Daily Update

Today's weight is down to 219.0, a loss of 0.2 pounds.  It's nice to see those numbers moving again, no matter how small!

Yesterday Jake and I went in search of some low-point Holiday goodies to keep us satisfied during the Christmas season, and one thing we found were the Little Debbie soft frosted gingerbread cookies-only 2 points per cookie!! It was nice to find something yummy and Christmasy that fit so snugly within our new lifestyle.  They are a tad small, but I've found that savoring those small bites really makes a difference, where I would used to stuff the whole cookie in my mouth without really tasting what I was eating.

I am so excited for Christmas this year; I always get excited when the decorations and lights start popping up around town!  Jake drove me to Candy Cane Lane last night, a local street that is always decorated to the nines for Christmas, and it was so fun to see all those pretty lights again.

Here's a gorgeous picture that my Dad sent me from last year's snow at the farm.

By the way, if anyone is looking for unique Christmas gifts this year, visit our family's website at Blue Willow Lavender Farm.  We've got lots of beautiful lavender gifts, handmade by my mom Tracy, and they smell wonderful!

Daily update

219.2 today, down 0.2 pounds. : )  My scale is making me crazy, I must admit.  Got on this morning and got the weight listed here, then stepped right back on and got 220!  I've just decided to not get back on the scale again if I like the first number!

Three great new WW blog finds!

Here are two new blogs that I have discovered that are completely WW friendly:

Weight Watchers Recipes With Points Plus - Low Calorie Recipes Online - LaaLoosh

Weight Watchers Recipes and Low Fat Cooking Ideas | Skinny Kitchen

Dashing Dish: This blog is run by a wonderful woman of God who makes fantastic food!

Post-Thanksgiving Massacre (or, Week Seven on Weight Watchers)

It's the beginning of Week Seven on Weight Watchers, and I have never been so glad to be back on the horse, as it were.  Thanksgiving was going to be a big problem for me weight wise.  I was prepared ahead of time for the setback it would likely bring, and I wasn't disappointed.  I started Thanksgiving morning at my lowest weight to date (218.5), a total loss of nearly 20 pounds, but it was to be short-lived!  After a day filled with indulgences (and believe me, I enjoyed every one of them!), I was in some serious pain.  My stomach cannot handle what I wanted to eat, and it let me know after the big meal was over.  I couldn't eat more than half my plate as it was, but I was still feeling the pain afterward.

The morning after Thanksgiving, which was supposed to be my first weekly weigh-in, I came in at a whopping 224.2, a gain of almost seven pounds of water weight!! Crazy, right? It took my ankles two days to come back down to normal, where they were extremely swollen after Thanksgiving, likely due to the incredibly increased salt intake over those two days I was visiting my grandparents.  By yesterday, I was down to 219.6, having flushed (literally) all that extra bloat away.  So I'm almost back to where I was before Thanksgiving.  This taught me a very important lesson about indulging.  It is almost never worth it to me to get to eat anything I want  because I will most assuredly gain weight as a result, not to mention the extreme discomfort that comes from eating the things I always used to eat.  The short-term delight that came from eating all of that food was just that, short-term.  Food, while it can be delicious, just isn't worth sacrificing my health over.  Even Jake said yesterday, "Food just isn't as important to me as it used to be."  Food used to be my idol of choice; I would literally think about my next meal while I was eating a meal.  To break free from that idolatry is priceless to me.

Current stats:

Stephanie
Starting weight: 237.5
Current weight: 219.4

Total loss: 18.1 lbs

Jake
Starting weight: 290.0
Current weight: 263.6

Total loss: 26.4 lbs

Six weeks on Weight Watchers!!

It's the beginning of our sixth week on Weight Watchers, and I'm feeling good! Yesterday I was down to 219.0, and after an extremely busy day filled with lots of bad, but yummy food choices (including some delicious pizza I just couldn't pass up), I am only up 0.4 pounds this morning, which is fairly insignificant to me in the grand scheme of things and just gives me more confidence that I can make this new lifestyle work for me.  The weight loss has slowed down considerably, which I have been prepared for, so now I need to work Phase II into my plan-amping up my physical activity! This should not be too hard-after all, I have a treadmill right next to me as I write this-but anyone can make an excuse for anything, and I am really good at that!  I love the treadmill, however, and I know how good it makes me feel, so I am going to schedule in my 'training time' so that I do it.  I learned from someone very close to me that if you don't schedule your walks, runs, whatever you happen to be doing for exercise, you won't do it, so that's my plan.  This week is going to be crazy with Thanksgiving and trying to get things done ahead of that, so I'm not expecting much of myself in that arena.  

I'm so excited for Thanksgiving and getting to indulge for one day!  My plan of attack is to eat small portions of all the things I like and try to work in some veggies where I can.  My weight loss means too much to me to go gung-ho and gorge myself like I used to do every year.  Besides, I can't eat nearly as much as I used to, so that should work in my favor.

Can't wait to see family on Thursday and enjoy the holiday.  Enjoy yours too, my friends and family, and thanks for your support and encouragement!  I love you all!

Note: I have decided to weigh myself once a week from now on, following the advice of many people, because I just want to focus on this journey and not on the scale, and weighing daily is pretty hard on my emotions when the numbers don't change the way I want them to.  So weekly weigh-in will be on Friday mornings from now on.

Steph's progress:

Starting weight: 237.5 lbs

Current weight: 219.4 lbs

Total weight loss: 18.1 lbs

Jake's progress:

Starting weight: 290 lbs

Current weight: 268 lbs

Total weight loss: 22 lbs

Daily Update

My weight this morning was 219.8!! I have finally broken the 220's, and I am so excited! It is a small loss- 0.2 pounds- but I am satisfied anyhow.  Last night after a really good dinner of pumpkin quiche (from the Hungry Girl website; I highly recommend it!!), which was only 2 points per slice, I had about 18 points left for the rest of the night.  I hate having that many points left after dinner because I always feel like I have to eat something bad for me to use up some more points.  (I have discovered, though, that I will lose weight even if I don't eat all my points.)  Not the best strategy; I should have just stopped eating for the night despite having so many points left to burn.  I decided to dip into our until now relatively untouched bowls of Halloween candy, of which we have a lot!  I settled on a Hershey's with Almonds bar, a full-size one.  Six points for the entire bar; not too shabby for an indulgent treat like that, and I definitely had the points for it.  Let me tell you, I used to devour those like they were going out of style.  Last night I hadn't taken my second bite of that thing before I found myself literally gagging on it!  Not having eaten anything remotely like that in the last three or so weeks, I found that I couldn't handle something that sweet anymore.  That was exciting to me because I feel like I have had such a profound sugar addiction for most of my adult life and it seems that I have finally broken that shackle! Hooray!

I am excited to face the 210's now and conquer them as well! My first major goal in this will be to break 220 for the first time in over 10 years, and I am now 19 pounds away.  I am so thrilled!

P.S. The Hungry Girl website can be found at: www.hungrygirl.com.  She has great recipes geared toward low-calorie and low-fat and lists PointsPlus values for all her recipes!

Daily update

Lost another 0.8 pounds today! I'm down to 220.0!  I am just on the cusp of breaking the 220's, which I've been in for the last two or three weeks, and I'm so excited!!

It still feels like a dream to me, and I know that 17.5 pounds isn't a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but I honestly didn't think that I would ever lose weight again; I had just resigned myself to a life of being fat.  I know that I won't ever look back again; this new lifestyle is here to stay! 

Jake updated me this morning that he had lost another pound and is now at 269.0, down from his initial weight of 290.0! I am so proud of him!

Reflections on Five Weeks

First post on my new blog!


It's been five weeks since I took the first small step toward a new life and a new me.  So far it has been really eye-opening in so many ways! 


Food used to be my medication, my salve to heal my hurts, my worries, my sadness, and the craziness of everyday life, which is what got me to where I was, 237.5 pounds, constantly hurting inside and out, and feeling desperate about life in general.  Fortunately, that is starting to become a thing of the past.  Food, instead of being the thing that I thought would help me, was the thing that was causing the majority of my mood swings and nuttiness.  I feel like I am escaping its grip on me little by little every day, and it feels great!


I wouldn't be where I am now, 17 pounds later, without the love and support of my husband Jake.  He has been a rock throughout this process, and he has done amazingly well himself, losing 20 pounds thus far!  Anytime I feel like I want to give in and just devour the contents of my fridge (which happens more times than I would care to admit), he gently brings me back to reality, reminding me of the success we have had so far and reassuring me that we will get to where we want to go together.  He is the most loving, supportive, and above all, patient man that I have ever had the privilege of knowing, and I'm so proud to be his wife and on this crazy trip with him.


My goal is 145 pounds, which leaves me 75.8 pounds to lose.  Instead of overwhelming myself with this huge number, I've been really savoring the moments in the morning when the numbers have gone down, no matter how small-it has really kept me going.  I am also so blessed to have so many people on Facebook who have supported us and kept us going with their encouragement.  I love you all, and you mean so much to me!