It's official!

My WW weigh in card. Break on through to the Onederland!

Saboteur

Feeling a bit bummed and hard on myself.  Thought I'd talk to you about it.

(Before I get too far down the beating myself up on the WWW path, let me acknowledge that, er, biology is in part to blame and it could well be a non-issue in say 5 days or so.  AND this probably has a scosh to do with my spiraling negativity.  But enough of stereotypes and back to my whining...)

I'm still stuck at the line.  Hanging on the verge of the Onederland. I've put myself there in part.  I've overindulged in wine this past weekend.  I'm not exercising as much as I need to.  So, I'm sabotaging myself because I'm close to this line that I'm afraid to cross over.  And how f-ed up is that?  I'm afraid of success.  And the worst part is that I already know this about myself.  I have known this for a long time.  It's part of my girl Peter Pan syndrome.  Here's the spiral.  (If you're a reasonable put together kind of person, you may not be able to follow.  Be thankful that you don't need a therapist, and just move on to either another blog or some other post in this one...)

Once I start being successful with weight loss, that means that I am really going to truly accept that it's my lifestyle now.  I'll have to exercise.  And eat right.  And ask how things are made when I go to restaurants.  And all that crap.  It's the diet* version of being a grown up.  I will have to be responsible for myself and my actions.  Yuck.  I'm just so not a fan of this.  But, that's the reality.  If I am successful at losing weight, then I'm going to have to grow up and be responsible.  I'm deathly afraid that this will mean that I will be boring.  Because I'm already pretty close to boring now. 

*Note on the usage of the word "diet":  Tonight in our WW meeting (aka Fat Church as anyone who ever read my old blog knows), we had a good discussion about how WW is not a diet -- it's a lifestyle.  In my less cranky-pants moments, I not only agree with this but I embrace it and preach it.  But here's the fact:  it takes a long time and a lot of responsibility to get to where that feels more like a valid truth and less like it's a "diet."  Because the lifestyle that got me here is one that is about embracing excess.  Anything less than big is going to feel like a diet for a long time.  It's why I believe so much in Weight Watchers, but also what makes it so hard for me.  The key thing that I have learned in each journey of WW is that the greatest key is moderation.  You really can have anything you want but you either have to have it in moderation or if you ARE going to go "all out" you must recognize that that is a splurge and "pay" for it.  It's a struggle for me because moderation and I get along about as well as Republicans and Democrats.  Oil and water.  Chocolate and beer.  So, if I can't be moderate, then I can't have it.  To the untrained eye, this gives the appearance of being a "diet."  I'm not indulging in things that are considered off limits.  But it's not that I really consider those things to be off limits.  For example, a co-worker brought in Krispy Kreme donuts the other morning.  Did I want one?  Hell yes.  But I calculated the points and it was 6 points.  I just didn't want it bad enough to spend 6 points on a donut.  I knew that it may lead to another donut and then that's at least twice as much.  (Sometimes two of something is more than double the points -- the magic of WW math.)  So, I didn't have one.  Does this mean I'm not going to have a Krispy Kreme donut ever again?  That I have denied ever wanting or needing a donut again?  Not bloody likely.  But I need to know that when these challenges come my way that I can decide not to indulge.

I recognize that my journey is about recognizing limitations and accepting them.

And accepting myself.  Even when I fail.  Like when I hang over the stupid Onederland waiting to fall.   And obtaining the wisdom to know that falling is not proactive.  Leaping is. 

In my head this ended on a pithier words of wisdom note, but I can't quite get that last line right and now I just want to go to bed.  :)

hugs,
Heather

Journey to the Onederland

It wasn't deliberate, but I kind of thought I was going to hold off posting until I could post a triumphant "I made it to the Onederland!" post.  I've been getting so close.  I've seen it on my home scale.  More than once.

But it never stays.  The return to the Onederland feels as elusive as it must have to poor Alice.  And my journey is also strewn with "drink me" and "eat me" taunts.  :)

The Onederland is not something that skinny bitches (er, sorry - healthy women) can relate to.  It is difficult to explain to them without feeling some embarrassment at having to explain that it is a magical place to live where your weight begins with a one.  I mean, even when your weight begins with a one, most women still wish it was lower in the ones.  I will once I get there.

I am concerned that I have a mental block with the Onederland that keeps me from getting there.  I have been actively trying to get to this point since I started this journey a year and a half ago.  Don't despair, I'm not beating myself up for not being farther along.  I own the Summer of Love Handles.  I own all of my journey in between.  It's all good.  But, now I'm close.  Really close.  And I am scared.  Scared I am going to sabotage it or scared I'm going to go crazy in the desire to get there.  Just scared.  When it's been this looming goal for so long and I'm so close, it is really daunting. 

I'm trying to breathe through it.  Just relax...  It will come.  I just have to keep doing what I'm doing and it will come. 

Maybe I need to get back to one of my hot yoga classes...

Well

Maybe if I get to the onederland doing all this torture I might say its worth all the nervous breakdowns...

"So this is what commitment feels like"*

I'm trying to get back in to blogging, as you can hopefully see, but every time I fail at a commitment I made to myself I think, "I don't want to write about THAT!  I can't tell them that happened..."

But I guess that's supposed to be the point, isn't it?  It can't be all running and staying on the wagon and eating rice cakes (:::shudder:::), now can it?  (Shut up, I know it was never like that!) 

It's going to be falling off the wagon and strapping on a bag of Tostito's like it's feedbag (AKA Tuesday) and one day last week where I think I consumed almost nothing but sugar and caffeine.  (That was so bad that I did almost blog about it to get away from the shame, but I was probably too wired to form coherent thoughts about it.)  The question is do I write about that?  Do I want to publicize my descent?  Do I think NOT publicizing it will mean it's not happening?

Well, yeah, I think there's a part of me that definitely thinks that.  Not like an active conscious thought, exactly...  I was talking to Kiosk about her sugar trigger, because she is coming up on a difficult time frame to deal with that.  She asked me for advice on how to deal with it, even though she acknowledged that she didn't really expect me to have any.  (Gee, thanks!)  I suggested exposing herself -- not literally perv.  She has a cake batter weakness because no one is around to see her eating it when she makes a cake.  I suggested invite someone over to her ostensibly to "help" make the cake, but really they're helping by not leaving her alone with the cake batter. 

And then I thought, "doctor, heal thyself."  Because that's my thing.  If I don't blog about my failures, then that's like snarfing the cake batter alone, isn't it?  If I commit to something and then don't follow through, what difference does it make if I'm committing it to myself?  No one is there to see when I screw up.  Again. 

Here are just a few of the things I have recently committed to and not followed through:  not drinking during the week, working out at least three times a week, following the plan at Spark People and you get the idea.  I commit to doing something or commit to avoiding something but the end result is the same: lots of not following through followed by strapping on a bag of Tostito's and the cycle continues. 

The problem is that I can't just not try to commit, because that's not going anywhere good.  So, I think what I'm going to do is just commit to one thing at a time.  Once I've fully embraced that commitment and it's become a habit then I'm going to move on to another thing.  Because right now if I have wine at night, that's a shame spiral.  And if I don't track what I eat, then that's another excuse to have a calorie ball because I'm already in the shame spiral from not tracking it in the first place.  Sometimes I think I make commitments just so I can break them and dive in to the shame spiral.  (Epiphany!)  So, that's not going anywhere good either.  I don't know if this is the best plan towards success.  After all, I still hold a hope that I will end the year in the onederland.  But, I do know that since I have started to get back on track, I have only been successful with one thing at a time.  (Eww, kind of a bit like AA, one day at a time...)  So, I'm going to get back to being regular with the gym and once I have firmly accomplished that then I'm going to work on layering from that.

I will also try to keep blogging as I go.  But, that is TWO things so...  ;-)

Heather

*PS* Note on title:  Because I signed up for Spark People, I have been inundated with motivation emails.  Sometimes they are short parts of board posts from their in-sight bloggers.  This was the title of one that I did a rare save in my inbox so that every time I checked my mail I saw that.  I kept thinking that I too wanted to know what commitment feels like.  But, not in a cheesy annoying way -- in a way that's more kick-ass then that particular post turned out to be.