unsweetened

I was thinking back the other day to 2004.  2004 was the year I started my very first diet; I was weeks away from turning 33, and I had never felt a need to diet before, though I am sure that sometime around 2000/2001, I probably needed to diet.  Post-baby weight is harder to shed at age 29 than it is at age 19 (fyi).  Anyway, I was turning 33, and I was months (9, to be exact) away from getting married and going on a cruise through the Mexican riviera.

That was February 2004.  I followed the South Beach Diet and did The Firm and Denise Austin workouts in my living room. In November 2004 (at the moment I boarded the plane to New Orleans for my wedding and honeymoon), I stopped dieting and exercising and proceeded to gain back every pound I lost in 2004 (and then some).

Fast forward to May 2009.  I had reason to go to the doctor, which I never do (in sickness or in health), and those bastards made me step on the scale.  I'd been to the doctor a year or so prior and refused to be weighed, but I was curious this time. I think maybe we didn't have a working scale at our house.  I weighed 162, I believe.  One-hundred-sixty-two.  I am 5'2" (rounding up).  That was more than I weighed when I was full-term with my youngest daughter.  I was floored.

I went home from that appointment and joined Weight Watchers.  I thought, screw how expensive I think it is.    I need to do this.

Soon thereafter, my family joined the YMCA.  Again, we had always thought the Y was too expensive, but I had a goal in mind, and I needed to exercise and diet to reach that goal.

The goal, at that time, was my 20th high school reunion (August 2009).

By July 2010 I made my goal weight (I think I was 120 then), and I was really pleased with my progress.  I was at a lower weight than I was the last time I dieted.

In September 2010 my grandma died, and I used my "I'm a stress eater" rationale to excuse my going off-plan.  I haven't really been able to get myself back on the WW track.  I tried to follow the new plan (Points+) diligently but I still wasn't seeing much change in the scale.  It was frustrating.

I've been paying $39.95 a month to WW since May 2009, and I just haven't been seeing much change this time around with Points+.  I don't know if that's a result of the new plan or something I'm doing (or not doing).

We have another trip to Mexico coming up, and I realized several weeks ago that I had 10-15 pounds I'd like to lose before our trip.  I began an online weight-loss challenge with the idea that I had about 14 weeks to lose 15 pounds (that would put me at 120).  Before I began the challenge, I decided to do a weight-gain to make my loss more significant.  Don't ever do that.  Gaining 5 pounds is easy, but losing that same 5 pounds can take weeks.  By the time I began the challenge, I had increased my weight from 135 to 139.

Weight Watchers wasn't causing me to see the decent losses I'd seen on the previous plan (Points), which was 1-2 pounds per week.

A few weeks ago, I remembered summer 2010, when I was at a spray park with some friends; they had a book called The Belly Fat Cure that they were all flipping through.  It looked interesting, but this was about the time I met goal on WW, and I wasn't about to mess with my success.  This year, though, I thought maybe I need a change in diets.

Three weeks ago, I checked out Jorge Cruise's book, The Belly Fat Cure through my library (on my Nook Color!).  I really didn't like what he suggests one does to lose weight (and belly fat); it's just not fun:  low sugar (no more than 15g per day!), no artificial sweeteners (gasp!), and low-carb (120g per day).  I have to admit, I love the initial challenge of a diet, so initially I thought, can I really omit artificial sweeteners, my dear Splenda and saccharin?  Can I stop eating fruit, which I had been gorging on while following the WW Points+ plan?  I'm down to try testing myself.

Well, I'm concluding my second week on the plan (diet), and it's still not fun.  I do feel better.  My weight loss is still not as rapid as I would like (I was 132 today), but I am on track for my goal of 125 by the time of my trip.  No sweetener took some getting used to.  I tried Stevia in several forms (that is an allowable sweetener), but I don't like the taste of it.  I would rather have no sweetener than use Stevia.

My single complaint about the BFC is that there is no easy way to track my sugar, carb and fiber consumption during the day.  Can I get an app, please?  None available.  So I use post it pads that I write my intake on every day, then I stick the post-its on the pantry door.

At age 33, I was so proud to say that it had taken so long for me to go on a diet, and now I feel like I live my life on a diet.  I probably spent over $1,000 on Weight Watchers (even when I wasn't sticking to the plan, I continued to pay $39.95 per month from May 2009-September 2011), and even now, I only decreased my membership instead of cancelling.  After reading the BFC book, I have to wonder if all the fruit I was eating on WW Points+ (fruit is 0 pts) was keeping me from losing weight.  My sugar intake had to be through the roof.

At age 40, I wonder if I will ever be able to live life not on a diet and maintain a healthy weight (135 is considered overweight for my height).  Ugh.  In my next life, please let me be tall and have a fast metabolism.  Amen.  

whoosh

...and it's gone!
December is nearly done, and 2010 is pretty much behind us.

My goal of daily blogging fell flat before I even began, but that's okay.  It was a whirlwind month of stress, anxiety and sadness that culminated with great release and relief at about 5:30am Christmas morning.  I cannot express clearly my stress leading up to the Christmas and how relieved I was on Christmas morning when everything fell into place as I hoped.  The children were happy wi ththeir gifts; I was thrilled with mine.  Wayne accepted his gift from me with a polite smile (it was a heart rate monitor and iPod armband for working out and the new Deadmau5 CD).  He out-gifted me, as usual: a NookColor.  I love it!  I haven't been the voracious reader that I have been in the past, but I hope the NookColor will remedy that.  I am reading a couple books now on the Nook:

Everything I Needed to Know About Being A Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, which isn't as good as I hoped it would be.  It's a collection of short autobiographical stories from popular female authors, and some of them read like English 101 essays.  Some are really good, but some are just meh.  I think the concept is fabulous because it's such an accurate thesis.  I mean, didn't we, the women in my age group (40-ish), grow up learning all we needed to know from Judy Blume's characters?  Don't we all consider her a Goddess of YA fiction authors?  I know I do.  But one of the authors (can't remember which one) made a good point about Judy's books: they aren't as relevant to YA girls today.  I can't get Maya to Read Are You There, God?  It's me, Margaret.  She loved the Fudge books, but I read them to her a few years ago.  She re-read them last summer, but she wasn't inspired to move on to any other Judy Blume books.  It makes me sad.  Kids today are too savvy--and possibly too cynical-- to enjoy Judy Blume books without rolling their eyes and thinking the content is dated.  I can't speak about any of Judy Blume's other books, but the Fudge series has been updated to include cell phones and iPods in an effort toward relevance.  I wonder if Margaret is still talking about using a belt with her sanitary napkins (who ever really called them that?!  That was a dated reference even when I read the book).  But the burgeoning sexuality of the characters in Judy Blume's books is what I really remember and think was so important back then.  Breasts, periods, wet dreams, erections, masturbation, actual intercourse and blow-jobs...all that she put out there for us to learn about before actually experiencing any of it.  It was some kind of awesome.

Okay.  I have to go.  Maya is itching to run to Target and GameStop: gift cards burning holes in her pockets!