The Dreaded Weekend.

Yes, the dreaded weekend. Blasphemous! How dare I dread the weekend?!

Ok, not all of it is dreaded.  The time with my sweet love, my family, friends, going to the pool, a long run or working on a home project certainly isn't dreaded, not to mention the time away from work....but the lack of structure, the non-existent outlook reminders, the missing packed breakfast, lunch and snacks make food choices so.darn.difficult on the weekends and sometimes, yes, makes me dread weekends.

Maybe it is boredom or that my planner and my little tracker is not right in front of me the way it is on my desk, or maybe it is that I am around the kids' food and the pantry and the leftover franken-crusts, but whatever the reason, weekends and food are so tough. Or it could be that for me....

STRUCTURE = CONTROL

I am sure I am not the only one that feels this way. So if I am going to be on-program, really, really on-program I need some handy-dandy tips & advice to keep me mindful, present and the inevitable calling from the pantry --- "Chrrrisssty....come eat this coooornbreadd.....then granola then nutella+pb+banana covered tortilla then the camp snacks then...."

So here are some of the things I'm going to work to follow this weekend:

• Eat a good breakfast.  During the week, I take my breakfast to work, which is usually greek yogurt & granola.  On the weekends, I get to cook...yay!  Except sometimes the kids really want pancake....oh irresistible!  I struggle to stay in portion control here.  So, for me, I am going to stick with my favorite green eggs concoction. 1 whole egg + 2 whites scrambled with sauteed onions and chard from the garden with EVOO, sea salt & pepper.  Gets the veggies in early!  And if the lovebugs want pancakes, fine, but I'll be freezing the remaining to keep me from nibbling away.

• Drink Water. Lots of it!  One of my biggest pitfalls on the weekends is that I forget to drink water.  Seems silly, but I do. And then I get migraines from not drinking enough or I have terrible run from dehydration.  During the week I drink plenty.  My office is 10 ft from the water cooler, so there is no excuse at work.  And added bonus, what better way to get up and away from your desk than to head to the loo.  (Must be the London Olympics influencing me.) But at home, I forget.  So here is my plan  Set my phone alarm to go off every hour and make sure I get a swig. That is, until night time when I'll switch to the wine. Who needs alarm then!

• Plan.  I love church, but coffee hour can be excruciating for introverts like me people with food issues like me.  Granted, we do lots of whole food, vegan type stuff - No Vienna Fingers here!  But still portions and finishing the kids food so it isn't wasted is my MO.  So a couple things I'll do here: Stick with the veggies, keep some weeklies or APs available, chose the small plate, or none and use a napkin and really, truly track. You bite it, you write it. Being grateful and really thinking about where the food comes from helps too.

There are several more tips I can think of, but frankly, I know myself well enough that if I make my list too long and overwhelming I'll have a harder time following it.  So, I will commit to cooking a good breakfast Sat morning, drink water, and plan to an extent for the inevitable snacking (and that bottle of wine....over the whole weekend of course!). 

Lastly, come Monday, I vow not to beat myself up if I don't follow these tips to a T.  

Yesterday's Stats

26+15 PPV eaten 

14 APs earned. (8 miles of h-u-m-i-d swamp-thing run worth of APs!) 

Marking Progress.

One of the things that bothered me about my life on Weight Watchers was the connection to the scale. Sure, WW does promote 'NSV' (Non-Scale-Victories) but so much of what Weight Watcher is, is well...Weight. 


And if there ever was a a Watcher of Weight, it was me. 


My self worth  and my mood seemed tied to the scale. If it was down, I was up. If it was up, I was down.  Yo-yo dieting is more like yo-yo moods!  Somehow stepping on this battery operated measurement thing some how changed me even though it was just reporting the facts. 


It changed me because I let it.  

Meetings have certainly changed over time, sure, we still weigh in, but you don't have to go around the room saying if you were up or down that week like we did when I started WW the first time10 years ago. (Sheesh that was painful...yes, both the room thing and admitting I've been at this for 10 years!)

Even though the meetings aren't what they used to be, I want to take it a step further.  This go around, I am going to try hard to focus more attention on NSVs and measure my success in other ways. It worked well when I did couch-to-5k (clearly) so a new 6 week challenge is in order.

Pushups. 

We do them every so often in my strength training class and every.single.time we do them (after the initial groan) I say, I really need to do between classes. So here is my chance. 


Here is how the 6week One Hundred Pushup program works - First you take an initial push test to see how many (in good form!) you can do in a row.  Then the next day you start your W1D1 (Week1 Day1) set based on your initial test.  There are 5 sets and a rest between each set with the last set maxing you out doing as many pushups as you can.  


There are only 3 workouts per week, so adding several pushups at the end of a run or before bed feels really doable and I think a better way to track progress. So I stared this week.  After the initial test, which I did 14 good-form pushups in a row (not bad) I did W1D1  yesterday. 

DAY 1 REST 60 SECONDS BETWEEN EACH SET (LONGER IF REQUIRED)
	up to 5 push ups	6 - 10 push ups	11 - 20 push ups
SET 1	2	6	10
SET 2	3	6	12
SET 3	2	4	7
SET 4	2	4	7
SET 5	max (at least 3)	max (at least 5)	max (at least 9)

Accountability is key, so here is me being accountable. Who wants to join me in being accountable and do the 100 push up challenge? 

Yesterday's Accountability Stats:
36 PPV eaten
9 APs earned
W1D1 hundred pushup challenge: 10/12/7/7/9 = 45 pushups

Getting with the program. Again.

For someone who states right up front at the top of this blog about losing weight using Weight Watchers, I have avoided actually going to a meeting for about a year now. I hit goal for the 3rd time in August 2009 and I still weighed in each month for the next 2 years. I did so for a few different reasons: 1. It was easy - we had WW at work. 2. I wanted to keep my LT standing. 3. It was free (as long as I was at or 2lb over goal) 4. I liked being able to pay it forward - I was motivated by those that lost & maintained and I wanted to show that it could be done. 5. It kept me accountable.

WW @ work stopped and I missed a monthly weigh in. I didn't want to pay. I thought I could just maintain on my own. But the further away I got from each of those motivations I mentioned above, the harder it was to get back. And the scale started to creep up. Sure, I am currently in a health weight range, but I am noticing a pattern and I am not ready to go down that slippery slope. I don't want to have a blog that describes me as "a mom of 2 that lost 60lbs 4 times over"; Three times is plenty, thank you very much!

Yet because I am in a "healthy" weight range it was actually harder to admit that there is a problem here. I'm not overweight. I'm only 3.2 lbs above my "official goal" (that is the goal I picked back when I was 210 lbs.) I am not looking to be uber skinny. So why go back to Weight Watchers?

I think for a couple reasons: I am tired of the cycle of listening to the "trying to be good" vs. "lighten up" voices in my head, those darn shoulds I fight so hard against: 

"You should really track"

"oh, lighten up it is just one chocolate" (which turned to 14)

"you ran 10 miles, you can eat that."

"you are going to run 10 miles, you can eat that." 

It became about the food and if I was "good" or "bad".  

This time on Weight Watchers, I made a simple shift, it isn't about what I look like, or what I weigh but to what I am going to eat that is going to best serve my body so that I can do all the things that I want to do and feel good doing them?

I want to run. Far. I want to be strong, both mentally and physically. I want to fuel my body with the foods to help me do that and fuel my mind with the positive thoughts that come with making positive choices.  If that means shutting the shoulds up by getting back on program, then so be it.  

Yesterday:

33 PPV eaten

7 APs earned

Up and down. Repeat.

7 miles. 5 hills.

There is something about hill climbs and there was certainly of a symmetry in this run.  Now that it is done, I feel ecstatic, proud and so glad I went out tonight.  But in it, well, that was a different story.

I went out planning on doing 7 miles.  After I did the first loop and it was exactly 1.4 miles, it worked out perfectly that 5 loops would get me to 7 on the nose.

The first loop I ditched my water and left it the trunk of the car and went out for a second loop.  In the second loop I was trying to convince myself to only do 4 miles.

In the third loop, I kept thinking, only 2 more left. You signed up for a hilly marathon, remember!

It wasn't really until the last loop that I was really, truly present in the run and realizing that I just spent the last hour waiting for these last 10 minutes!

I guess just like there are runs that make you realize how wonderful life is, there are also runs that remind you just how much of a climb life can be, and if you can be present, really, truly present, you can see how strong and how far you've come even if it takes 5 times of the same ups and downs to get there.

And there will always be water on the trunk of your car when you need a break.

Bikeless-biker update: No sightings yesterday or today.  But I have 2 bikes, a helmet and a U-lock ready to pass along!

People are Awesome.

About a month ago on a Friday afternoon, I was riding my bike home from work when I got to a unmanned police car and barricade blocking the road. Uh oh. I had no clue how to get home any other way, so cautiously, I went around the blocked road on my bike. It turned out the road was closed to cars because there was a bad accident and power lines were down.  Passing by the crashed car, I prayed that the person (one car and a telephone pole) was ok.  NSTAR was there and carefully waived me on.


Because the road was closed, I got to do something I don't normally get to do.... 

When I bike to and from work, I see the same bike commuter on the other side of the busy road we ride every time. We've passed each other for months, and recently we started waving and greeting with smiles every time. Without fail, I see this guy.  I don't bike every day, but based on the fact that I see him every.single.time, it is clear he does bike every day.....unless miraculously we are on the very same schedule.  


But on this particular day, the day of the bad accident, there were no cars or traffic between us, so we stopped in the middle of the road to chat.   


That is an odd feeling being in the middle of one of the busiest roads with no cars in sight.  


It turns out, he bikes everyday because he doesn't have a car, he came here from India just 4 months ago and his wife & 2 kids family will be joining him in a couple months. He commutes to the town I live in and I commute through the town he lives in - the exact opposite sides of a very busy road.  It was cool to chat with him when I normally wouldn't be able to. 


After the road block day, we were back to waving in the morning and afternoon. 

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, on my ride in, I saw him walking in nice clothes, not all sweaty as if he'd been biking in the heat like me and he was near his work place.  I waved and yelled, "You got a car!?" But on the ride home, he was walking again, this time well further down the road. Clearly, he didn't have a car.


I yelled, "Where is your bike?" 


"It was stolen." He yelled back. 


"Oh NO!" I yelled riding by.


He was still waving with a smile. 


sigh.

Here, this man moved half way across the world, saving up for his family, and his main form of transportation was stolen. 


This part of the story would make me think, "Wow, people suck."  But wait. 


I happened to be telling this story as our legs were burning during what felt like an hour long wall sit durign our afternoon workout when someone happened to know a guy who has several bikes that he works on and she emailed her community and we have a bike ready for this guy.  


See.  People are awesome. 


Now it is up to the logistics.  We will find a way to get this bike to this bike-less biker. 


We are figuring this all out, but this one act, this generosity and connection and simple thing just really made my day.  


Hopefully soon I can report back that I am waiving to my bike-commuter friend on the other side of the road once again.