How I lost my first 40 lbs. before reaching a 16-month plateau

It sounds ridiculous to say that at the age of 52 I didn't know what I could eat, but it's true.  I didn't know proper portions anymore - did I ever? - and I didn't know what my daily nutritional values (calories, carbs, fat, protein, sugars, fiber, etc.) should be.  Those charts they've been shoving at me since I was a kid showing the "food groups" didn't help either.  Now I have to worry about the number of servings of certain foods I have to eat EVERY day, too?  Besides, how much is one serving for fruit and vegetables?  For example, how many carrots does it take to make one serving?  Or how about strawberries, how many does it take to make one serving? 

There's so much confusing/contradictory information out there, too:  some people say you should only worry about calories, others say you should be eating non-fat while others tell you that a non-fat diet doesn't work, some believe it's carbs you should look at, and yet others say protein is the key.  Now sugar is the latest true evil.  Then there's the good cholesterol and the bad cholesterol, saturated fats versus unsaturated fats, blah blah blah.  Good grief, it's like a calculus project trying to eat properly!  It was just too overwhelming for me.

At this point, I had no idea what I should do so I decided to try Weight Watchers ("WW") again since I was familiar with it and I wouldn't be required to learn anything new.  My mind set at this time was resignation rather than elation.  I wasn't happy about starting a new program, I didn't even want to start one because losing weight is such a tedious process - assuming I could even lose any weight, but I had resigned myself to the fact that I had to do something.  I had no choice.

The key to WW is tracking every morsel of food you consume.  WW works on points and every food item is assigned a point.  In order to track properly, you have to measure/weigh everything to determine serving portions.  The number of points allowed to you each day depends on your gender, age, and weight at that time.  As you lose weight, your daily points allowed are reduced (which I saw as punishment for succeeding!) and, conversely, increased if you gain.  The program has changed a bit through the years and right now pretty much all vegetables and fruits, with few exceptions, are zero points which makes tracking easier.

I was elated to discover that WW now also offers an online program where you can follow the WW system in the privacy of your own home, at your own pace, and not have to talk to anyone or go to any location to get weighed in once a week.  With the online program, once a week, on the day you chose to have your weight tracked, a little box pops up automatically for you to input your new weight for that week.  With WW, you only weigh in once a week.  At any time you can check your progress by pulling up a list of your past weight or the same information displayed in a graph.   They always offer support meetings, but I'm not a meetings-type person.  I hate group settings.  I hate meetings.  I often wondered what I would do if I was an alcoholic because I know I wouldn't attend AA meetings.  In any case, the WW online program was tailor made for anti-social people like me.

In the olden days (which is only about 20 years ago), before the internet and Smart phones were invented, tracking with WW was incredibly time consuming and tedious.  It involved carrying around a bunch of books that listed different foods and their points/nutritional values and you kept track of your meals on a piece of paper or a computer spreadsheet.  Now with the internet and Smart phones, you can access your account at any time from anywhere and the drop down menus and search engines make tracking very easy.  

So as a last ditch effort, I joined WW in late November 2012 with absolutely no hopes that I would succeed in the long run.  In fact, I chose to join month-to-month rather than take the discount for multiple months because I figured I probably wouldn't even use it after the first month anyway.  You might accuse me of being too negative, but when you've failed time and time again for more than 30 years, you are conditioned to expect failure.  I remember feeling buyer's remorse immediately after joining because I thought I was wasting my money once again.  Why would this time be any different?  I had over 30 years of historical proof that it wouldn't be.

I spent the next two weeks navigating through WW's website off and on, trying to figure out how to use their online program, but really having no desire to start.  It wasn't until mid December that I started tracking my meals when I realized I was paying for something I wasn't using.  I told myself to just try it for the remaining two weeks and then I could cancel after the month was over.  No harm, no foul.

At this point I decided to do some more self-analysis regarding my past (failed) efforts to see what worked and what didn't.  Consequently, I made some changes to what I had done before:

• Don't tell anyone.

Whenever I started a weight-loss program, I told everybody immediately.  I practically put a banner on my forehead to inform the world, "Look, people!  I'm on a diet!"  The school of thought is that you do precisely that to make yourself accountable to someone else.  This actually had the opposite effect on me.  I'm fiercely independent and I resent being accountable to anyone.  I really didn't like it when people asked me how I was getting along, particularly when I wasn't doing well and especially when I had given up.  My failure and embarrassment were only magnified.

This time around, I decided not to tell anyone until I had lost 25 lbs.  The 25 was arbitrary, it sounded like a good number.  If I failed, it would be in private and no one would ever know.  If I succeeded, losing 25 lbs. proved to me that I could do it and I could share my success with those around me without looking like a flake … again.  It took me about three months to lose 25 lbs. and then I began to share my success with my closest friends.  As I kept losing more, I shared it with even more people in my        circle - except my mother.  

I never told my mother what I was doing.  Why?  First off, she's the queen of interrogation.  I knew that if I told her about my journey, I'd be bombarded with the same questions over and over again about whether I was succeeding or not and then she'd give me advice I didn't ask for.  It's annoying.  Secondly, she's always been concerned with my weight and throughout my life as I fluctuated up and down the scale (mostly up) her comments were not the kindest so I decided not to tell her I was on a weight-loss journey because if I failed, I didn't want to hear about it.  I already knew I was a failure when it came to my weight and I didn't need anyone to point it out to me.  She started noticing once I had lost about 75 lbs. and as my journey progressed, she's been elated at my success and immediately started shooting questions at me.  I told her, "Oh, no, no, no.  I'm not going to be interrogated."  She even said once (after I cut off my hair into a flattering do) that I looked "adorable."  Thanks.  Who knew I could!

I know family members are concerned with a loved one's obesity, but I don't know why they just don't get it that pressuring, harassing, ridiculing, insulting, or embarrassing that obese family member does NOT work!   If you had a child who's having difficulty learning, would you loom over them and call them stupid?  Of course not.  So why do people think an obese person who has a food addiction is going to respond to negative stimuli?   I just don't get it.  In fact, research has shown that this has the opposite effect.  I didn't need research to prove that to me.  I already knew.   

•  Work on the food first, THEN worry about exercising. 

Starting a new eating plan and a new exercise program at the same time never worked for me either.  It was just too much for me and if I stopped doing one, I'd stop the other.  Basically, I'd give up if I couldn't be perfect on both equally.  It's a curse to be a perfectionist!  This time around, I decided to concentrate on the food first until I got a handle on it and I told myself that once I lost 25 lbs. (assuming I could), then I would HAVE to start some type of exercise program which would most likely be walking.  Besides, hating exercise as much as I do, it was no problem at all putting it off for the future.

•  Postpone all temptations for two months. 

Every time I started a new eating plan, someone would invite me to a party, lunch, or dinner.  Then I'd have to start all over again because I would have no self control when I went to these events.  This time around, I postponed everything for two months.  It was crucial that I not get derailed before I succeeded.  So for two months I bowed out of every social event (not that there were many) by making excuses but not telling anyone the true reason.  This new tactic, although boring and even more isolating than I had been already, worked out perfectly for me because it allowed me to concentrate on every single meal without being tempted to deviate from my new eating plan and I had complete control over what I ate.  This made tracking easy, too.

So keeping my five epiphanies (the forest-for-the-trees thing explained in "The first step - before worrying about food or exercise") in mind and with the above changes piled on, I started tracking my food with WW one day at a time.  Again, I had absolutely no hopes I would succeed.  Little did I know then that this was going to be just the beginning of a journey that would lead to a new me - and a blog about my journey, too!  I probably wouldn't have believed it anyway had I known.

 

After the two weeks of tracking were over and I was charged for a second month by WW, I decided to keep going.  I could always cancel in a few weeks before being charged for a third month.  As time went on, I realized I was doing it and I was seeing success so I kept going.

I decided that the way this process was going to work best was if I cooked my own meals.  That way, I could control what went into the meals and it'd be easier to track, too.  My mother taught me to cook when I was a kid and I've been cooking and baking since I was about 10 years old.  I've always enjoyed cooking, but as an adult, life got in the way and I was too busy and too tired to do it regularly.  This time, I had no excuse.  I had the time and I needed to start eating better.

I bought some WW cookbooks which are great because the points are already calculated for each recipe, and I bought some vegetarian cookbooks to give me ideas for side dishes so I wouldn't be limited to salads every single day, too.  I also researched recipe ideas online, in addition to looking through my vast cookbook collection that I've compiled for years.

What I really liked about the WW online membership is that it offers a recipe builder program.  You can input the ingredients of your favorite recipes into the builder and the points are automatically calculated for each serving.  I spent many hours inputting my favorite recipes (just the ingredients) to figure out the points per portion.  They also provide a calculator so that you can convert normal nutritional values from products or from recipes (many cookbooks include nutritional values for each recipe now) into WW points for easy tracking.

Since tracking properly includes measuring/weighing everything, I put a kitchen scale, measuring cups, and measuring spoons on my counter and I kept them there at all times for easy access.  I didn't like doing this too much because my kitchen is very small and these items took up precious space on the counter, but it'd force me to use them if they were readily accessible.  Since WW allows you to eat anything and everything, I really didn't have to clear out my pantry.

So here I was, in mid December 2012, starting to cook my meals, eating better, and tracking with WW every morsel of food I was consuming.  I was not perfect on my points, but I started having success almost immediately because I had been eating so badly for so long that any change was beneficial. 

The first problem I encountered was hunger.  The first two weeks I walked around the house saying out loud, "I'm STARVING!!!!!!"  I started to seriously doubt I could continue on WW much longer.  The old thoughts of, "No wonder I'm fat.  I can't do this!" started to creep in.  Instead of giving up, I analyzed my days:  when did I feel hungry?  was I hungry all day or at a particular time of day?  was it always the same time each day?  I started looking for a pattern.  It was then I realized that during the day I was fine, but once 10 p.m. or so hit, I was getting hungry.  I'm a late-night person, I often stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning regardless of what time I had to get up the next day.  I had always been that way, especially now that I was retired and had no job to get to.  I've always been a late-night binger and I was never hungry because I was always eating, but now that I was on WW and on limited points, those late-night snacks were no longer an option.  I realized that since I was eating dinner at 5 or 6 p.m., by the time midnight came around, I was starving.  No wonder, I hadn't eaten in over 6 hours!  I decided to try having dinner later or saving my afternoon snack for after dinner.  Because under WW most fruits are zero points, my snack of choice was usually a smoothie:  delicious, filling, and healthy.  And guess what, I was no longer starving once I made this small adjustment.  Whew!  Now I could just keep plugging along on WW and see how far I could go.

Within the first few weeks, I was walking around thinking to myself, "Gee, I feel smaller!"  Suddenly I didn't feel as bloated and my clothes were starting to fit a bit looser, too.  I just kept plugging along, taking it one day at a time, and the weight started to come off slowly, but steady.  I wasn't struggling too much, I wasn't starving anymore, and I wasn't obsessing over food because I wasn’t entirely depriving myself.  For example, if I wanted a piece of cake, I'd have it, just not as big a piece nor as frequently as before.  As time progressed, I saw the scale numbers drop and I could literally feel my body shrinking. 

The other perception I changed was how I viewed the numbers on the scale.  When I was younger, I'd put unreasonable goals on myself:  if I didn't lose 10-15 lbs. in a month, that was a failure, so why keep trying?  People would say that a healthy weight loss is .5 to 2 lbs. a week and I used to think, "Half a pound a week???  That's nothing!  It's not worth all that work!"  Of course, I was ridiculous in thinking that way.  This time around, my motto was that whatever I lost, that was better than gaining, and if I gained once in a while, that was okay as long as I didn't gain consistently.  I was smart enough now in my old age to know that your body weight fluctuates constantly and the only thing that matters is to look at the overall picture.  In other words, half a pound a week will eventually add up and if it takes longer to get to my goal, so what?  As long as I got there eventually, that's what mattered.  This rewiring of my thinking worked out really well because there were weeks I stayed the same or only lost one or two ounces over several weeks.  In the past, losing such meager numbers would have driven me insane and I would have given up.  This time around, I took it in stride despite being disappointed.  

Also, there were weeks I gained - as much as 3 lbs. in one week, but I didn't let it get to me.  Disappointing?  Of course, but instead of giving up, I reassessed what I had eaten that past week to see if I could have done better.  In most cases, I could have done better and that meant that I had to try harder.  When I binged here and there, I didn't berate myself or feel like a failure anymore.   Instead I told myself, "Okay, you needed to do that, but it's over now.  You have to get back on track NOW" and that's exactly what I did.  In some cases I gained even when I had been very good all week.  Again, I took it in stride and just kept plugging along one day at a time.  The key was to NEVER GIVE UP!  The weight continued to come off.  It wasn't fast, but it was steady. 

About two months after I started on WW, I truly saw the effects of my success.  I took my mother's dog, Mitzi, to the park and I was wearing my usual stretchy casual pants with elastic waist (like baggy yoga pants), but as we started to walk around the park, something didn't feel right.  Had the leash wrapped around me?  I looked down and the weight from my cell phone and keys that were in my pockets were pulling my pants down to my hips!  I couldn't believe that I had shrunk enough to render the same pants I had worn for years (which were tight more often than not) to be too baggy now!  It was a great feeling to visually see my success.  

By the end of July 2013 (almost 8 months after joining WW), I had lost 50 lbs.!  This was amazing because I hadn't been able to drop any weight at all for over a decade.  Despite rarely being perfect on WW, I was losing weight steadily, I was feeling happy, and I was wearing smaller clothes.  I thought I had finally figured it all out and I had finally made it!  I was on my way with ease to my goal!  Hallelujah!

…and THEN I got stuck!  Completely stuck!  I hit a dreaded plateau.  Ugh!  I didn't know it then (thank God I didn't), but for the next 16 months, I would gain and lose the same 15 lbs. over and over and over again.  

During this long-term plateau, I was following the WW program fairly well.  Since losing 25 lbs., I had been working out by walking regularly and I also joined Curves in the spring of 2014 to increase my workouts.  However, I just couldn't drop more than these 50 lbs. - although I could easily gain beyond that.  It didn't help that I was experiencing one setback after another either.  Once I hit the plateau, life got in the way and things were hitting me all at once or back to back.  I felt like the universe was working against me again, like it always had before.  The setbacks included shin splints, my mother's medical issues, financial problems, and a bad fall:

I've always suffered from shin splints whenever I started a walking program, but they were really bad now.  I was forced to take a few weeks off from walking to let them heal, but once I returned to it, not only did the shin splints return, my feet were hurting, too.  I already had a bad (arthritic) knee and all this pain was frustrating me and thwarting me from my plans.  As if I didn't hate exercising already, now I had to deal with a lot of pain, too!  After working with a podiatrist for four months, I started wearing orthopedic inserts in my shoes and the shin splints and feet pain eventually disappeared.  The problem was that during these four months, I couldn't walk very much and I had to start all over again once I could.

My elderly mother had surgeries and subsequent complications so her recuperation kept getting extended during which time I was tasked to help out more, like taking her to all her appointments, running her errands, taking care of her dog, etc.  It wasn't that big of a deal for me really except it completely threw my routine (especially for working out) off the rails. 

Almost immediately after my mother fully recovered, I fell down some steps and severely sprained my left ankle, my left elbow, and my left wrist.  I was on crutches for weeks (try walking on crutches with an entire bad side including a sprained wrist!), then had to wear a special boot 24/7 for a couple of months so I could at least hobble along, and then I had to undergo physical therapy for a couple of months.  Even though people offered to help me, I managed completely on my own and since my injuries were on my left side, I could drive myself to the doctor's.  As for groceries, I ordered them online and had them delivered to my door.  It was tough, but I handled it.  Except for going to doctor and therapy appointments, I was pretty much laid up in bed the rest of the time for months.  I was in a lot of pain, especially my arm which hurt so bad I couldn't even move it, and not only was I bored to death, I was feeling very sorry for myself, too - all excellent triggers to overeat.   

Adding insult to injury (literally and figuratively), during this 16-month period, I got hit with one large unexpected expense after another.  Suddenly, my healthy savings disappeared and now I was in debt and on a very strict budget.  Talk about frustrating!  It took me over a year to pay it all off and start saving again.

In the past, any one of these setbacks (let alone all of them hitting me pretty much at about the same time) and the stress they caused me would have derailed me from any weight loss program and I would have given up immediately.  I would need my "comfort foods" to get me through tough times after all, right?  Not this time.  I was literally saying out loud (to myself) all the time, "I REFUSE TO GIVE UP!"  I did struggle a great deal during this plateau and by the time it was over I was about 10 lbs. heavier which means my total weight loss in almost two years was "only" about 40 lbs, but I knew that if I gave up, I'd gain it all back.  I knew that if I ever saw 300 on the scale again, I would just die inside and I'd completely give up.

When I wasn't budging from this plateau, instead of being defeated, I changed my outlook.  I figured that if the most I could ever lose was 40-50 lbs. for the rest of my life, that was okay, at least I lost something and the 300s were far enough away.  It was disappointing that my weight-loss journey was apparently over, but I was happy that at least I lost something.  In the back of my mind, I hoped that perhaps maybe some day I might be able to lose a little more.

… and then, there were the omens and a blue-haired tormentor that would change my life!