Wooomp…There it is!


The weeks since Thanksgiving have been chocked full of celebrations. Each and every get together has tested my commitment to a healthy lifestyle.  With just a few more days of the season remaining, healthy living is way behind in the polls.

I started the season strong. The week of Thanksgiving I ran three times, hit Zumba on the days I didn’t run, and worked out with weight machines two or three times a week.  Even with the big holiday dinner and all the leftovers, I lost .6 pounds.

The night after I ran my first 5K, we went to a friend’s house for a dinner to celebrate a birthday. The food was awesome. I was especially taken with the sausage-stuffed mushrooms, the meat dip, and the chocolate-covered peanuts.  As a runner, I can eat whatever I want.  I lost another half pound that week.

The following week I attended several receptions and holiday luncheons. Though each one provided additional opportunities for me to over-eat, as a runner I wasn’t concerned. No way I was going to pass up a slice of Celia’s Chocolate Fudge Cake, one of my partner’s White Chocolate Red Velvet Cake Balls, or a piece of Laurie’s Berry Pie. This year I became highly infatuated with the cheesy hot dips served at several different functions. Yum. I gained a pound and a half.

That brings us to the week that just ended. We hosted a little party at our house. My partner made his special cake balls, haystacks, and two kinds of cookies. I ordered a couple of trays from Publix, and everyone brought a dish. We ended up with enough food to feed everyone at the party for a week.

I tried forcing people to take food home with them. No luck.  After everyone left the kitchen table was piled high with boxes of cookies, candy, and fruit.  We had to completely re-do our refrigerator to make room for everything.

The next morning my partner took off to Florida to visit family. He took quite a bit of the leftover party food with him–perhaps even most of it. Over the next three or four days, I polished off the rest. Rainy weather kept me from running. I did go to Zumba classes, but didn’t get any work-outs in because of pure unadulterated laziness.

Being home alone for a few days didn’t help the cause. I ordered a pizza. Ate it. On the way home from Zumba, I picked up a flatbread steak sandwich from Taco Bell. Inhaled it. Saved half a sleeve of townhouse crackers from the landfill, with peanut butter. And of course, enjoyed my nightly dish of low-fat frozen yogurt with a banana sliced up over it and a generous squirt of chocolate syrup.

Weigh-in day rolled around.  I knew the truth would be ugly. When I stepped on the scale, I found I’d gained a whopping 9.8 pounds! Now I’m within two pounds of where I was back in May when I started Weight Watchers. Which reminds me of the one good thing–the silver lining of gaining nearly ten pounds is getting two more points added to my daily point allowance. Woo hoo!

I really can’t believe I gained ten pounds in one week. That gaining weight is so much easier than losing is totally not fair. If I could lose ten pounds a week, I could reach my goal in just a month and a half. Sigh.

Setbacks are a part of the process. Gaining ten pounds for no apparent reason would be hard to handle.  That’s not what happened here. I ate too much stuff I shouldn’t be eating at all and just about stopped exercising.

Oh well. That’s all water under the bridge now. What’s done is done. I’ll recommit to my goals and work hard to make sure this little setback doesn’t turn into a big failure.  I’ll start tomorrow, right here in…

My Glass House


2 responses to “Wooomp…There it is!”

  1. Started working on this myself just this week… have had a bad two years, with some medical issues that has plumped me up considerably. It sure does seem more difficult to take off weight now that I am older, *sigh*….
    Exercise has always been key for me….so gonna work on that— but NOT going to be one of those people that joins the gym in January and never sets foot in it again after that.