My Own 600-Pound Life

I thought it would never happen and now it has… moving back to normal from fat.

Even During the Hard Times

Posted by Scott Groppenbecker comments (0)

For me, hard times means stress.  It means worry.  It means taking every waking moment trying to figure out how to solve the issue that is at hand.  I'm a good problem solver and I can get things done.  I know people that can get things done if I can't get them done.  That doesn't mean I cope well with those situations.

This poses a problem for my weight loss journey.  You see, weight loss, for me, takes a lot out of me.  While I am, right now, in a "groove" where I pretty much run on Weight Watchers auto-pilot, I notice things more when I'm not myself.  I notice that I really don't want to go to the gym or that I really want to go to Cold Stone and get that very yummy ice cream dish.  I know it's not healthy, but just like any addict, we want to satisfy our cravings and when we have our minds on something else, that is when we are weak.

I think the hardest thing about the weight loss journey is dealing with it during the hard times.  For the past couple of days, I've just been in a funk.  I've been upset about some things that I don't know how to deal with, my leg has been hurting more and I've just been down.  Honestly, I haven't gone to the gym in almost a week (I am going tonight, though).  But I've kept on program.  I'm not sure how, but I have.

That is something we all must learn over the course of our weight loss journey.  I would venture to say that most of us have issues with eating.  If we didn't, we wouldn't be overweight.  From my experience, those issues with eating will never go away.  Just like a drug user or alcoholic, we tend to use food as our dependant drug of choice.  Why?  I don't know.  I don't know what predisposes us to use food to cope with our hurts and our problems, but we do.  But we have to stop.

It's been hard during these past couple of days.  I don't want to be on program.  I don't want to have my diet cokes and my salads and I definitely don't want to go exercise.  But I have to.  Not because someone tells me to and not because I think it's the right thing to do, but simply because I know it is the thing that will make me healthy and able to do the things I want to.

In our meeting last night, I shared how I could barely walk a quarter of a mile right now without stopping at the gym.  I don't want to be that person.  There are so many limitations that weight puts on us and we have to learn to tell it to stop.  We wouldn't let anyone else put those kinds of limitations on us - so why are we doing it?  Why are we allowing ourselves to put those limitations on?

So I guess my point is that even though the hard times, we must find a way to shine through.  Maybe we don't have enough energy to cheer other people on during the hard times, but we must have the strength to pull ourselves together and make it through.  We owe it to ourselves to continue this journey.  While it's a hard and a very long one, we will eventuallly get there.  We really will.

That "Magic" Formula

Posted by Scott Groppenbecker comments (0)

I think we all have an idea of what we think the weight loss "magic formula" is.  I know I do.  Well, at least I did.  For those of us who have been on diets for a while, either off and on or steady, we all know what we think works for us and we know what results we should obtain from that formula.  For instance, I "knew" that if I ate all of my daily points and 10 of my weeklies, I put up a better number than if I just stayed within my daily points.  So I had it all figured out!  Well, not so much.
For two weigh-ins before this weigh-in last night, I had horrible results.  I had lost a net of 0 pounds.  Some people may say, hey, that's OK because you didn't gain it overnight and while that's true, I did gain 150 pounds in 1 year.  And losing 0 pounds in two weeks was not going to get me to lose 150 pounds in one year.  I was so frustrated (if you couldn't tell by my previous posts)!

I almost gave up exercise and in fact, I only got to exercise two times this past week.  I also stopped taking a lot of the vitamins I was taking (just because I forgot them, not because I thought they were the problem) and the only thing I really did well this last week was track my food.  However, the scale decided to surprise me with a 7.2 pound loss!  Holy crap!

By my formula, this shouldn't have happened.  Top that off with the fact that I wasn't able to go to the bathroom before my weigh in (long-standing WW joke, folks), I felt "fat" and my legs were hurting.  I was sure I hadn't lost any weight again!  But I did.

You see, our bodies react to what we do to it.  Sometimes they are a little behind, but they do react.  With that being said, there is no magic formula.  As long as you are following a safe, healthy diet (whether that be Weight Watchers or simply counting calories) and doing some exercise, you are going in the right direction.

Now don't get me wrong, this isn't an easy lesson to learn and I'm not sure I've even learned it fully.  However, it is something that would behoove us to remember because when we get those weeks where we don't lose or where we lose less than we think we should, we need to remember those weeks where we didn't necessarily give 100% and we lost an amazing number.

Folks, this is a lifetime journey for most of us.  Even when we get down to our goal weight, we will still be overeaters.  We will not be able to just go out and eat that medium pizza by ourselves again.  Actually we probably could if we went and ran about 13 miles or so, but you get my point.  We will constantly be in a struggle with our weight, but by then we will know how to manage it.  We will be at the end of the hard part and we will have all the tools we need at that point.

So, don't give up and if you have your "formula" written down on a piece of paper, shred it and throw it away.  It's not going to work.  Well, it may work this week, but it probably won't next week.  The only formula we need is points target + exercise = healthy lifestyle.  Don't put a number on it and don't expect it to turn out a loss each week, but we are becoming healthier, happier people.  The weight will eventually follow.

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