Focus, focus......FOCUS!

Source: thefitway.tumblr.com via Sherrie on Pinterest

Tonight was weigh in night at Weight Watchers, and I genuinely was not upset to show a gain of 6/10ths of a pound. Most of this week was spent trying to recover from a bit of a dietary indescretion (ok, a flurry of emotional eating would be more accurate) on Sunday night. I found myself feeling a sort of free floating (as in no "target" to apply it to) anger and anxiety for no real reason, and it seemed at the time that the best way to deal with that was to plunge elbow deep into caramel popcorn. (Hey, it made PERFECT sense at the time!) I was up 2 1/2 pounds that next morning, and spent the rest of the week staying carefully on track with my eating and racking up over 40 activity points to counteract 30 minutes of eating hysteria. So, do you see why I wasn't upset with "only" a 6/10th gain? Now the caramel corn is GONE and I'm striving to regain my focus on my final stretch towards my weight loss goal. On Tuesday, my former Weight Watchers leader posted a quote on Facebook that I've been repeating to myself all week, and I even printed it out and put it on my "inspiration board" in my bedroom. Here it is, it's from Jennifer Hudson's new book:
"Hear this loud & clear. I am completely in charge of the choices I make about what I am doing to lose weight and get healthy. And you know what? We ALL have this power."
When I've been tempted to inhale cookies or junky, not nutritious food the last few days I've just repeated to myself "I am completely in charge of the choices I make about what I am doing to lose weight and get healthy." That has steered me in the right direction, and I will strive to continue to maintain that FOCUS and show a better result on the scale next Thursday.
:)

Anybody still occasionally checking in here? It's *possible* that I haven't blogged in a minute...ok, make that 20 months. Yeah, I'm a bad blogger. I've been reading a lot of blogs lately by Weight Watchers members, and I'm hoping that I can revisit using this blog as a way to keep myself on track with WW. I'm currently at a total loss of 93 pounds, with my (unofficial, as I never have actually sat down with a WW leader to set a goal) goal weight just 7 pounds away. (Last week it was only 5 pounds away, but I had an unexpected 2 pound gain at my weigh in yesterday.) I'll keep reading everyone else's blogs and posting here.
Some new foods that I've discovered in the last few months are spaghetti squash and Oikos chocolate Greek yogurt. (Not together...that would be bad!) I've been cooking a little bit, which is a big change for me as I've always depended on my son or my husband to cook for me. I can make spaghetti squash, chicken breasts, pork chops and (new tonight), tilapia.
I've been really ramping up the activity in an attempt to shed these last half dozen or so pounds. I've been doing classes at the gym, my favorites are Body Attack and Body Combat. I also do Body Pump every Wednesday and Body Vive occasionally. I also invested in some good running shoes and I can run over 5 miles at a time at a pace of 5.5 MPH. My goals are to increase my speed (if I can get it up to 6 MPH that will be a 10 minute mile pace) and to increase my distance so I can move up to 10K races (6.2 miles) along with the 5K's I've been doing. I've been doing the "30 day chip" challenge on Twitter, aiming for 30 minutes per day of exercise every day for 30 days. Today is day # 19, once I get another 5 minutes in. :)
I hope that a handful of you will join me in this effort to get those last few pounds gone and to reach my WW goal weight. Here is a pic of me and my "little boy" (who's nearly 6 feet tall at 15 years old)on Christmas to show my latest "after" picture. Please feel free to comment here or email me to keep me accountable, that's why I'm here!