Not looking for much

My weigh-in is tomorrow, and I'm not counting on it being a good one. Again this week, I had more bad days than good. (Monday, Tuesday and Sunday were good; the rest weren't.)

Before WI, I head to the doctor's office for my annual exam. I'm toying with the idea of asking him if I should get a note from him to up my goal weight to 180 ... That's 10 pounds higher than it currently is, and 8 pounds above the upper end of my range.

He'll say "no," I'm sure. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to hit 170 ...

Well, there is: It's my laziness. I've been a bad Weight Watcher. I didn't count Points Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday ... and on Saturday, especially, I ate a lot of junk I didn't need (including Taco Bell for dinner). If I spent as much time on-plan as off-plan, I'd be at my goal by now.

The only reason I'm thinking about it is to save money, anyway. If I bump up my goal, I can get there that much faster, and then I'll be able to quit paying for WW meetings.

I want to hit 170, darn it ... and soon. It's going to take commitment and fewer excuses.

File this one under 'things that make you go hmm'

Those of you who read my blog over at Blog to Lose know that the Boyfriend and I got into a tiff Monday. He wanted me to fetch and carry (like he always does, somehow thinking that's helping me get more activity) and I didn't want to (like I usually don't. Why should I jump when he says jump?).

He yelled, and the words "fat" and "a$$" came up. He also asserted that all I need to do to lose weight is get more exercise ... like the macaroni and cheese, french fries, fried chicken and other unhealthy foods he's always tempting me to eat aren't a huge culprit in my failure to lose the last 15-20 pounds.

Later, he apologized. But he also brought up a good point: "You say your a$$ is fat all the time ... why is it OK for you to say it, but not me?"

A very good point, indeed. It reminded me of something my WW leader said once: We often say things to/about ourselves that we'd never put up with a friend saying.

And that begs the question: WHY? Why is it OK for me to call myself fat, yet I don't like it at all when the Boyfriend says the same thing?

The short answer? It's not.

We should all be a little kinder to ourselves. Let's celebrate our successes instead of focusing on our failures.

I'm particularly bad at that: I keep focusing on the weight I still have to lose instead of remembering that I've already lost 50+ pounds. In fact, I can tell you exactly how much weight I still had to lose as of my last WI: 18.2 pounds. But I had to look it up to know how much I've lost in all (53.8 pounds).

There's something wrong with that. I should be able to call that number to mind effortlessly. I've lost 53.8 pounds ... Yes, I have a few more to go — but I should still be celebrating what I've already accomplished.

Basically, I've been maintaining for a year. I hit the 50-pounds lost mark right around my birthday in 2008 — ever since, I've been bouncing around the 180s. My WW goal is still 170 (2 pounds under the max weight for my height).

I can get there, I know I can. Yes, I do need to get more exercise — at least 30 minutes most days of the week. But fetching for the Boyfriend isn't going to cut it. More long walks ... bike rides ... even jogging.

And I have to put the kibosh on eating crap, especially when I'm with the Boyfriend. (He really is a huge culprit.)

Time to live by the wise, wise words of Yoda: "There is no try. Do or do not." It's time for me to buckle down and just do it!

No excuses

That's an attitude I need to work on. Today, I made a good start. I headed out for a short walk after my WW meeting and lunch, only to find my Nike+ sensor wasn't working ... I was moving and the iPod wasn't registering a darn thing.

But instead of using that as an excuse to decide NOT to take a walk, I walked anyway. I cruised the sidewalks around my neighborhood the old-fashioned way — without the Nike+, just the iPod on shuffle.

Funny how dependent we can get on our electronic gadgets. I love the Nike+ because it tracks my distance and speed ... but I don't NEED it to walk. As long as I have music, I'm fine.

Lunch was delicious. I stopped at Pita Jungle after my WW meeting. All you Arizonans, if you haven't tried it, you should. I've been there three times now, and haven't tasted anything I didn't like. Today I had the Mediterranean Chicken Salad — chicken, tomatoes, corn, pine nuts, feta cheese, tabbouleh, lettuce, golden raisins and a little vinaigrette. Yum! I even managed to stop after eating just half and I'm completely satisfied.

As for my weigh-in, the news was better than I expected: I'm down 0.8 for the week, which leaves just 14 pounds to get to goal. Slowly but surely, I'm getting there.

Struggling to 'get the balance right'

So far, I'm failing — not miserably, but failing nonetheless.

I try to strike a balance between healthy food choices and indulgences — the indulgences won all day Friday and part of Saturday. Sunday, the healthy choices took the prize. I even still have a couple of Points left for a snack when I get home from work. I'm thinking popcorn drizzled with EVOO for 2 Points. Yum-o!

I try to strike a balance between working out and resting. Unfortunately, these days I find myself resting a lot more than I'm working out.

The biggest area I'm trying to find a balance in is life in general. I'm trying to balance the healthy eating and exercise with work and (in my off hours) work on my writing career. That's a lot of balls to keep up in the air at once, and I'm not doing a very good job of it. I can't imagine what would be falling by the wayside if I had a husband and kids to take care of. I don't know how Roni does it: Maintaining her weight, working, three blogs, training for a marathon ... I wish I had half her energy and discipline.

It seems that when I'm at work, I'm either stressed or (when it's slow) bored, so I'm snacking a lot. When I'm home, I have time to exercise and eat right, but feel like I should be writing instead. And when I'm writing, I may not be snacking because I'm busy with my novel ... but I'm not taking that walk I know I should take.

I need to strike the right balance wherein I can work out, eat right, hit my goal weight by Thanksgiving, get my novel rewritten in time for the Golden Heart competition (deadline Dec. 2) and still have time to go to work and spend time with the Boyfriend.

That's what I want for my birthday, which is on Wednesday: A recipe for balance.

Anyone have any tips for me? I'll try anything, within reason.

Dare I say I'm on a roll?

Even though it was a short week (I weighed in last Wednesday because my regular Monday meeting was closed for Labor Day), I still managed to record a loss this week.

That's right: I'm down 1.8 more pounds, for a total of 63 pounds altogether. More exciting still is that I have just 13 pounds left to lose before I hit my WW goal.

Amazing what happens when I actually track every bite that goes into my mouth!

OK, I'm not really amazed. I know tracking is an important part of the plan. I just have to fight my natural tendency, which is to stop writing it down the minute I eat something I know I shouldn't. Sometimes I find that what I thought was really horrible wasn't really that bad.

Then there are times when I discover it's a lot worse than I thought it'd be. For instance, a small

piece of cake with icing has something ridiculous like 12 Points — half my day's allowance. And you can forget about Wendy's Baconator, which has 830 calories, 51 grams of fat and 1 gram of fiber for a WW Points total of 21.

The sad thing

about that is Wendy's introduced its Baconator after I started WW. Had I still been doing Atkins, I could have enjoyed one sans bun. But I can see no place in the WW universe for the Baconator. Maybe on the last day of the week, if I haven't used all my Flex Points yet ...

Like that ever happens.

I guess I should take heart that the Boyfriend ordered one a couple of nights ago (for me he said) and told me it didn't taste that good. Then again, why take his word for it? He's more carbivore than carnivore.

Scale says ...

Hmm ... I sound a bit like Richard Dawson, don't I?

The good news is, I lost 3 pounds at my official Weight Watchers weigh-in Wednesday evening. The bad news is, my last meeting was on Aug. 17.

At least the scale was down and not up. After a couple of weeks of vacation from both work and my WW plan, (and most of a week of being about 85 percent on plan), I wasn't sure what to expect. Last Friday, when I first got on the scale, I was pleasantly surprised that the 190s weren't staring me in the face. That's what I half expected.

But I got back to work — and back on track — and I guess it paid off. I'll take a 3-pound loss for three weeks!

Now, I'm on a quest to lose 14.8 more pounds to get to my WW goal. And I want to do it by Thanksgiving. That's 1.3 pounds a week, actually — completely do-able, right? Right. I just need to focus.

But I'm not going to try to be perfect. I read these words of wisdom from Roni over at Roni's Weigh last night. She was being interviewed by Trish, another blogger, who asked, "If you could give readers one piece of advice, what would it be?"

Roni's very wise response?

You will never be "perfect". Not your diet, not your body, not anything. Do your best everyday and make the best choices you can to live a happy, active, healthy life. When you relieve yourself of the pressure of perfection you just might be able to reach your goals.

So I will focus on doing my best to make the best choices I can, every day. But I will not try to be perfect, because none of us can ever be that.