Too Much, Too Soon

I had a crappy weigh-in this week. :-( I'm not really surprised. I had several "bad" days where I didn't fully account for my calories using my BodyBugg. I even had a day where I ate cake, chocolate and pizza, without much regard to how much, although I didn't stuff my face or anything. It was classic stress eating. There were a lot of negative emotions going on this week. I was down on myself for failing. I've also been stressing out about returning to work next week, as today marks my last day of maternity leave. Because my resolve is strong, I know that this is simply an "off" week and that I will be back on track going forward, but this has forced me to seriously take a look at my approach.

I've adopted several new things all at once. I've started using BodyBugg. I've started going to the gym and weight training. I've also started a "clean eating" lifestyle. All of these things are wonderful and should help me attain my goal of losing weight and being healthy. Unfortunately, as I discovered this week, although my commitment is there, this new lifestyle is still fragile and can't handle a lot of external factors. I've identified some key factors that contributed to this week's poor results.

• My dad's birthday was this past weekend. I gave myself permission to have a small piece of cake and ice cream, but what I found is that my clean eating habits aren't well enough established to allow for sugar from time to time. It just started a string of cravings, and later, negative emotions as I gave into those cravings.


• I'm stressed out beyond belief about going back to work. I hope I can handle it all. The baby is only sleeping through the night occasionally, which leads me to my final challenge.


• Going to the gym in the middle of the night is not sustainable. I feel tired and can't wake up and take care of my business. I need to have the evenings to relax. Working out in the morning is the only way for me right now. This means the gym is out since I have the baby home. She also has a medical condition that makes me hesitant to put her in the gym daycare. I bought a weight bench and videos to help me get in a little extra activity.

All of these things contributed to a sense of feeling defeated this week. So, upon a great deal of reflection, I've come up with a new approach that allows me to forgive myself a little and focus on the task at hand.

1. Clean eating is the way I want to eat, but it is OK if I don't eat perfectly clean for every meal. Because losing weight is my primary goal this year, I will focus on eating cleaner, but still focusing more on calorie counting/deficit management, including allowing some diet foods that aren't 100% clean. If I manage my caloric deficit, I will lose weight whether I eat clean or not. Cooking for my family in the evenings has been so beneficial to everyone, so I will continue to make that a priority. My daughter has dropped a few pounds. We went clothes shopping for her yesterday. She was actually enjoying it instead of crying her eyes out when things didn't fit exactly right.


2. Exercise will help me lose weight faster, but I don't have to exercise to lose weight. While exercise will continue to be an important part of my lifestyle, I am going to focus more on being more active in my daily life and less about how many sets of how many reps of whatever exercise i have to do on whatever day. The structure is causing me to feel like a failure if I don't do it exactly right, and because feeling like a failure leads to self-destructive behavior, I'm letting go of it for now. I have the rest of my life to have a structured gym/lifting schedule. Right now, while I have so young kiddos and work full time, I will focus on being active and do what I can when I can.

Despite this horrible week, I'm still smaller than I was when I started this adventure 4 weeks ago. I had hoped to be about 12 lbs down by now, but I will accept the 4 - 5 I have actually lost and make the changes needed to be successful during the next 4 weeks. :-)