Do It Again

               This week's meeting topic is about tracking. When I am in control, tracking is my friend. I like to double track. This means I track online using Weight Watchers E-Tools as well as on paper. I like the online tools because it automatically calculates the amount of points you consume each day. It can also help you calculate how many points something is worth which comes in handy when you are trying to plan what you are going to eat in advance. Tracking in adavance helps a lot of people. A few of my WW homies have had real success in breaking through a weight loss stall. Imagine being able to track what you plan to eat days in adavance. I cannot do this. For one thing me and my family rarely eat out or order in. That is a luxury for us. Most of the time I know what we are going to eat because I purchase most of the same foods that keeps our budget on track. But let's say, someone treated me to lunch and that this lunch was worth more points than my usual lunch. Now I can sit down with the tracker and figure out how many points dinner will go into bonus points or figure out how to make my dinner plate lighter that night.
              Paper tracking is also a wonderful thing. After I lost about 20-25lbs, I hit a plateau. I could not figure out what was happening to me. I purchsed one of those black and white composition note books and used it to log not only what I ate but also how I felt in little notes in the margin. For example, work was really hard today or I had an argument with my hubby. Sometimes I made bad choices on those days and I could look back and see that I was medicating myself with food. This may not cure me of eating but it gives me some evidence and some insight as to what behaviors I took to deal with stress, punishing myself with weight gain. It gives you something to think about.
               When I was younger I had Hello Kitty diaries in which I put down my feelings.These rantings of an emotional teenager may seem like silliness but every once and a while I read them and saw some of the silly mistakes I made. I saw how I made some human beings important to me when they obviously were not good for me. I did not want to see that at the time(I probably did not hear it at the time either). I was not ready then. But the resource is still there in my words in my handwriting. I still have some of those diaries. I also still have many of my WW trackers too including ther black and white notebook. Maybe now is the time to read them again.Hmmm. What do I know now that I should have known then?
             This week I lost 1.2lbs. Which is great considering some of the foolish choices I made this week. Of course I did do a little more activity than I have in the past few weeks due to my sprained ankle.
THIS WEEK'S ACTIVITY
Tues.5/31: all day - 4pts
Wed. 6/1: rest day
Thurs. 6/2: 5K Day - 16pts
Fri.6/3: all day - 7pts
Sat. 6/4: all day - 3pts
Sun. 6/5: all day - 3pts
Mon. 6/6: all day + 30 min Walk dvd - 5pts
Total for the week = 38 activity pts