Again

At the urging of a friend, I'm taking up the keyboard again and restarting Wrecklamation, which has lain fallow for quite a long time.  On my Weight Watchers' profile, I have the tag line:  "Always Aspiring".  This journey is so long, friends.  So long.

In November of 2106, the day before Thanksgiving, in fact, I rejoined Weight Watchers.  I was skeptical, because I'd had mixed results with it in the past -- back when I was single and in my thirties, I had a lot of success.  I was single-minded and had a lot of time on my hands to focus on myself.  When I went back to Weight Watchers right after giving birth to Chickadee #1, I hated it.  I felt completely unwelcome in meetings with my baby and, no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to shed the baby weight.  I was nursing so I think that my metabolism was just going to hold on to all the fat possible in order to make milk for her.  I know that all the books say that women lose weight while breastfeeding, but I've since learned that not everyone does.  I have the "good fortune" to be a weight hoarder.  It's really wonderful for the self-esteem.  Right after I stopped nursing, I became pregnant again.  Unfortunately, I lost that baby to a miscarriage at ten weeks.  My body was in an uproar, as were my emotions and my hormones.  Two months later, I was pregnant again, this time with Chickadee #2, not having lost any weight in the previous 19 months.  Nine months later, I had a beautiful new baby and 30 more pounds.

Now, one of my children is a young teen and the other is a tween, so I can't claim that I'm still carrying "baby weight" with much credibility.  But, in a sense, that is just what I'm doing... I'm carrying the weight of years of taking care of others instead of myself.  I'm carrying the results of a mindset that says my life has to be either about my children or about me.  I'm carrying the consequences of not getting a handle on my health earlier because of "everything else" I've had to do.

So, when I rejoined Weight Watchers, inspired by the marvelous Alexis Eggleton of Trading Cardio for Cosmos, I decided that no matter how long and no matter what, I was not going to quit trying to become healthier.  I might die trying, but I was not going to give up on myself.   I was going to give myself the gift of my own time and my own attention and I was not going to stop.  I haven't, but it's been S.L.O.W.  and very frustrating.  I have plenty of opportunities to beat myself up and to compare myself to others' journeys -- comparison which always finds me on the losing side.  It's a very difficult and slow work to change your mindset about what you can and cannot do and about what you deserve.  So, I'm working on that. 

I can look at the chart of my progress and see good things and bad things.  On the positive side, the trend is downwards.  On the bad side, February 2017 through August 2017 demonstrate that, even though I was "following the program," I was really just playing around.  October 2017 through February 2018 show that things really went off the rails.  I wish that I could just magically fold this chart so that the 1 year period between February 2017 and February 2018 could disappear. 

This trajectory would be much better...

Right?  

Actually, no, it would not be better.  I've learned a lot from my plateau year.  And that is a subject for another post.  Stay tuned.