Getting back up (again)

I had one of those weekends that involved me saying to myself “I give up” a lot. I also said “I don’t want to do this anymore” a few times. It was the first weekend since I started training that I didn’t do my long run. I ate everything in the world. I didn’t do any kind of activity. I weighed in at Weight Watchers Saturday morning to see that in the two weeks since I’d last weighed in I had gained six pounds. I stood there for a second, pretending to myself that I was shocked, until I thought about it and remembered that not only had I not written down anything I’d eaten, I’d chosen to just eat whatever I want.

So I was not in a great place.

I pay 43.00 a month to go to Weight Watchers but I haven’t been taking advantage of the program the way I could. I vehemently dislike the Saturday morning leader (the only meeting I thought I was able to get to) and even if I did like her, 8:30 on Saturday morning is a ridiculously inconvenient time for a meeting when I have to run for an hour and a half or longer before I go to work at 12:45. I miss my meeting. I miss my leader. So I decided to do a little digging and see if I could cobble together a solution. I found that Weight Watchers opens at 9am on Tuesdays so I could go weigh in before I go watch the twins I nanny for and then come back for the 6pm meeting. It’s run by a leader I’d never met so yesterday I decided to give it a shot. I weighed in at the end of the day, however, because it just worked out that way. Since Saturday I was down a pound, even though it was the end of the day, so that made me feel better. As an aside, I knew before I weighed in last weekend that I’d gained weight. On Saturday my face was super blotchy and puffy and I didn’t look healthy and I felt terrible. Yesterday was also the first day in two weeks that I tracked what I ate and I put a lot of effort and thought into eating healthy. I weighed in, left my car in the parking lot and went and ran three miles. It was pretty hard. It was the first time since last Thursday that I ran. But it was a really nice day and I felt really good when it was done though my poor body was so sore.

I’m really happy with my decision to try the Tuesday meeting. The leader, Melanie, is one of those people you look at and think “what are you doing here?” because she’s so fit and healthy looking. And then I read her name tag and saw that she’s lost 90 pounds. That in and of itself was cool. But she was really welcoming and encouraging and she had lots of energy and she made me feel like it was okay that I was there which is hard to do when you walk into a room of twenty strangers. I spoke up at one point and the only man in the group welcomed me and said “this is a good meeting.” So I’m going to go back next week and I feel really inspired to get back up and keep going. I’ve been up and down since September and it’s so frustrating. I just want to keep moving forward, even if it’s tiny little steps, instead of a step forward and then several steps backwards.

Today I was up before seven and ran five miles at the indoor track at the gym where I work. In the past I’ve run that distance in about an hour and eight minutes. Today it was an hour and thirteen minutes but I finished and that was such a great feeling. My legs were so sore, my hip was hurting, and I did not want to keep going. Within the first five minutes I was bargaining with myself. “You can stop at three miles.” “Just make it to three miles.” I really thought I was going to stop but then three miles came and I just kept saying “you can stop at four miles.” And after mile four, it was silly to stop when I only had one more mile to go. I was feeling okay, I just didn’t want to be running anymore, and that seemed like a silly reason to stop when my legs felt okay and I was breathing fine.

I’m making little bargains with myself to get through this week. Things like eating healthy and within my points and then on the days that I run, letting myself have a treat worth the points I earned from my run. For example, I hate homemade minestrone soup and a turkey sandwich for dinner last night and used the twelve activity points I had earned from my run to have a McFlurry. In the past I would hoard my points and then use it to have an unhealthy meal and this way feels more balanced. I ate lots of fresh fruits and vegetables today, minestrone soup and carrots for lunch and used some of the twenty-two points I earned on my run this morning to have a brownie as a snack. I feel like it makes more sense to do it this way and it gives me a sense of control that I’ve been missing.