I'm just stuck on the ground for a little while.

Today I ate like a Biggest Loser contestant…before they went on the show. For breakfast and lunch, I ate what my daycare class ate: fruit loops, whole milk, white noodles, butter, syrupy fruit. I had two bags of chips and a can of coke during the course of the work day. I went to freaking Red Robin with my dad and brother tonight and had fries and a burger with barbecue sauce and onion straws. The worst part is not that I ate all of this absolute crap, it’s that this has been an average day for me since about the time that I stopped posting.

I am so mad at myself. I was doing so well and I wanted to lose a ton of weight this summer, to make it about my health and getting my life back on track. On the one hand, I know that my self-loathing is not getting me anywhere. On the other, I know that it is so, so well-deserved.

I don’t know what to do to get back on track. I know that it is so simple, when you really get down to it: stop eating crap and start moving. But I’m out of my routine and I’ve been out of it for so long that getting back on track is more like starting all over.

I want to do this but I feel like I’ve forgotten how.

Hello, failure.

Sigh. After only one day of doing well, I screwed up again today. I wasn’t feeling well and when I’m sick I tend to give myself the excuse of “I’m just too tired to follow through with my eating.” It’s a total copout and I hate that I do it, but I do.

I had a tiny glimmer of inspiration when I was spring-cleaning my closet. I decided, in addition to my donation pile, to make a pile of stuff that doesn’t fit now but is nice enough to put in storage in case I really do lose the weight. I remembered that, up until a few days ago, I was moving steadily toward that goal, and that I could be again.

But still, I just feel like I was doing so well for a while and now I’m just in a downward spiral. I feel like I’m just plain too lazy to do what I need to do for my health. Any suggestions for climbing out of a rut?

Back on Track

Today went much better than the rest of the weekend. My sleep was still really off from the weekend, so I slept for a lot of the day. After waking up and going to a quick doctor’s appointment, I had lunch. I was starving, but I reminded myself of how crappy I felt after eating whatever I wanted this weekend, and made a delicious 2.5 point sandwich. Turkey, a wedge of Laughing Cow light swiss, and pickles on a whole-wheat Arnold sandwich thin. I had a few sips of Naked Juice to wash it down. If you haven’t tried this yet, you should. It’s not really low in calories or points (I had a half-serving for 2 pts, 90 cals) but it is definitely good for you. It contains no sugar, no artificial sugar, and no preservatives…just mango puree, banana puree, apple juice, orange juice, and a squirt of lemon. It has a slightly thicker consistency, like a smoothie, and it’s really, really tasty.

For dinner, I had a few ounces of some incredible chicken my mom made with some South Carolina mustard-based barbecue sauce for 2 points, some snap peas for another 2 points, and another few sips of Naked Juice for - you guessed it - 2 points. That brought my daily total up to 10.5.

A few hours after dinner I was feeling pretty munchy, so I had huge snack. 15 fat-free Saltines for 3 points, two wedges of Laughing Cow for 2 points, and some garlic mixed in with the cheese. I also had a soda (bad Meghan) for 4 points. That brought my daily total up to 19.5, and I also had a small handful of popcorn about a minute ago. Not sure how much that cost me, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a 15 point handful of popcorn, so…I came in under my points value today! Yay.

I spent some time exercising with my mom before Lost came on tonight. We went up to the high school, which is about 2 miles from our house, and walked the track there. My mom is getting really awesome - she ran a lap and walked three. I am still in abysmal shape, so I walked two laps and ran two sets of stairs. For some reason, it’s a lot easier for me to run stairs than it is to walk on a flat surface. Probably because it’s over so much more quickly. My problem is that I just absolutely HATE exercise, find it boring, hate doing it, the whole thing. I need to find something that I can stand doing, and walking’s not it, but I just don’t know what to even look for.

Anyway though, I feel that today went well, and the only hurdle left is to avoid nighttime snacking! If I decide that I absolutely HAVE to put something in my mouth, I have some 0-point pickle chips in the fridge. Wish me luck!

Louisiana was a bust.

Title says it all. I’m disappointed, because I did pretty well for the first few days - but as I tend to do, I had one bad dinner and allowed myself to get progressively worse after that.

My mom and I left around 8:30 Thursday morning, drove through South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, and finally arrived in Baton Rouge, LA at around 11 pm (after a time-zone switch). It took us a whopping 16 hours, but it was a beautiful, marshy, river-y drive, and I surprised myself with how well I did food-wise. I only had one snack, barbecue baked Lays, and I counted out the exact serving as I ate (17 chips). We stopped at a Cracker Barrel in Atlanta for lunch, and I got grilled chicken tenderloins with green beans. I did have a glass of sweet tea, and I ordered the baked apples because I absolutely love them, but I only had two small bites. Our dinner stop was a gas-station Subway in rural Alabama. I had turkey, swiss, mustard, cucumbers, pickles, tomato, and lettuce on flatbread, along with one of the new flavors of baked Lays (delicious!) and water.

Friday was a little less light, but still not terrible. I was able to put together one of my standard breakfasts from the hotel’s continental choices: a teaspoon of peanut butter and a sliced banana. I also had a yummy 1 point Light ‘n Fit peach yogurt. I usually hate artificially sweetened anything, but this was good. I did have apple juice because, for some reason, I love hotel juice-machine juice. Still though, breakfast went well. For lunch, we went with a big group of the family to an awesome restaurant in Baton Rouge. My uncle ordered a few appetizers so we could taste some classic Louisiana food, including fried alligator - which is actually really good. I ordered a great grilled chicken sandwich, steamed broccoli, and fries. I split the fries with my mom, didn’t eat all of the sandwich, and drank water - so overall, lunch was a success (as well as a lot of fun)!

I spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool and didn’t snack. Mallory (the cousin who was getting married) had a small reception at her new house after the rehearsal dinner, and I didn’t snack there either. Then came The Dinner. Capital letters to emphasize its massive detrimental impact on my diet. My mom and I met my Uncle Roger at a Carraba’s near our hotel. This is my FAVORITE chain restaurant, so I should have known it was a bad idea. I had too much bread, an entire crabcake (don’t judge unless you’ve had one - they’re incredible), half a serving of tomato-basil soup, and half of my meal: garlic-herb chicken with a side of spinach and orzo pasta. I had two sprites, then switched to water. Yep: a complete blowout. I don’t even want to know how many Weight Watchers points I “spent.”

Still though, the above meal wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d dusted myself off and kept going well. I did fine for the first half of Saturday. I missed breakfast, and I had the leftovers of my Carraba’s meal for lunch (an ounce or two of chicken, a reasonable amount of spinach and orzo, and half a cup of the soup). Then came THE WEDDING. All capital letters, that’s how bad it was. (Well, that’s how bad my food intake was - the actual event was beautiful and fun.) During the course of a few hours, I polished off several chocolate covered strawberries, cookies, fettucine alfredo, a couple cherry Cokes, coconut chicken, and SO much incredible Gulf Coast seafood. (Seriously, if you like seafood and you haven’t been to Louisiana yet, you haven’t lived. I thought I knew good seafood because I lived so close to Charleston. I was wrong.) Anyway, the wedding was an absolute bingefest, and that night wasn’t much better. My mom and I went by to visit and have leftovers for dinner with my aunt, two of my uncles, and one of my cousins. Even though I wasn’t that hungry, I managed to polish off a couple of catfish tenders and a bowl of strawberry ice cream.

But wait! It gets even worse. We’ll just say that I have a tendency, after a day like Saturday, to sabotage myself even further. I don’t know why I do it, I just do…and Sunday was no exception. I had the same sandwich at Subway for lunch, but my breakfast involved potatoes, I snacked all the way home, and I had Zaxby’s for dinner. Today I thought I’d get back on the wagon, but instead I had a slice of my brother’s TCBY frozen yogurt birthday cake for breakfast. Then I went to Macaroni Grill with some friends, threw caution to the wind once again, AND had a slice of my favorite lemon poundcake from Starbucks.

So, if you can’t tell already, I fell completely off the wagon this weekend, and gained back a significant portion of the weight I’d lost. I should be embarrassed to put all of this in writing, and of course I am. But if I’m writing this blog to hold myself accountable, then I have to TRULY hold myself accountable. And that’s something I have never done before. In fact, all the food I’ve eaten in the past few days wouldn’t have even seemed strange to me before. That’s why I’m confident that I still have the opportunity to turn things around. I bought some Arnold sandwich thins and Laughing Cow today, and I have my meals and exercise planned for tomorrow. I’m not going to allow this (major) setback to cancel out my efforts or keep me from changing.

I’ll write tomorrow about my first day back on the wagon!

Leaving for Baton Rouge in about 20 minutes. The drive is somewhere in the ballpark of 10 hours (probably more like 12 or 13 with my mom and I driving/navigating) and that’s baaaad because I’m terrible about snacking on the road. I’m stocked up with popcorn and baked chips, but portion size is going to be the biggest issue. I don’t want to just aimlessly eat because I’m stuck in a car and bored.

I re-lost my two pounds of ice cream weight though, so that’s excited. Hopefully I can lose a pound or two more before wearing my dress on Saturday.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Get up eight

I would screw up the night I started a weight-loss blog! And I’m not talking ranch dressing on my carrots screw up. I’m not even talking large Pepsi and fries screw up. I’m talking two large bowls of delicious, full-fat Neapolitan ice cream. Oops. I weighed myself around 12 today and hadn’t gone up an ounce. I thought that meant I’d just barely slid through, then I ate for the first time today and went up 2 pounds. Oh well. Just gotta get back up. 

I did much better today. Stayed within my points and went for a walk and a very small bit of running. My cousin is getting married on Saturday in Baton Rouge, and my dress just got here today. I’d just gotten back from finding the perfect pair of shoes, and I really loved the dress, so I was on pins and needles waiting to try it on.

The verdict? Just okay. When I first tried it on, I didn’t think it was even loose enough to wear. Then I put on God’s gift to women, Spanx, and it’s wearable. I cried a little though because, I don’t know…you see this dress in the catalog and it’s so cute, and you imagine yourself wearing it and…I don’t know. I guess I airbrushed myself in my mind. I just wanted to look pretty, and that doesn’t feel possible right now. With the Spanx, it doesn’t look bad, but it doesn’t look good either.

After the initial disappointment, though, I realized that ten pounds ago when I ordered that dress, I wouldn’t have been able to even put it on. So that helped a little. And I also realized that if I eat and exercise really well until Saturday - stick with fruits and veggies and whole grains and water - that I can lose another few pounds by then. And every pound will help. (And okay, I just realized that I have to say eight pounds now, after the Neapolitan Incident of 2010). 

So I had a few little setbacks, but if I have the right attitude I can turn those setbacks into catalysts for more weight loss.

Losing weight, gaining everything else.

So. Introductory post?

My name is Meghan. I’m a nineteen year old (almost twenty!) studying journalism in the mountains of North Carolina. I like to read, I like the outdoors, and I have a slight obsession with The Office and Lost. At the moment, I’m home for the summer in Columbia, South Carolina. (Think of the hottest, most humid weather you’ve ever experienced and multiply it by ten.)

I am also overweight. Like really, really overweight…and I have been for a long time. When I was a kid I was relatively normal, then middle school hit and my weight has pretty much been skyrocketing ever since. 

Every now and then, I would say I was “dieting,” but I NEVER committed and never lost a significant amount of weight (other than a long hospital stay last summer which shaved off thirty pounds - but that was from literally not eating and it all, of course, came back). 

And then I just got sick of it. Honestly. I can’t explain it more than that. I’ve always hated being fat, but a few months ago I just got sick of it. I realized that I was tired of being too afraid to do any of the things I wanted to do, tired of being self-conscious, tired of living in a beautiful area that I couldn’t enjoy because of my weight, tired of my feet hurting every time I walked to class, tired of wasting my youth. It sounds dramatic, but I began to realize that my current standstill in life had everything to do with my weight - and until I got it off, nothing was going to happen or change.

I hemmed and hawed with this revelation for about a month and essentially kept eating whatever I wanted. Then one night, I was praying and I was whining to God about how my life was never going to change, things were never going to improve. Then, this phrase popped into my head: There are things you can do to change your life, but you have to do them. Seems really self-explanatory and simple, right? Like I was an idiot for not knowing that already? But I’m telling you, that one phrase made all the difference.

The next day, I started the Weight Watchers plan. I already had the books because I’d half-heartedly tried it before, but this was the only honest go I’ve ever made of it. That was about three weeks ago, and today I’m ten pounds lighter. It’s just a drop in the bucket, but I can’t even explain how much better I feel already. And it’s not drudgery, either. I am enjoying my food a LOT more than I was before. After all, I’m in college, I live in a dorm…I got fat off Totino’s pizza, not filet mignon. 

Around the same time that I started my diet, I created a Tumblr account and started spending ridiculous amounts of time on it. I love posting about and following all of my little TV obsessions and interests. But I also typed in “Weight Watchers” at one point. I ended up finding so many blogs that were full of helpful recipes, ideas, and just commiseration from people in the same spot (well, from people who HAVE been in the same spot - most of them have lost a lot more weight than I have!)

I started following some of those awesome, inspirational Weight Watchin’ people, and it has been really instrumental in getting my new lifestyle off the ground. But every time I wanted to post about a weight loss achievement or snap a picture of a particularly good meal, I would hold back. It just didn’t seem to fit with the other stuff I was posting (not that anyone really reads that blog, but you know). So I decided to just start another Tumblr account. 

Pretty much everyone out there in this little segment of the Tumblr community has more experience with weight loss than I do, so I probably won’t be offering “advice” or letting anybody in on things they didn’t know. In fact, I’m probably going to be talking to myself, and that’s okay. I guess I’m really looking to hold myself accountable.

So…here we go :)