Ugly and Overcoming Ugly (Evaluation: Week 1)

Last Weight In: Friday, 30 August 2013
Weight Information -
      Weight: 455.2 lbs
      Weight Change This Week: +3.4 lbs
      Weight Change To Date: +2.0 lbs
      Weight Gauge: Really?!? 

Current Goals (Updated: Friday, 30 August 2013) -
     Number Goal: 430 lbs
     Distance to Goal: 25.2 lbs
     Feel Good Goal: Set aside time to relax
     Distance to Goal: Happening later this afternoon
     The Y:
          Go to the Y three time next week.
          Get a swim suit.
     Distance to Goal:
          Need to sit down with calendar and plan which days
          No swimsuit but today is payday.
     Weight Watchers:
          Use the paper tracker tomorrow
          Make a meal cards with the PPV's worked out.
          Attend at least two Regular meeting this week, most likely Thursday and Friday
     Distance to Goal:
          Paper tracker is out
          Meal cards are planned for Monday
          Thursday and Friday are still ahead of us

EVALUATION:
This was an ugly weigh in. There are three primary reasons that I feel the weigh in went the way it did.

1. High stress week (little sleeps, too many activities, too many chores needing my direct attention, too many irregular activities, etc.). Only work was relaxing.
2. Poor attention to detail when it came to eating. Ate the wrong things. Justified it by eating a single item (small bag of potato chips, for example) over the course of several days. Obviously, it didn't work. 
3. Not a single point was recorded.

So, to overcome these three issues:

1. Long relaxing Labor day. Working all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Fewer events for next week. Re-initiating the point system for family chores. Discussion on Sunday for rules, regs, preferences, and schedules.
2. Take the Eat This, Not That mentality. I know what good choices are. Time to make them.
3. Start recording every things I put in my mouth starting tomorrow morning. Today and Monday, use 3'x5' cards to list individual meal ideas and their points.

Additional Issues/Solutions:

1. Header much too long for daily attention. / Simplify entering header. Full header once a week on weigh in. Remaining header only if there are updates.
2. Individual entries take too long to enter and edit. / Shorten individual entries. I may like to write, but I don't have to go for prolific.
3. Names for immediate family / MBWM (My Beloved Wife M), Horse, Asian Red Fox, Jaguar, Iguana, Lemur (Ring-tailed like Zaboo), Quail. And ya know, some days, home feel like a zoo.

Good Idea: Snap and Track - When you snack, take a picture of the item and then track it when you are ready.

Post Number: 6

So I learned a couple things this morning. First of all, I only get two Power Start meetings from Weight Watchers. From now on, I only go to the regular meeting. Good to know. Also, my frustration tends to express itself a little later. Delayed release as it were. I made it back to the van before I expressed my feelings with an angry, "Why even bother?" I know why I bother. I just need to be bothered into making better choices. Okay, maybe bothered isn't the best wording. Especially since I'm trying to face down a birthday cake for Jaguar. She has been a delightful, flighty girl bouncing from excitement to excitement. I don't think she could have been anything less than thrilled regardless of what happened to her.

So here I sit, ready to make plans. I explore, I delve, I research. And why this attention to planning:

"A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

So first, the goals. I know, there are quite a few listed above. And those are good. But lets have a few more. That way, different goals will help me combat different temptations.

Overall Goal: I am losing weight so I can live longer.
Long-term goals: I am losing weight so that I can...
     Attend every sealing: Horse, Asian Red Fox, Jaguar, Iguana, Lemur, and Quail
     Bike, swim, walk, play with my kids and my grand kids
     Comfortably fit into a pair of pants that can be purchased at Wal-Mart, Shopko, JC Penney’s, …
Intermediate goals: I am losing weight so I can...
     Stand during lectures, seminars, etc and not feel extreme pain in my ankles, knees, hips, and arches.
     Recover from long day of work in one good night’s sleep
     Handles stresses better
Short-term goals: I am losing weight today so that I can...
     Take charge of this part of my life today
     Abstain from compulsive eating today

Next, I will come up with SMART goals related to my weight loss. Tonight, I am just brain-storming categories for the SMART goals. Once I have categories. I will work at describing the destinations for those goals. And then once I have the destinations, I can get SMART. So here are my thoughts on categories:

• Physical Activity
• Food
• Emotional Assistance
• Spiritual Assistance
• Family Assistance
• Miscellaneous

I know this sounds like quite a bit of effort. But frankly, left to my own devices, this week shows I am prone to failure. I suspect, in time, I will ramp down to fewer goals, statements, descriptions, and destinations. But at this stage. The hope here is that the more I focus on these things of importance, the easier it will be to make the best decisions, always with the destination in mind. Better to have too many descriptions of the best life I am seeking. Then I can find the ones that work throughout today, through the entire week, on into the entire months, and for years to come.

Yours in the joy of being refocused,

Eliot

P.S.: I have seen so many before and after pictures in weight loss ads and at weight loss clinics. To be honest, I'll be thrilled to make it to the before picture.