lbs

gained 1/2 lbs.. better luck next week I guess.. well, at least I'm not sick or running a fever this week.

best results to date..

best results to date.., originally uploaded by meekorouse.

Scores for this morning's Walk it Out session.. Doubt I'll walk that many any time soon.. it was mostly an accident..

Ready to Wear

Supposedly I've lost about 14lbs (between being stressed and sick.. well, nothing's permanent til it is). I haven't noticed any viewable changes. My 38/30 jeans fit OK these days.. and by "OK" I mean I don't have to lay down on the bed anymore to put them on. I did try that with my 36/30s.. and well.. we won't be trying that anytime soon! =) (Maybe when I hit my 10% goal)

Today I did notice something. Being sick I'm out of clothes etc so I ended up having to wear one of my few 'girl-y' clothes.. my Merona Size 16 crop pants. I was able to put those on without sucking anything in. Yay! Honestly I don't remember ever being able to wear these (even when new) without sucking something in.. my gut or my butt. So hurray for the little things.

Yes, I'm still obese I know this.. but I'm getting there.. and if I keep up the 2 lbs a week thing I should be to my goal weight by December. Right now I'm on track to hit my 10% before May... Every little bit helps!

iPhone app bug

This morning I stumbled onto what I found out is a bug with the Weight Watchers iPhone app. It seems that when you update your weight on the iPhone it automatically puts you into maintenance when you set a new goal weight..

I'm very grateful that a good friend let me know what it was because I was having trouble finding anything about it on the message boards. Of course I wasn't looking for anything about a bug with the application.. It didn't make sense that I would get to eat MORE points after losing 14 lbs.. Once I went to the website and fixed it.. editing my goal (for the same 10% loss) it gave me an option to 'stay on maintenance' or 'keep losing' and sure enough, it had defaulted to maintenance so I changed my ticky box to 'losing' and it fixed my daily points right away:



Hurray! I'm not excited to eat less, but I'm certainly happy to keep on program the correct way. =)

End of Week 6

This past week has been a rough one.. what with my temporary weight gain last week, Sean's hospital stay at Good Samaritan and my getting sick (still sick but temp seems to have gone down). Weigh in today seems off.. in a good way.

14 Feb 2011: 205.5
07 Feb 2011: 211.6

So I got my 5% goal.. plus.. Here's a screen shot of my weight tracker graph:


I was given a choice of making a new ultimate goal or I could do a smaller goal of 10% (which would be 198). If you see along the top it says my daily points plus is 35! 29** (I've been doing 30 points plus) The weekly is always 49.. that's what I can use for special occasions or, like last night I only had 5 points plus left for dinner and my dinner was 6 points plus.

To be fair the only reason I had 5 points plus for dinner was because I'm sick and I had 3 cups of Trader Joe's Spiced Pear Cider throughout the day.. and a cup of that particular cider is 3 points plus... So yeah, I blew a 1/3 of my points plus on juice. Bummer. (FWIW I had oatmeal for breakfast & lunch)

I don't understand why my daily points plus value went up**.. Is it because of the wacky week I had last week?? Is it because I set a new goal so they 'zero' me out so to speak?? I honestly thought my daily points plus would have gone DOWN not up...

Granted losing 6lbs in a week is not considered a good thing.. I'm cutting myself some slack because honestly that 2lbs weight gain was water weight.. So assuming I didn't gain 2lbs in water weight I would have lost maybe 4lbs and not 6lbs.. or maybe not.

A good average is 1-2 lbs a week. My personal goal is to lose 2 lbs a week.. to lose more than that isn't considered a healthy rate by Weight Watchers from what I understand. Sean, (who says he will post here but has been otherwise occupied what with being in the hospital) has been averaging a pound a week. He did his weigh in and got a "you're losing too fast" warning..

If you look along the bottom of my photo it has my stats average to about 2.1 pounds. That may or may not be too much. This is one of the few times I wish I was able to talk to a consultant, so I'd know what the deal is with the points plus plan. Why do I have MORE points this week?? Should I stick with my 30? Is there a glitch in the online program? (ie: if I'd done an ultimate goal would that have kept my daily points plus rather than increasing?)

I guess that's what the message boards are for..

**EDIT: I found out this is a glitch with the iPhone app. I went back to the site and updated my goal and it gave me the option to 'stay in maintance' or 'keep losing' so I changed it. Suffice to say I won't be updating my weight loss with the iPhone app any time soon!


PS: Thanks to my friend Sam for the iPhone bug help & info!

End of Week 5

Another Monday! Today's weigh in was not so good. I know WHY I gained, but here's where the blogging gets a little too personal for me.

Let's just blame it on the Super Bowl and leave it at that?? =)

07 Feb 2011: 211.6
31 Jan 2011: 209.7

I'm just bummed b/c I was so close to that 5% goal.

Fruit!

One of the things I really like about the new Points Plus program is that I'm finally able to eat fruit w/out getting penalized (which is how I looked at it when on the old program).



Previously, a medium banana cost me 1.5 points.. on the NEW Points Plus program, it's 0 points plus

In fact most fruit and veggies are 0 and so I can have as much as I want! Yay!

Despite having as much fruit as I want, I still manage to only have around 4 servings of fruit a day. A banana here, a couple clementines there..

We live in downtown LA, so we have many options for hunting down our fruit. We get the bananas at Costco for like 3lbs for around $1.88; cuties we get at the Arts/District adjacent Fresh & Easy and the other fruit like apples (and more oranges!) we get at Superior for a crazy deal.

For last minute options we have the Central Market on Broadway, the Farmers' Market at City Hall on Thursdays and now Two Bits on 5th near Spring at the Alexandria.. The fruit at Two Bits is all organic, so the prices run a bit higher than Superior or Costco but it's a convenience too.

Hurray Fruit!

Walk it Out Rainbow

Walk it Out Rainbow, originally uploaded by meekorouse.

One of the features the Nintendo Wii game "Walk it Out" has are free spheres you can collect while walking to make a daily rainbow. SeanYoda actually collected all his color spheres on his first time out on the game today,

No, it's not a double rainbow.. but it's still neat!