…buy a bag of Robin Eggs and finish the entire thing in a 24-hour time period. And try to feel guilty about it but can’t, because they are just that good.

…forget to charge my iPod and a scheduled run turns into an unscheduled walk.

…stop tracking my food deliberately and feel completely out of control.

…realize how much tracking helps me stay accountable and, most of all, more in control of my body.

…experience anxiety on weeks when I’m not working as hard as I need to be at this weight loss thing, worrying I will never be able to control myself and always be labeled as fat.

…get annoyed by the perfectionists in my Weight Watchers meetings.

…think the best part of my week is after weigh-in, when I get to eat whatever I want and not worry about points values.

…experience major exercise guilt, either from not working out or not working out as hard as I wanted to.

…think about quitting soda cold turkey, but I know I would be miserable.

…get really jealous of others’ weight loss successes.

…make a really good, healthy choice over a really bad, unhealthy choice and feel completely satisfied and proud of me.

…forget how good an early morning workout feels. I wish I could do that every day.

…think I have a really bad week and will never see successful weight loss…and end up losing more weight than I thought I could.

This week wasn’t a good week. This week was full of ups and downs. Full of pain and burning. This week was one where I only opened my tracking journal once. This week was more about dealing with my physical pain than focusing on my eating habits. More about lounging around, napping, and taking care of myself. Less about go, go, go and run, run, run. This week I learned that I need to slow down. I need to build up my immune system. I need to take care of myself. This week I gave myself permission not to track my food and focus instead on getting better.

It was a tough week. I didn’t work out once because when my blisters grew, I knew the worst thing I could do would be to aggravate them by sweating and pulling on them. Plus, for most of the week, it was a struggle just to walk without them burning or stinging so that was never even an option. I’m not someone who pushes through the pain and exercises anyway. It’s a struggle for me to get my butt to the gym on good days, so on bad days? Forget it. Not happening. I will say I miss exercising. I miss pumping those endorphins into my system and feeling amazed about what my body just did for me. And there were times I wondered how I would be able to survive if I had to wait weeks to exercise again. I never thought I had such a strong pull for exercising, but I guess I do!

As for my eating habits, the last thing I felt like doing was writing down every single thing I was eating. Sure, I was most definitely emotionally eating this week. But you know what? I don’t really care. It was an odd week. It wasn’t as if I had a test coming up and I was eating my emotions because of that. It wasn’t because I had a little cold, or had some rough days at work. No. I had shingles. Shingles! I’m still a little weirded out by the fact I got this virus, but I gave myself permission for the week off. I tried making healthier decisions but, for the most part, I took a chill pill from it all. Sometimes, you just have to have weeks when you emotionally eat. It’s not like I’m never going to do this again. I probably will. I’ll probably do it in the next few months. And sometimes, you just have to give yourself a break. Take a look at what’s causing you to emotionally eat and decide if it’s worth it or not. Sometimes, it is. At least in my world.

That’s not to say I’m not trying to kick this emotional eating habit. I totally am. And if this were a test, a rough day at work, or being delivered bad news – I wouldn’t give myself a break. But illness? I give myself a break when I’m ill. (And also, why does my appetite always increase when I’m sick? If I’m going to get shingles, at least suppress my appetite! Geesh!) Since I started the program close to two months ago, this is only the second time I’ve had a week like this. For me, this means I’m doing pretty well. (This used to happen every 2-3 weeks.)

All in all, not my finest week. But I have owned it and I’m looking forward to next week. On Tuesday, I woke  up to discover my blisters looking tremendously better and feeling good. Yesterday was the first time since last Tuesday that I finally felt like myself again. The burning/stinging is minimal and nothing near what it was at the beginning of this. I’ve taken it super easy this past week and I think my body has calmed itself down. (Although I still think it was more of a low immune system and the stress I’m under just caused it all to come to a head.) I’m attempting to get into some light exercise today, so I’m looking for suggestions. I want something that’s not going to pull too much on the sides of my body, where my blisters are. A walk on the treadmill? The elliptical? What would you guys suggest?

Five weeks is usually my stopping point. It’s when I realize how tough weight loss is and how I don’t like the pressure weekly weigh-ins put on me. So I quit and try it on my own, only to end up gaining the weight (and then some) back. It follows having a week or two when I don’t track correctly which, consequently, causes me to gain weight. That’s what happened the past two weeks and oddly enough, it didn’t defeat me. I knew what I had done wrong and I knew what I needed to do to get back on track. I knew how I felt during those weeks when I had total control over my eating habits and wanted to capture that feeling again.

And I did. This week went so much better than the past two weeks, where I maintained my weight and then gained over a pound. I was a tracking fiend, making sure to write down everything I ate, even those things I used to “conveniently” forget about. Tracking can be a pain and a hassle, but absolutely necessary for this journey. I can’t wait for the day when it becomes intuitive for me, but I’m content to take it slow and learn first.

Some great things that happened:

• I reinstated my No-Coke-Days again, after totally and absolutely failing to drink water during the week. I would really like to get off this addiction I have to soda and I used to have a lot of success with No-Coke-Days. I’m starting with one day a week and will gradually build my days up until it’s only a special occasion type of thing.
• I exercised 5 days! I actually ran 11.25 miles out of the week, as well as completed a pretty kick-ass strength-training routine that I created.
• I had to turn down home-baked cupcakes on Valentine’s Day. My boss baked them and they were staring me in the face throughout my entire lunch on Monday. Honestly, though, it wasn’t too hard to turn them down. I didn’t really want one and knew I would feel so much better about myself if I resisted. And I did. Yay, me!

I still have a ways to go and a lot of things I need to take our of my diet. But it’s going good and it’s all coming together.

Stats
Starting Weight: 159.2 lbs
Current Weight: 153.2 lbs
Net Difference: –6 lbs (-1.6 this week)
BMI: 28 (-1.1 total)