Weekly Weigh-in

So, I will get right to it. I weighed in today and here are the results:

Previous weight: 285.4 lbs
This week: 279.4 lbs
+/- : -6 lbs!!!!!

Now, I know that in the beginning I will lose more than I will regularly but the last time I started Weight Watchers again (September or October I think), I only lost 1.2 and 1.4 lbs a week. Which is respectable but I was hoping that when I started again I would see a really big number. I really needed that to boost me up and keep me motivated. I am not 6 lbs away from the weight when I first weighed in at Weight Watchers last year and about 9.6 lbs away from when I last weighed in at Weight Watchers. I am kind of hoping that I can get off all the weight that I put back on by Spring Break. It might be a little unrealistic but that is what I am going for. I was really surprised at this number though because I have not been great with my food choices. I did ok but not great. I did however not count my activity points for more food with the exception of one day. That might have helped. I also think that moderate intensity workouts that last longer rather than high intensity workouts that send my HR shooting up have helped as well. We'll see how that goes next week.

So, here are my goals for this week. I want to earn 28 activity points for the week. Last week I earned 19 activity points but I did not do any exercise 4 of the 7 days last week. I am going to try and change that this week. I am not sure how often I am going to be able to get to the gym (I am hoping at least 1-2 days) but I will definitely get out my Wii Fit everyday. For those of you who do not know about activity points and what they equate to, here are some examples for someone of my "stature" :)

30 minutes of moderate intensity activity (sweating after 10 minutes) is 3 points
30 minutes of low intensity acitivity (not sweating) is 2 points
30 minutes of high intensity activity (sweating after 3-5 minutes) is 7 points

I try to round down with my intensity levels. I figure it is the safest way to assess my actual activity level. Also, I sweat like nobody's business so I don't think that the sweat assessment of activity is really the best for me. I consider all of the aerobics stuff on the Wii Fit to be moderate intensity because I know my heart rate goes way up and all of the other stuff (Yoga, strength training, balance games) to be low intensity. Some of the Yoga and strength training probably could go into the moderate intensity category but like I said, I like to round down. My high intensity workouts come from 30 minutes on the elliptical. I think I start sweating as soon as I see the machine but that is definitely high intensity for me. Another goal is to start getting positive reinforcement from my Wii Fit instead of "Do you trip while walking?" in response to a balance test. As my friend said, that machine is a little bitch. I am improving with my balance and am making an effort to remember my posture both when I am walking and sitting.

I also realized this week one of the reasons that I fell through last time I tried this. I tried to go really gung-ho from week 1 and only eat fresh vegetables and fruit, meat that I prepare for myself, and cook most of my food. That was a mistake. While that is what I would like to achieve in the long run when I am not getting home between 7 and 9 pm it will not work in the short run. It is not feasible for me to try and cook all of my meals at home. This does not mean eating out but I mean actually cooking and not just heating something up. For now, it is easier (and cheaper) to use canned veggies and fruit, buy my meat pre-cooked (which does save a lot of time), and generally try to find things that are super fast to make. When I am coming home at 8 pm, I do not want to spend another 30 minutes making my dinner. I much prefer being able to just microwave something and throw a salad together real quick. I think I am being much more realistic and am instead focusing on the quantity of food I eat and the points value of the food I am eating. I am trying really hard to track my food all day. I really do think that it makes me much more mindful of what I am eating and just how much. It is amazing how easy it is to forget the little bouts of snacking throughout the day. As I start to get a handle on my schedule I will start to plan my meals a little more but for now I am planning for chaos and making sure I have a backup plan (something I did not do the first time around).

So, there it is. Maybe this time I can go longer than a couple of weeks. My overall weight loss goal is to get to 150-160 lbs (or a size 10, whichever comes first) and I would like to be around 250-255 lbs by the time I go back to California in May and around 200 lbs (or *gasp* even under the 200 mark) by the time I go home for Christmas. My activity goals are to keep above 20 activity points a week because no matter how I get 'em I need to start regularly getting 'em. I would also like to be able to jog/run a 5K by Christmas but we will see about that one. I have never really been a long distance runner even when I was more athletic and played sports so I am going to have to play that one by ear. I do like the idea of running and I think it would be a great stress reliever but like I said I am not very good at it. I am gonna try though. So, that's all till next week when hopefully there will be less of me to share!

Wii Fun

So I have decided to post mid-week (well actually almost week-end but whatever) and share a few things I discovered this week. The first is just an oddity that I have discovered about myself. I think I am now addicted to Fruit Loops. We use them in lab for food rewards for our rats and they always smell good. I got really hungry one day in lab and saw it was only 2 points for a whole cup so I got an unopened box and had some. I have not been able to stop eating them since. It has become my new favorite snack. I have to be careful though because I had fruit loops 4 times today. I think that signals a problem but they are just so good. I also use the excuse that they have vitamins and stuff in them (calcium too) so they can't be all that bad, but still. Must try to limit the Fruit Loops :)

The second thing is that the Wii Fit is AMAZING! I have not felt like going to the gym this week so I made sure to do some Wii Fit at home at least. I didn't get any exercise in on Monday and Tuesday but I more than made up for it over the last two days and I am SORE! I really enjoy the aerobics exercises that they have and have recently unlocked the Free Step so I turn that on and step on and off while I watch TV. Just doing that for 20 minutes, I did 1400 steps. Not too shabby. Yesterday I even did 10 minutes of it with 5 lb. free weights in each arm to get an arm workout. That is the only thing the Wii Fit is missing, a really good arm workout (but I have the free weights). I love the Super Hoola Hoop and did the 6 minute duration tonight and just about died. Try it before you judge me for that statement. It is a whole bunch harder than it sounds. Anyways, I have really been enjoying the Wii Fit and I think it was well worth my money. It gives me the opportunity to get a good workout even if I do not want to leave my house. It makes exercises a little bit more fun. I have also noticed a difference in my posture when I am walking (sadly, not when I am sitting though, I think I assume the grad student slump when in a chair). So, to close, I highly recommend the Wii Fit for anyone that struggles with getting outside to get some exercise and I also highly recommend staying away from Fruit Loops, they are crazy addictive. Well, another post on Saturday or Sunday when I weigh in and we will see if those Fruit Loops did me in :)

I'm Back!

So this post is going to ramble on past just losing weight.

Well, it has been a looooong time since I posted. I just got busy so I started eating more (and badly) and exercised less. That led to me not wanting to look at the scale on a weekly basis. I had to miss one Weight Watchers meeting to go into lab and then it snowballed from there to me not even caring about what I put in my mouth. I weighed in over Christmas but I did not weigh in again until last Saturday. The problem with me is (and will always be) is that I am really incredibly busy. I usually have too much work to do and not enough hours in the day to do it so I continue to fall behind a little more and more each day before I start giving up things. Some of these things include putting off laundry until I have about 5 or 6 loads and only have my laundry day clothes, leaving my room in a general state of disarray (the same goes for the rest of the house), any exercise at all, any semblance of a social life, sleep, and concentrating on changing my eating habits.

Every time this happens, I see some bright point in the future when I won't be this busy and I tell myself it will be easy enough to put things off until I have more time. I keep telling myself that I just have to get through the next couple of months and then things won't be so crazy and I can focus on losing weight again. The even bigger problem is that time usually never comes. I have been telling myself these things since last October and I came to the realization that I am going to be insanely busy for probably the next 5-7 years of my life. Working in a research lab requires a huge time commitment and usually unorthodox hours and a constantly changing schedule. What I need to do is to stop letting work overrun my life and put me off of the things I need to do to keep myself physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy. The silly thing is that I make my own schedule pretty much. The thing is I have deadlines for completion of experiments and there are only so many hours in a day, and so many days in a week, and yada yada yada.

My big problem is in saying no. If my advisor asks if I can do something I will almost always say yes. The same goes for other lab members. I also have found myself in charge of the graduate student group (who, coincidentally have not had any activities this semester, I wonder why), organizer of a graduate student journal club, and secretary of our local chapter of Society for Neuroscience (which is also doing a book club that I will be attending). In fact I often am volunteering to do these things because I really want to be involved in them and some of them are good for my career but I need to learn how to say no. We had a visiting speaker at school recently and we were talking about high incidence of poor memory among researchers (and in my opinion, especially among those that study memory) and she was saying that she thinks it is because researchers always have too many things going on because they cannot say no.

So, I will still be overworked until May and probably through the summer (and in this instance is completely unavoidable if I want to finish grad school in 5 years) but instead of putting everything else off, I am going to make a bigger effort to make more time for myself and scale down the things that can be scaled down. I am getting better about delegating tasks in lab and I have a little army of undergrads so it should be a little easier to scale things down. So I am going to stop using the "I am too busy" excuse and just learn how to deal with it all. The career path I have chosen means I will always have a lot of work to do. Even when I finally enter into the so-called "armchair science" when I do not actually have to complete the research myself, I will still be busy with all of the other responsibilities of a faculty member. So, I need to learn how to achieve some sort of harmony in my life now because the work factor is not really going to change. It will be hard and kind of baby stepped but I am really going to try. This is something I need to do not only for my weight but also because when I get this busy I get really unhappy. I find that I start complaining A TON and if you don't believe me, just ask Maria (sorry for all the complaining lately). I also tend to get downright bitchy, depressed, and am generally not a very fun person to be around. I do not like the person that I am when I am like this. I need some positive in my life and some happy so that I can be a happier person, even when overstressed.

So, without further ado, onto the actual weight part of this entry. When I weighed in last Saturday, I was:

285.4 lbs

Sadly, that is +15.6 lbs from the previous time I had weighed in at the Plano Weight Watchers last October and about 3 lbs more than when I first started Weight Watchers. When I weighed in during Christmas break in California I was 274.8 lbs, which is actually not that bad. I really just went into a deep slide downward when I got back to Dallas. So, we will see how next Saturday turns out. I have been keeping up with tracking my points but I am still finding it a little bit difficult to get in the exercise time. I am trying to find a few more fun ways that I can do some exercise at home at any time of the day. I have a feeling that getting to the gym regularly is not going to happen right away. However, I am going skiing with some friends for Spring Break in March and I want to try and get in a little bit of shape for that. I am going to take an entire week off of work and it will be glorious. Anways, my goal for the rest of this week is to try and go to the gym at least 1 day before Saturday and to make my Mii just a little bit skinnier. I have a Wii Fit now so I am going to use that for some of those days when I really do not want to go to the gym and want something a little more fun. It will also be nice to get to the point where it does not try to guilt trip me for not using it more often :)

So I will report back on Saturday as to my success (or limited failure) and I will also post my new measurements. I was going to do that today but I could not find my measuring tape. So, that is it for now. Wow, I really have a propensity for long-windedness. I think it is because I feel like I spend more time with rats than people lately. If you are reading this part, thank you for sticking with me through all of this and I promise not to ramble so much in the future.