I’m a terrible blogger. You’d think that because I wrote for a job I would write for fun any time of the day, but the truth is the last thing I want to do after working all day is sit at the computer even longer. Maybe I also don’t put much effort into blogging because I have been failing myself and I think that people read blogs to gain inspiration, not read how someone is not making the best choices.
I guess I’ll just come out and say it. In the last five months, I’ve gained back 12 pounds. It fluctuates from time to time, but on average I am about 205 — which is 10 pounds more than I weighed in September/October. I feel so disappointed in myself! I worked so hard to get out of the 200′s…and I was so happy to see the 90′s start to get lower and lower — and then the move came.
Throw in all the new places to eat and the friends to see and I am back to never making food at home and gaining weight. Now I am back in the 200′s (where I swore I’d never be) and the scale is either going in the wrong direction or not budging. I was getting to the point where I went to the gym twice a day for 30-40 minutes each time so I could get my Active Link to light up and even after a month of that, the scale didn’t show any good loss. The end of February was a nightmare in terms of work, so I sat all day at the computer and didn’t spare any time to go to the gym and then ate out every meal because I didn’t want to cook and clean.
We just came back from a trip to San Francisco, and while I didn’t go crazy with the food (hubby and I shared almost everything) I still had this little voice in the back of my head that I wanted to come home and start cooking again. I used to have an interest in cooking and enjoy all the amazing things I was eating and losing weight each week on the scale — and there are so many things I used to do while living in Colorado that I don’t do here.
For example, menu planning. Something as simple as sitting down with cookbooks, food blogs or whatever is the key to my weight loss — and saving money (which some of you know is going to be imperative in the next month or so). For me, this is how menu planning affects my life and is the foundation for everything else I do:
Menu planning — I stay on track with points, don’t spend too much at the store and I always know what I am going to eat.
When I don’t plan, I get hungry (or hangry. lol) I look in my refrigerator and see nothing but crappy stuff that won’t taste good. Well, it won’t taste good because I want chili from Wendy’s! Then I go out to eat, spend money and blow my points. The food that is in the fridge goes bad because I don’t eat it, thus causing me literally to throw away money.
I think a lot about food. Despite being on Weight Watchers for two years, I still struggle with thinking about food all the time. When I don’t have a menu plan, my mind wanders to all of those tempting foods out there I could get because there’s nothing at home. Making a menu plan helps me stay focused. I’m hungry at 2 p.m.? Don’t worry, there is a string cheese and banana waiting for me. I wake up hungry? Oatmeal and a smoothie are on a menu, so I shouldn’t tell my hubby we need to go out for breakfast.
Today is my first day back from finishing a ton of work and vacation. You can bet the first thing I am doing is making a menu, grocery list, cutting coupons and getting back in the kitchen. I know that my first 32 pounds of loss were purely because what I did in the kitchen. It’s time to snap out of it, make food and get back to enjoying what I make — the restaurants aren’t going anywhere! They need to stay a special treat and not a daily occurrence.
