Weigh-in, It's been awhile.

Tuesday has been my official weigh-in day for about a year and a half. It has fallen into infrequent use since I retired and since I received my cancer diagnosis. Yet, today is Tuesday, and I did weigh myself, 225 pounds.

That's not a good number for me. It does not represent a 100 pound loss anymore. I started on Obama's Inauguration Day, so we are coming up on two years. I went from 322 to 295 by April of 2009. When I met Dr. Falcao the first time for the original ventral/umbilical hernia surgery evaluation, he scared me into losing a lot of weight fairly quickly. I went from 295 in April to 220 on November 2, 2009 for that surgery. Obviously, I was doing a lot of things right. I have mentioned what those things were many, many times in this blog...
1. writing it all down,
2. keeping calories to 1200-1500 per day,
3. walking and other exercise,
4. eating 3 good meals and planned snacks, no mindless grazing,
5. using resources like Hungry Girl and other recipes to keep meals interesting,
6. weighing in only once a week and keeping track of the weight by writing it in a log book,
7. joining and using online resources to help keep focused,
8. starting the blog.

This worked so very well for months and months, and I achieved a low weight of 205 in February of 2010. That represented a total loss of 117 pounds at that point. Then I left work at the end of that month; on March 2 Mark and I took off for our 7 week vacation. This involved lots of eating in restaurants and buffets on the cruise ship. Although I tried for a long while to control what I ate in those situations, it is not the thing I do best. I had not taken my scale on the trip, nor had I taken the log book to write any foods down. I stopped exercising as much, no place or time every day for a long walk. When we returned from the trip, I had gained 15 pounds. Whoa! Not unexpected, but frustrating.

So I tried to start over. I lost a few of those pounds. If you re-read old blogs from the spring, you can read all about that frustrating time. Then we sold the house, bought a house, moved, got cancer. Wow! Talk about roadblocks to success! I have difficulty controlling eating at the best of times; at the worst of times it is how I deal with stress. This is not a good time for me. The doctors have actively discouraged me from keeping calories too low right now because it is too stressful for the body to restrict calories and undergo surgeries and chemo at the same time.

The best thing I can do for myself now is control the eating without restricting the calories. A healthy diet of three good meals and planned, healthy snacks, coupled with walking for exercise, as I can do it, is what I need to do now. I need to start writing down the foods again, even if the calorie counts are more like 2000 a day, a maintenance level.

Unfortunately, I am not doing that. I haven't written anything down at all for months and months. My log book is in Florida. Hm...purposely self-sabotaging myself by not bringing it? Who knows. I can get a new book easily enough. That's not an excuse.

Well, today is a new day. I have eaten a big bowl of high fiber cereal (actually three types of cereal blended together) because of my new fear of constipation. I haven't measured the cereal or thought about how many calories I consumed in cereal. That is already not a good way to start the day. I have paper, so I could estimate and write it down. I think I will. I'll try to write down all my meals today. Baby steps.

I'm feeling so much better today than I have been since chemo started. I am encouraged that this week will probably be a good one, so that should help me keep more control over the eating. I'll give it a try this week. I'll make a sincere effort to get back to better habits. I'll try to maintain the 225 pounds for this week. Who knows? I'll weigh in next Tuesday, and we'll see. Maybe I'll even lose a pound! Wouldn't that be nice.