This past Thursday was my 14th week in Weight Watchers. Looking over my weigh-ins, I have come to an uncomfortable conclusion that pushes past my natural state of denial: I don’t want to get past a 10 pound weight loss. Really, I have had a fairly steady, healthy loss for the first 10 weeks, at which I hit a 5% loss goal. But since then, I have been wildly up and down, to arrive at essentially the same weight a month later.
I have had so many excuses over the last month:
*I am so stressed! (It has been a stinker of a month, actually.) I just can’t get a grip on the stress eating.
*I’ve been too busy to get all my exercise points.
*I was wearing my blue jeans for that weigh-in, AND I had just eaten dinner!
But you know what my real problem is? I am not exercising my self-control. And I am lying. On my tracker. To ME. How lame is that?! Like I don’t already know that I had three cookies and only gave points for two? Or (true story) I ate four or five cookies for breakfast so I just abandoned tracking the day altogether. And you know those BLTs (bites, licks and tatstes)? I confess I have NEVER tracked those! Sampling as the chef? Points free, of course. Finishing the last couple of bites from a kid’s plate? Surely those points are gone now. And what about that little palmful of Cajun trail mix? How much could that be?
Just call me Bessie, as in the cow, because I GRAZE. And I really have a lot of trouble managing that eating. It’s got nothing to do with being hungry, and it DOES get worse with stress, but that’s no excuse. It’s like I need the *activity* more than that I need the food. The craving to nibble just grows. I am discouraged by my inability to manage it.
However, I can be capable of managing the environment: I can keep plenty of sugar snap peas and baby carrots and celery sticks and strawberries and even plain popcorn easily accessible, and keep the kids’ snacks harder to get to. I can sip my low cal hot Russian tea, but I need a good hot-weather alternative with no caffeine and no artificial sweetener. I can also chew gum, which is actually very effective, but it gets tiring (literally). All of these strategies help, but I need to TRACK them. They are low-cal grazing alternatives, but they still pack a point!
This week I am renewing my effort to not make excuses for myself and to be honest with myself. I mean really, what good does it do to lie to ME? Apparently, all it accomplishes is feeding some apparent psychological roadblock to pushing beyond my 10 pound weight loss. Wish me luck!
Pamela UnPlugged: the Art of Life 
Pam,
You are definately NOT alone in your tracking struggles. I’m slowing putting the weigh back on (3lbs already) because I was not tracking. So this morning I started tracking and measuring AGAIN. I decided that I will probably have to track the rest of my life or learn to enjoy the yo-yo rollercoaster ride of my losses and gains. I’m getting too old to enjoy rollercoasters so I’m choosing the alternative: being consistent with tracking and getting back to putting in the activity in my schedule. Girlfriend, just know I’m praying for you and know you ARE going to do this!! So together let’s pick up our pens and as my WW leader encourages “If we bite it, we write it!” (No matter how small a taste or bite we assign it at least 1 point.)