The weekly weigh in, week 30

it's been a good diet week. I stayed within my points allowance. I did manage to put in a couple of days of exercise. Getting in all the water wasn't a problem. I didn't go hungry at all. My only weakness was fitting in all my fruit and veggies. Sometimes five servings a day feels like a lot, but all in all, the week just felt routine and normal. That's a good feeling. Healthy eating just feels normal. I really need to take a minute to let that sink in. It may not sound like that big of a deal, but when I look at the difference between how I eat now and how I used to eat, it's huge. I think the biggest difference isn't the type of foods or even the quantity of food that I'm eating. It's really that I'm eating consciously.

I've made some real adjustments in the way that I cook. I look for lower fat options when cooking. I know the items that will not bear a compromise. Low fat or no fat cheese will never have a place in my home! I'm cooking more with fresh ingredients rather than canned or frozen. I'm refusing to sacrifice taste gratification to achieve weight loss. I don't let myself pass beyond the normal hunger that builds between meals. I snack, and I have my sweet and salty indulgences when I must.

However, there's not a bite I put in my mouth that hasn't had thought go along with it. I savor my food. Even if I'm eating breakfast in my car on the way to work, I'm not gulping it down. I actually taste things more now, and a huge thing for me is actually recognizing that I'm full before I'm uncomfortably stuffed. I don't have hard proof of this, but years of commercial and not-profit diet and eating disorder support groups have led me to believe that many people who have eaten themselves to obesity seem to lack that physical feedback of fullness. I've discussed with other people that feeling of never really being full. It's not a constant hunger, but more like the feeling of being able to eat something if it's available. I've wondered if it's akin to alcoholics often having greater than average capacities for alcohol and cutters having unusually high pain tolerance levels. I would be curious to know if this seeming greater capacity for food than is normal is something that has been noted or studied by anyone. I know the people besides myself who have noted it have also felt that certain eating behaviors and certain foods were addictive.

Eating has become more of an event than just another activity. The irony there is that before my diet began, I was trying to use food as a way to make my life feel richer and more pleasant, but it took the diet for food to actually fill that purpose. A good meal is something to anticipate. All of this has also meant that I can't numb out my emotions with mindless, repetitive eating. That doesn't mean I don't want to run to the kitchen when my anxiety is high, but part of me is aware even when I'm cursing myself for not having chips in the cabinet that eating won't make the tension dissipate.

Tonight when I stepped on the scales, I registered a 5.4 pound loss from my Saturday Weight Watchers weigh in. However, from my weigh in on Thursday of last week, the loss was only an even two pounds, so that will be my "official" weight loss for the week. Your weight changes daily, sometimes dramatically. Water weight, hormonal shifts, constipation, changes in medication and more can all play a role in that, so I'm only going to count the weekly numbers. A two pound loss is more than good enough.

Summary: Weekly weight loss -- 2 pounds. Total weight loss -- 59.4 pounds. Average weekly loss -- 1.98 pounds.

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health and wellness, diets, weight loss, Weight Watchers