Finding My Mojo (Part 2) and January Joiners

To continue from where my last post left off, a quick summary…(quick for me anyway).

I was fat. I’m not going to sugar coat it. I was fat, not overweight, nor was I pleasantly plump or ‘could stand to lose a few pounds’. I look at my ‘before’ picture from my last post and the first thing that comes to mind is someone stuck a bicycle pump in my mouth and blew me up. (I have found that being brutally honest with myself helps keep destructive behavior at bay.) It’s not being negative, it’s reality. It is what it is. So I was fat. I decided something had to be done. I felt like crap and I was miserable. I started participating in a weight-loss challenge at school and I joined Weight Watchers all in the same week. This was when Weight Watchers was just rolling out the Points Plus program. I found a meeting I liked, a leader that was supportive and was on my way.

And now you’re caught up to where I left off yesterday. The first month of the program was brutal. It was a complete change in eating habits. I am a very picky person. I don’t like most vegetables. Cooked veggies generally displease me. I don’t think they should be mushy and melt in your mouth. Veggies need to be crisp and fresh.  In the last two years I’ve learned to eat broccoli and carrots steamed as long as they aren’t too cooked. More recently I’ve decided I can tolerate onions in moderation and only if they are mixed in with something else. Most of the fruits and veggies I do eat are in the raw form. I don’t think fruits and vegetables should be mixed so I don’t eat fancy salads that have fruit on them. Apples in salad make no sense to me. I can tolerate shrimp, lobster and crab; but I abhor most seafood. Fish tastes fishy to me and my palate cannot stand it. My aunt and uncle have gotten me to try tilapia, which I can usually choke down as it’s not too  ‘fishy’ of a  fish. I can’t do salmon. It tastes like the ocean. Needless to say sushi is completely out. I have many other food issues as I’m sure you’ll discover if you stick with me for a while.

Needless to say the whole “healthy eating” thing was a shock to my system. I stuck with it however and tried my best. Forgive the expression and for lack of a better term, I became a food Nazi. I worked program like my life depended on it. I suppose in a lot of ways it did. I ate my daily points, I got all of my healthy checks in (minus the oil. I never used it before Weight Watchers so I opted to not start using it), I did not allow myself to have ‘snacks’ that did not consist of something healthy, and I made sure I went to the gym at least 5 days a week. I was a little out of control to be honest. When I made up my mind that this is what I wanted to do, I gave it 120% which may have been a little overboard. I didn’t have amazing numbers on the scale. It was slow going. I started to get frustrated when I’d only lose a pound or .6. I talked to Debi about it, who at this point had become a friend in addition to being my leader. She reassured me that 1-2 pounds a week is average, healthy weight loss. She reiterated the fact that any loss, even .2 was still a loss and needed to be celebrated.

Then people started to notice. They would look at me funny for a week or so before asking , “Are you losing weight?” Upon investigation I discovered a lot of people are uncertain of asking a woman if she’s been losing weight because they aren’t sure how she will take it. I don’t know any woman personally that would be offended by that question. It made me feel good to know people were noticing and fueled my desire for change. Bored with the elliptical at the gym I stepped on the treadmill determined to run. After I flew off said tread mill the first time, I pushed on and started to really run. (for more about my beginning running check here)

I also started lifting weights. To be honest I felt pretty bad-ass. I may not have looked it, but at that time it was all about how I felt.  I was still overweight and out of shape, but I was getting there. The image of myself in my mind had changed from the Oompa Loompa to a girl who was working hard at change. Every once in a while I’d catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I’d see that sad, insecure girl peering back at me, but I would close my eyes until she went away. I was saying good-bye to that girl and didn’t want to see her again. (Just as a side-note, I really wish there were areas of my gym where you don’t have to stare at yourself in the mirror while you’re working out.). I even started smiling at people and making eye contact and walking around the gym like I had a right to be there.

Our three months of the weight-loss challenge was ending and once again we found ourselves at the YMCA for our final weigh-in and body-fat measurement. As a team we did really well. We had all lost some weight and some body fat. Yay team! I myself was pleased as I had set a private goal for myself and had achieved it. My hard work was paying off and I was down 25 pounds and had gone from 47% body fat to 31! It still wasn’t where I wanted to be, but it was a very good start. More people were noticing my efforts and commenting on it. The support and the cheers and compliments really helped to keep me motivated.

I continued to attend my meetings religiously every Wednesday no matter what. My mother passed away at the beginning of May in 2011. It was a very hard time for me, but I still continued to attend my meetings as at that point, Weight Watchers was the one thing I still had control over when everything else was very much out of control. (PS There will be a post coming soon about my mother and dragonflies so stay tuned). I ran my first 5k in November of 2011 and did better than I had hoped! I finally reached my goal weight, coming in two pounds below my goal of 135 pounds the week after I ran my 5K and 2 days after my 35th birthday. I had lost a total of 56 pounds!

Here is my “after” photo:

I really wish I still look like that.

Throughout my journey every once in a while people would ask me, “When are you going to eat normal again? You are so strict with yourself”. I kept answering, “This is a lifetime change.” They would respond with “A lifetime of denying yourself? No thanks”.  I shook it off at the time, but I really was being way to strict with myself. At that time I wouldn’t even eat a piece of chicken if it had barbecue sauce on it because I didn’t want to spend the points on sauce. I had also eaten the same lunch every day for almost a year. Two pieces of low-calorie bread with Boars Head low sodium chicken breast, mustard and lettuce, 20 baby carrots and 14 fat-free Pringle’s. I also would have a bottle of water. I had been an avid Pepsi drinker prior to joining Weight Watchers. I am talking at least a 6 pack total in one day. Breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, when I’d get home from work, with dinner, and before bed. It was bad. I had switched to water on program because I really coud not stand most diet sodas. Iced tea was too hard to drink at work because to me iced tea has to be fresh and brewed. I can’t stand the canned kind or the fountain kind. (Eventually I discovered Diet Dr. Pepper so all was right with the world).

I started thinking maybe people had a point. I really was being too strict with myself. I vowed to loosen the reigns a little when I reached lifetime status and had my 6 extra maintenance points every day. I stayed strong through the holidays amazingly enough. I loosened the reigns a little so I could have my aunts stuffing of course, but skipped desert and all the extra goodies that come along with the holidays. Then in January something changed, I think that’s when I either started to lose, or completely lost my mojo.

At my meeting this last Wednesday Debi and I were talking about January Joiners. She asked me if I had been a January Joiner. I very proudly told her I was not a JJ and had actually joined the week before Christmas. January Joiners are resolution people for those of you who may or may not know. These are the people generate sales at sporting goods stores in January.  These are the people who always have the best intentions and vow to lose weight and get in shape for the new year. They join Weight Watchers, they start shopping the healthy aisles of the grocery stores, they join other weight loss programs (both online and in person), they go buy home gym equipment and hand weights,  and they clog the gyms. For about 2-3 months. Then the resolutions slowly fade away and real life takes over. I can freely say this as for one thing it’s true, and for another thing I admit I have been a January Joiner in the past. Maybe not to that extreme, but I’ve thought I’d start working out, or change my hair color, or stop drinking soda. Everyone makes resolutions but according to some of the sites I checked online, statistically on average only 8% of the people who make resolutions actually follow through and satisfy those resolutions. That’s kind of  a scary statistic. That’s why I don’t make resolutions anymore, I know personally I won’t follow through.

I am not going to blame January Joiners, but I am going to finally admit to myself and everyone else that I let myself use the January Joiners as an excuse. I went to the gym as I had been doing for the last year and walked into the sea of chaos that had become my gym. Normally the gym is a nice quiet retreat for me where I can push my body and ask it to do things it normally resists doing. I can always get a cardio machine, the classes aren’t so crowded you are going to step on someone (except for some of the yoga classes) and although I may have to wait for a weight machine, it is not for long or off-putting.  I kid you not when I say there was not one piece of cardio equipment available. Even the row of torturous stair-climbers that are generally sitting abandoned were all being utilized. There were children running around willy-nilly, people were standing around socializing while they waited for a machine and the noise level was almost intolerable. I turned around and walked out.

I vowed to go back in a week and see what the situation was. A week later it seemed almost more crowded if that was even possible. I went to a class I normally love attending and ended up so frustrated by rude, inconsiderate people. It was difficult to get a set of weights, people put their steps almost on top of mine instead of allowing for space for movement, and then had the nerve to complain there wasn’t enough equipment for everyone in the class and they were scrounging for mats and weights. Normally there is plenty of equipment when the fair-weather-gym-goers aren’t clogging the gym.

I will never understand why people will waste all that money trying to follow through on their resolutions and then just give up. If I’m going to invest my time and my money you bet I will be making it worth my while! Needless to say I became very frustrated and discouraged and apparently to spite myself , I stopped going to the gym. I promised myself I’d go back when the January Joiners were gone, but by then I started letting life get in my way, where previously I had worked around life’s little inconsistencies.

I had also stopped tracking my food (I fully believe I was so successful on the program because I tracked everything that went in my mouth), and was allowing myself a lot of leniency when it came to my food choices. I wasn’t eating nearly as bad as I had before, but my portion sizes were probably bigger what they should have been (I was also no longer weighing or measuring my food-I was convinced I had done it for so long I could eyeball it). I allowed myself more snacks and without tracking points, I was also eating more than my daily points allowance and my weekly points as well.

After I had run my first half-marathon (PF Chang’s Rock and Roll 1/2 Marathon), my body was so sore (not having run that far before), I sat on my ass for a week “recovering”. Then one week became two and then three. I struggled to get back into the swing of running when the inaugural Phoenix Marathon came up in March. It was the first year and they only had a half-marathon and a 10k. I wasn’t going to participate due to money constraints,  but an opportunity came up and I took it. I really struggled on that run and my foot was starting to hurt. By this time I was about 10 pounds over my goal weight.

During that run I promised myself I’d get under control again and take that 10 pounds off. Running was so much harder with the extra weight, even if it was only 10 pounds. I felt like I had bricks strapped to my feet.  I was in so much pain from my foot/Achilles/ankle/whatever thingie,  after the Phoenix half I sat on my butt again for 3 weeks. Then it got hot. It’s Arizona. Hot is an understatement. I would break out in a sweat just walking down the stairs.  I had no desire to run, nor did I want to go back to the gym to voluntarily sweat, even though it was 3 months past the January Joiners’ expiration date.

My mojo was gone. My motivation, my desire, my drive; all kaput. In October last year, I started running again with the motivation of the Phoenix Marathon. Although I’m running a lot more now, I still haven’t returned to the gym. I feel like I run so much I don’t want to ‘waste’ time at the gym. Not that the gym would be a waste of time, but I’m afraid the gym will deter my running. I know that makes no sense what-so-ever and I really am trying to sort it out in my head. Plus it’s January again and all the “resolutionists” are swarming.

I wasn’t going to weigh-in when I went to my meeting on Wednesday. I even signed in as a visitor and went and sat down. Something made me get up and get out my weight tracker and weigh in, even though I was wearing my favorite fuzzy socks, my heavy sweat pants and my Nike jacket. It was not pretty. I gritted my teeth, squeezed my eyes shut and dejectedly walked back to my seat. Debi said not a word. That’s why she’s a great leader and a good friend. She knew I’d be harder on myself and I wouldn’t need a lecture or a pep talk. During the meeting I had a long talk with myself. Silently of course.

As a lifetime member I only have to weigh in once a month. I have to stop doing that and pretend I’m on program as a regular member again. I am too far away from where I want to be.

Okay it is January, but this is not a resolution. This is more like resolve. I need to get my act together and find my mojo again. I am going to keep myself more accountable by weighing in every week and not using the once a month thing as a crutch. When I do weigh in once a month and see the numbers have gone up I tend to say “Oh, I’m retaining water”, “I just ran”, “It’s that time of the month”, etc. Now comes the brutal truth. I did not gain weight this week because I’m retaining water. I’m up on the scale because I’ve been binge eating chocolate covered marshmallow santa’s and Reece’s Peanut Butter Trees. (I love those guys).

I’m taking baby steps to get back to where I want to be. I’m not looking at how far I have to go to get back to goal, I am still holding on to how far I’ve already come and what I’ve accomplished.  I will try not to be a food Nazi again. I may have been too strict with myself in the beginning and that’s why I gave myself permission to stop tracking and splurge a little. I know weight-loss is a lifetime process. I don’t want to be a yo-yo person who goes up and down for the rest of my life; but like Debi said, I’m not ‘cured’. I like food and I like to eat. That won’t change. I didn’t get the way I was because I binged on broccoli and carrots. The rational part of me knows all these things, has known them since I strayed; but I’m having a tough time convincing the rest of myself…

Now I just have to find time in my running schedule to start weights again. Core strength will make me a better runner I know. I just have to figure out a way to deal with the January Joiners for a little while.