This particular lesson smacked me in the face again this morning. A little background- during the summer, I like to stop occasionally at QuikTrip for a soda. They’re always on sale over the summer and sometimes you just need some therapy in the form of fountain Diet Dr. Pepper. This summer, however, Goober has an awareness that Momma is getting something and he wants some. Since he’s not allowed to have soda, I got into the BAD habit of buying him the kid sized slushy anytime he was with me and I stopped.  I tried to explain to him that this was a “special treat,” that we only get “sometimes.” I’m pretty sure what he heard was “delicious sugar that you are entitled to on demand!” I tried to space out such treats, but it didn’t help that he started petitioning the grandparents to take him on his days with them. Kid is smart!

All of this leads us to this morning, when we were on our way to my dad’s house (he baby-sits Goober on Tuesdays.) We pass a gas station and the following conversation commences.

“Momma, look, a gas station! I need a special drink!”

“No buddy, we’re not stopping this morning.”

“But I NEED a special drink!!”

“Not today, we don’t need to spend money on that.”

“MOMMY. I NEEEEEED A SPECIAL DRINK!”

{Insert futile attempt to explain the difference between need and want to a 2-yr old. I know, I know!}

“But Mommy, I need it.”

“No buddy, you want it.”

“Mommy, I want a special drink!!!”

“Goober, we are not stopping, and that’s the end of the story!”

“NO MOMMA, I WANT A SPECIAL DRINK! THAT IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY!!”

“Oh yeah? What’s the end of the story then?”

“I DON’T KNOW! I CAN’T READ!“

You try saying “No” to this guy!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I had a child.

( And why I keep giving into him. Kid is GOOD!)

• Fell off the Weight Watcher’s bandwagon. Haven’t actually stepped on a scale since about April and not very eager to either. C’est la vie.
• Took a 9 hour road trip to Atlanta. Everyone survived.
• My baby turned two. MY BABY TURNED TWO!
• Two has been interesting. It often lives up to the stereotype, but not always, and there are a lot of days where he’s so unbelievably awesome that I have to pinch myself a little.
• My great aunt passed away. She was old, she was awesome, she is missed.
• Summer came and is (hopefully) on it’s way out. It was hot.
• We are sorta semi potty training. When Goober feels like it. Since he’s only 27 months and the Parents As Teacher program recommends waiting until 2 1/2 to ensure all the bladder nerves and control are developed, I’m not pushing it yet. I’m thinking during Christmas vacation we might try one of the 3 day methods. We’ll see.
• Hubby is still out of work. It still stresses me the hell out.
• For a variety of reasons, we’ve decided to put Goober in full time daycare. One day a week he stays with Hubby’s mom, one day a week he’s with my dad, and three days a week he goes to a sitter we found (we will call her J.) J is amazing and awesome and has incredible patience with Goober. He started back in May and had a pretty difficult time adjusting (a.k.a. he cried all damn day for the first few weeks.) Now’s he’s at the point where he doesn’t cry at all (mostly) when I drop him off and asks me when he gets to go next.
• I’m in my LAST class of my Master’s program! Next semester I will take my comprehensive exams (’cause I was too lazy busy to try to study for them this semester) and then I will graduate in May. Wooohooo!
• Did I mention I’m the parent of a TWO YEAR OLD? Insert your choice of incredulous sentiment of flying time here.

This year was so different than last year. He really got into the egg hunts and had no problem finding eggs that were not always in plain site. He has learned what candy tastes like and gets super excited to find jelly beans or chocolate eggs in the plastic eggs. I actually did not expect him to get the Easter Bunny concept for at least another year, but we still reminded him that the bunny was going to come and leave him a basket and hide some eggs. I was pleasantly surprised Sunday morning when I awoke to not the usual “Mommy!” cries, but the sound of my son jumping in his crib, yelling “ BUNNY COME, THE BUNNY COME!” and as soon as we put him down, he ran out of his room looking for his basket. So stinking cute. One unfortunate side effect of “understanding” is that he was a little spoiled yesterday. He got a LOT of baskets over the course of the day, he wouldn’t eat any real food at all, knowing that there was chocolate and jellybeans everywhere, and the request for jellybeans has yet to cease. Apparently moderation is a concept a little out of his reach. Then again, he’s not the only one.

Which leads us to Part 2 of this post, my Week 7 Recap. Please recall my last recap, where I confessed to falling off the wagon and it showed. Well, jumping back onto the wagon is always easier said than done. I was still not eating perfectly, but I did get back on board with tracking, at least during the work week. I tried to make better choices, but I frequently gave myself a pass as it was a busy and crazy week. However bad I was though, I held myself accountable by tracking everything. I also started walking with a coworker during our lunch break a couple times a week. I was pretty sure that my Friday morning weigh in would hurt, but I was willing to take responsibility for my eating and hopefully get back on track. I was in for a shock.

Week 7 starting weight: 218.6

Week 7 ending weight: 214.2

Week 7 progress: Down 4.4 pounds!

Overall progress: Down 20.1 pounds!

Conclusion: Pardon my language, but HOLY SHITBALLS! I have no idea how that happened. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN??? All I can come up with is that the overall changes I made over the past 7 weeks have maybe helped out my metabolism? Perhaps it was an Easter miracle? I don’t know what it was, but it was AWESOME. I even got on my scale twice to double check. Whatever, I will take it and I will be THRILLED. For the record, I am now below my pre-pregnancy weight. I’m just over 3 pounds away from my 10% goal and I’m about 6 pounds away from my lowest breastfeeding weight (oh breastfeeding metabolism, how I miss thee!) I am so happy to see that number fall, I am actually even more committed to this program than I was a week ago. I’m anxious to finish my class so that I can use my Zumba Groupon that’s waiting for me. I’m working up the motivation to start using my Wii Active exercise stuff again. I brought a salad to work again! This week was just what I needed. Like Dorie says, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”

Week 6 starting weight: 217.8

Week 6 ending weight: 218.6

Week 6 progress: Up 0.8 pounds

Overall progress: Down 15.7 pounds!

Conclusion: Time to find that excitement that I had going into this. Gotta get back to using the Weight Watchers tools and recipes and information. I mean, that’s why I’m paying for it, isn’t it?  Get back to eating more “clean” foods: Nothing out of a box, lots of fruits and veggies, yogurts, and making my own food. STOP eating out and eating convenience foods. I WILL DO THIS DAMN IT!

Week 5 starting weight: 218.8

Week 5 ending weight: 217.8

Week 5 progress: Down 1.0 pounds!

Overall progress: Down 16.5 pounds!

Conclusion: This has been just another week. Nothing really stood out as very bad or very good. It just was what it was. Slow and steady I guess? I still need to get my butt moving. I think that’ll be the key to kicking this weight loss up a notch. But I’m happy with my 1 pound this week. Here’s to next week!

Week 4 starting weight: 219.9

Week 4 ending weight: 218.8

Week 4 progress: Down 1.1 pounds!

Overall progress: Down 15.5 pounds!

Conclusion: First of all, I’m really excited to hit the 15 pound mark. That feels pretty great. Considering the week I had, I will take the 1 pound happily. I’m feeling some resolve about next week, about getting back on the wagon and rethinking some of my eating. For these first few weeks, I’ve maintained the same breakfast and lunch, which worked to get me into a groove of better eating. A month in, though, and I’m not surprisingly a little sick of my food, which led to some last minute poor choices this past week. This weekend I’m going to (hopefully) do a little recipe searching and pick some different foods to spice things up without fattening things up. Also, we’ve been having gorgeous weather. If it keeps up, I’m also going to try a little harder to get MOVING. My butt is getting too flat and wide from all this sitting.

If you have some suggestions on satisfying food ideas to break the boredom, I’d love to hear them!

Moving on…

After last week’s disappointment, I was a little nervous to get on the scale. I thought perhaps my two days without real food might help me out, but there was also the possibility that it shut my metabolism down and screwed me royally. Getting on the scale this morning, I was pleasantly surprised:

Week 2 starting weight: 225.6

Week 3 starting weight: 219.9

Week 3 progress: Down 5.7lbs!

Overall progress: Down 14.4lbs!

Conclusion: HELL YEAH! I will more than take it and it definitely makes up for last weeks slap in the face. Other than the two days of saltines, I didn’t really do anything different. I actually used my weekly bonus points on some fine trivia night junk food (doing it again this weekend too!). Still haven’t exercised. I’ve noticed my pants feel a little looser. Not ready to go shopping or anything, but not so much muffin top. Also my energy is still running high (when I’m not sick in bed.) I even scrubbed my house last weekend. Impressed? I am.

Also, Weight Watchers has you set small goals to aim for and this week I sped past my initial goal of 5% of my initial body weight (222.5). My next goal is 10% of my body weight (210.8), which is documented to make significant improvements in a person’s overall health. At only 9 pounds away, I’m confident that I’ll reach that before too long. 

Outlook for the next week: Pretty good. I am feeling good that even though I may not have as big a loss, I can recover from it like I did this past week. I’m excited about some nice weather we have coming. That, combined with the time change this weekend, will give me an opportunity to get outside with Goober and get some old fashioned exercise, also known as PLAY. It’s going to be good.

The rest of the day Hubby dealt with our barfing baby boy, along with some diapers that could realistically be used as biological weapons. I came home early to accompany them to the pediatrician who lovingly told us there’s nothing we could do for him, except wait it out, and that these stomach flu bugs were going around. Monday evening consisted of me taking the lead on cleaning up two more pukefests and the sanitation of some very befouled stuffed animals.

Tuesday morning I went in to work late after trying to catch up on the sleep I missed the night before. I felt…off. I tried to convince myself that it was just the sleep deprivation that was causing it, but after eating lunch, there was no denying that I had caught the bug. I went home where I stayed in the fetal position for about 18 hours. It was pretty tortuous. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t really drink anything, and I couldn’t see my baby. I sent Hubby over to his parent’s house with Goober, because if Goober saw me, he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t jump on me, why I couldn’t get up and play with him.

Wednesday morning I woke up feeling significantly better than the day before. Sure, I was crazy dehydrated and hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before, but compared to what I felt the night before, I was in great shape. I went to work, only to go downhill as the day progressed. Dizzy, lethargic, and overall just felt crummy. Once again, I came home midday and went to bed. Luckily Goober was still at his grandma’s, so I didn’t have to hide from him. A 3.5 hour nap later, I was good as new. I stayed in bed reading, but I felt pretty much fine. Hubby and Goober came home, I got to play with Goober before he had to go to bed, which felt amazing after being separated from him for over a day. Right after he went to bed though, I started feeling crummy again and now Hubby felt bad too. The Bug of Doom strikes again!

It’s now Thursday morning. I am still at home because Hubby feels like crap. Luckily my parents are coming to pick up Goober around 10 so that I can go to work. I feel pretty great, but after all the feel-great-fakeouts the last couple days, I’m still skeptical that I’m over this nastiness. On the upside, I feel like I’ve been through an initiation process. A parental hazing of sorts. I’ve gone through our first toddler barfing (completely different than infant puke!), plus experienced consecutively sick family members, and lived to see the other side of all of it. I’m expecting the appropriate merit badges to arrive any day now.

First, my logical side:

• Hey, it’s a loss! Yay losing weight!
• On Biggest Loser, the 2nd week is always the worst.
• The water weight from the first week’s loss isn’t there to pad this number, this is all real fat leaving my body.
• The program says losing between 0.5 and 2 pounds per week is a healthy range, this is healthy, losing too fast isn’t good for your body.
• At least my skin elasticity will be able to keep up.

Now for my gut reaction:

• 1.1 pounds?? What the F*@%??
• I haven’t even been consuming all my points per day! It’s a lot of points, and I’ve been staying below, so I should be losing even MORE than 2lbs per week!
• Is this because I splurged at Mom’s Night Out?
• That’s bullshit, I didn’t even use all my weekly bonus points!
• Am I not eating ENOUGH? I’ve heard if you don’t eat enough, you’re body can go into starvation mode and hoard calories.
• That’s bullshit, I’m not even hungry. I eat when I’m hungry.
• Is this because I’m not exercising?
• That’s bullshit, I should be able to lose some weight with food changes. I’m not ready to add another thing to my to-do list.
• Is this because of the one night we went to Chick-fil-a?
• That’s bullshit, I didn’t even eat the fries. I DIDN’T EAT THE FRIES!!!

Soooo…yeah. I’m working on it. After weighing in, part of me wanted to run to Bread Company (Panera for those of you outside of St. Louis) and get a nice, yummy bagel breakfast sandwich. To hell with these points, they’re not working anyway. But I didn’t. I had my Kashi cereal and skim milk and I planned my lunch out today. I’m doing this. I’m working this program, I’m changing my eating habits for good. I tell myself that next week will be better. My body will give in to these changes and start shedding the weight. I’m 3 pounds away from my first goal (5% of my starting weight). I might make that goal next week or maybe the week after, but I’m not giving up.

So to kick off this Week 1 update, here are the stats:

Week 1 starting weight: 234.3

Week 2 starting weight: 226.7

Week 1 progress: Down 7.6lbs! Woo WOO! [insert happy dance here]

I have to say I’m pretty proud of myself. Being through this before, I know that a lot of Week 1 weight loss is water weight (70% of Americans are chronically dehydrated), but I also made some really great choices. I ate a lot more fruit and veggies. I stayed at or below my daily point allowance every day; I didn’t use any of my weekly point allowance. Not to say that I plan on staying this strict, but for my first week I wanted to make a big improvement. I want to start good habits and I think the best way to do that is to go full throttle for a little while. That being said, I do have a Mom’s Night Out this weekend, so I will using some of those for that for sure.

I also gave up soda the entire week and I steered mostly clear of coffee and caffeine. I want to see if my chronic consumption of caffeine and sugar substitutes have been adding to my “hunger” and constant snacking. I need to do this a little longer, but I have definitely seen an improvement in my energy. Another thing was that I ate out a lot less. And while perfect eating wasn’t always available, I did notice that when I ate something really bad for me, like cheap delivery pizza or a McChicken from McDonalds, my digestive tract was, ahem, less than pleased. Definitely not worth it.

What I didn’t really do this week is exercise, and I did that on purpose. While exercise is very good and very necessary to the healthy lifestyle I’m striving towards, I want to get my eating under control first. I want to learn good eating habits and get used to making better food choices before I add in exercise, which will inevitably increase my hunger.

Overall, I say this was a great week. So what did you do this week that you feel great about?