Week Six - Burning The Blubber

I did a little dance with the binge monkey on Sunday and let him step on my toes, not in a grand way, but enough to get so far beyond my daily point allocation that I gave up counting. My son and his family had come for a barbecue and, at some point when I was already pretty close to points' poverty, I decided to free myself from the distraction of accountability. This decision was both a cause and an effect of my wandering into the land of excess. It started with my nibbling 2 or 3 almonds and the same amount of corn chips. That was my first non-points-counting transgression. For lunch we had burgers (a vegetarian one for me) and cole slaw with watermelon for dessert. After Ben and his family left, I felt deprived because of the absence of a more desserty dessert. I have half cup servings of gelato in my freezer which I can usually indulge in and still stay "on program." The vanilla, which tastes like coconut, has 140 calories and the chocolate hazelnut, which tastes amazing, has 200. I grabbed one of the chocolate hazelnuts even though I knew that I couldn't eat it and still have a satisfying dinner without going over my daily points. The obvious solution was to give up on counting points for the day. This gave me a free pass to cruise up and down consumption alley. In the course of the evening I ate both a vanilla and a chocolate hazelnut gelatto, as well as a large bowl of cereal and more. Earlier, when I gave myself leeway with the almonds and chips, I had convinced myself that I could eat reasonably without having to count each and every point. Once again, I proved that I need the structure that points provide. And once again I was reminded that eating is not the appropriate response to fatigue and that the family room couch is the site of much self delusion.

But . . . I've got a huge whip that sent the monkey racing back to the jungle the next day. My elliptical cross trainer is the whip. It has turned me into a raging exercise machine. Every day, except for Sunday, I have been putting in a minimum of one hour on the elliptical. My average heartbeat for a session is 135 beats per minute (bpm). This includes the 3 minute warm up and 3 minute cool down parts of the session. Once I'm in the groove, I have to keep myself from getting into dangerous cardiac territory. I try to keep a 134 to 136 bpm range; I get scared when the read-out is 141 bpm.

The Weight Watcher scale this evening validated my hard work. And ignored my Sunday missteps. Well maybe not entirely. Maybe I'd have gotten rid of a few more ounces had I stayed on track Sunday. Even so, I'm delighted to report that I've dumped another 2 lbs. The reading on the WW scale was 197.2 lbs., a total of 10.4 lbs. down the drain and out of my life since I rejoined WW on May 1. I am within 3 lbs. of reaching a significant milestone, the weight that I was when I began my successful journey to my goal weight on 10/22/01. As to my home scale, this morning it read 194. This is 2 lbs. above the reading of my home scale when I began that successful journey. I am 10.4 lbs. into another (and final) successful journey to my goal weight. And this time, I will successfully maintain that goal weight once I reach it.