Freaked Out About Maintenance.

I cheated and weighed myself this morning even though my weigh-in day isn't until Monday. If what I weighed today sticks around I'm only going to be about 5 or 6 pounds away from my goal weight. You'd think I'd be ridiculously happy about that, and I am in a way, but I'm pretty freaked out and a little scared too.

I've never in my life maintained my weight. I've either been losing weight or gaining weight as long as I can remember. I don't know how to do anything else! I'm curious about how much I'll be able to eat on my maintenance program. I don't want to slack off on my exercise, I'd much rather just eat more!

Most likely it will be a few more weeks until I have to worry about how its all going to work though because next week I'm going on vacation. I'm not planning on being super strict about what I eat while I'm on vacation, but I'm hopefully not going to blow myself out of the water either. I'm planning on staying on track with my half-marathon training while I'm gone also. I hope there will be some great scenic places to run up in the mountains.

So far my eats today have included:

Chobani Strawberry Greek Yogurt with Kashi Crunch cereal.

A ham sandwhich on Arnold's Sandwhich Thins with Laughing Cow cheese, sprouts, onions, lettuce and mustard. Stacy's Simply Naked Bagel chips, and baby carrots.

I also snacked on some Chex Mix (I'm telling you, I'm addicted!), a Gala apple and a Homemade Clif Bar that Tim made (more on that later). Tonight for dinner we are having Pork Tenderloin and some undetermined vegetables.

Goals for The Week

First of all, there is something that has been on my mind that I want to discuss. For all you Biggest Loser fans, last night on the episode when they had to order all of their food out, did you notice that they said to make sure their fruit didn't contain any: bananas, melons, or grapes? I keep thinking that maybe I misunderstood what they were saying. Surely they don't have them on such a strict diet that they can't eat certain fruits! Or do they?

My personal philosophy on fruits and vegetables is that, I didn't get fat eating them and they aren't going to make me fat now. Unless of course, you fry them or saute them in butter. I don't normally count points for fruits and vegetables that I eat raw or cooked without additives.

Every week I like to set a couple goals for myself. My weeks start on Monday (as far as weigh-in goes), so I'm a little late blogging these but thats ok. My goals for this week are:

• To only weigh on weigh-in day.
• To track everything I eat on Weight Watchers and Spark People.

I signed up for Spark People several months ago, but I stopped using it because I felt like it was too time consuming and redundant to track my food on both Weight Watchers and Spark People. One thing I did like about Spark People though that Weight Watchers doesn't have is that you can track all of your nutrients. You can actually see a breakdown of your calorie, carb, fat, and protein intake and measure it against the recommended daily amounts. You can track any other nutrients you are interested in as well.

Lately I've been really interested in not only losing weight, but also healthy living. By this I mean that I'm more interested in the nutritional value of what I'm eating than the Points value. So that is why I wanted to start using my Spark People account again. So far I'm doing really good at staying in the correct ranges for calories, carbs, fat and protein.

My other goal for this week is to only weigh on Monday. When I was younger I was completely scale obsessed; I would weigh when I first woke up, after I went to the bathroom, after I ate, after I exercised, anytime I went into the bathroom. You get the idea. I think this stems from growing up in a househould with someone that had eating disorders. My mother struggled with anorexia and bulemia when I was a child. For that reason its really important to me not to be scale obsessed anymore. I usually want to weigh myself every morning when I wake up, but I realize that there will be normal fluctuations from day to day and that weighing on a weekly basis is much more reliable.

My eats for today included:

Kashi GoLean Crunch with Vanilla Oikos Greek Yogurt


A Gala apple, my fave!


Leftover spaghetti squash with meat sauce, and a side salad.


1/2 of a Green Monster (Yep, thats yesterday's pic again)


Steak with mushrooms, green beans, roasted cauliflower, and
a twice baked potato.

I also had a handful of Quaker Quakes Mini Rice cakes, a Crab Delight snack, and a piece of garlic toast. It really seemed like I ate alot today, but I came in at 1450 calories.

I ran 6 miles this afternoon, and it was extremely hard for me today. I don't know if it was because I ran in the afternoon and I normally run in the morning, or if I was just having an off day. I literally felt like I couldn't have taken one more step though, and I felt all weird and dizzy afterwards. I think my body needed the extra calories tonight because I felt much better after dinner.

Is a Plateau Coming?

Daily Activity: None (too freakin sore)

So as you can see I didn't work out today. I can barely walk. I thought doing the spin classes last night would help stretch my muscles out and decrease the soreness from the Body Pump class I did on Monday. WRONG! All it did was make me much much worse. So, lesson learned.

Its not that I feel like I have to workout every single day. I realize that isn't necessary. I just like to do it whenever I feel up to it. If I feel like working out 12 days in a row, then thats what I'm going to do. But I'm not gonna beat myself up when I need to take a day or 2 off either.

I think from now on when I do strength training to the point where I'm sore the next day I'll definitely take that day off and not even consider working out. Hopefully though if I keep up with the strength training it will get to the point where I don't get sore doing it.

For some reason I've had this feeling lately that I'm about to hit a weightloss plateau. I don't really know what makes me think that. Perhaps its because I only lost .6 lbs this past week, or that today when I peeked at the scale I was actually .6 above what I was on Monday or what. But I feel it coming.

So today I researched what to do when you hit a plateau and I found the Wendie Plan. Which I've actually known about before, but had forgotten. Its no magic regimine or anything, its basically just alternating high, low and medium point days to trick your body by shaking things up.

I've found 2 ways of thinking on the topic. One thought is that you should follow this strict points schedule ... eat this many this day, that many that day, etc. And the other train of thought is that you should make your high days the days you are hungrier, and low days the days you aren't as hungry and let your body guide how much you eat that day within your point range. Ultimately, you should end up eating the same amount of points per week either way.

I'm not sure which school of thought I'm a fan of just yet. I like the idea of letting your body naturally control which days are your higher days based on your hunger level, but on the other hand I'm a very structuralized (is that a word?) individual and I like having a plan and sticking to it.

I'm saving the Wendie plan as my secret weapon when I confirm that I've definitely hit a plateau. From everything I've read everyone has had great success with it, even after many weeks of no losses.