On My Weigh

Okay, I’ve heard it one too many times. Heck, I’ve even said it in the past. But it’s not true and I won’t listen to it anymore! It’s not more expensive to eat healthy! “I try to eat healthy, but it costs so much more money to get healthy foods.” Riiight. What you really mean when you say this is, “Processed foods that are low fat and/or low cal cost more than their fattier counterparts.” That is true. I can spend $2.64 on a box of 6 packages of 100 calories snacks. And that’s a bit more than a box of fatty chips. But… if I want to eat healthy, I’ll skip the pre-packaged snacks and eat an apple. And an apple is cheap. And so is a banana. And an orange. Even at $1.64 a pound for what I had to pay for my Gala apples the other day, I got more apples - more volume than those little snack bags.

But see it wasn’t that long ago that I was griping about it all myself. That was before I started actually trying to eat more healthy, not just less fatty. When I really started analyzing my diet, I realized that those 100 calorie snack bags are a bunch of empty calories. They may be less calories than the bag of Doritos, but they’re still empty calories. I grudgingly started eating more fruit (I still have to work on fresh veggies, but I’m doing frozen at least) so that I could have more potassium, and more vitamin C and all that stuff and less sodium (WAY less sodium!). And now I find I’m spending aless money. A LOT less. And dang it, I LIKE the fruit. Now, sometimes I really want something chocolatey. And a Pria bar is slightly more expensive than a candy bar. And I think my Health Smart Fudge bars are a little pricey-er than the unhealthier versions, but those indulgences don’t tip the scales with how much less I’m spending not buying so many pre-packaged foods!

Now, I still need to work on lunches. I do a tv dinner every day. And I need to work on dinner because we do a lot of easy foods at home in the interest of time. I think my kids recognize the Hand on the Hamburger Helper box! But that has nothing to do with eating healthy (because it’s NOT) or not (and on HH days, I usually bake some tilapia for myself - my poor malnurished children). And the truth is, if I actually cooked a real dinner, I’d be spending less money. And if I stored some of that dinner and ate it the next day, I’d be saving money *and* having less sodium. So I’m back to the lie. It is not more expensive to eat what’s good for your body.

So there.

This subject may be just too much information but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about way to much not to mention. I’ve been getting at LEAST 8 glasses of water a day, and that’s straight water. That doesn’t count hot chocolate and it certainly doesn’t count soda which I’ve practically eliminated from my diet. If I DO have a soda, I have an EXTRA glass of water to make up for it. But when you drink a lot of water, naturally you pee a lot. And I’m SO tired of peeing. I’m glad my office is right across from the bathrooms (except when someone makes stinkys and I have to close my office door, but I digress). I think we’re supposed to drink so much water because that gives us that much more exercise every time we have to go to the bathroom!

Too much fiber is a bad thing. We’ll just leave it at that.

Okay, my snagged page has been taken down from that site. And by the creator. So she must have read my comment there. Or perhaps she came here and read my post. Still hoping she gets help.

I was looking at my web stats the other day and saw an external link that I hadn’t noticed before. That just means someone has a link from their site to mine. I visited this site and I was appalled on so many levels. First, and now the most trivial, this person has my entire “My Tools” page on her site. The entire wording is mine. The links to the files are to my site. There is no mention of my name and she never asked me for permission to do this. I never mind when people pass around my spreadsheets. Frankly it flatters me. But this is different. This is the entire page and I’m given no credit whatsoever.

But worse than that is what this site is about. The home page says,

This is a a “pro ana” site so if you do not have an eating disorder please leave now. This is a non-judgemental place and all are welcome but please do not leave rude messages.

At first I paid no mind. I was more concerned about the snag from my own site. But then I read around. Pro Ana… Ana is short for anorexia. ANOREXIA. This is a PRO anorexia site. I’m all for losing weight, but in a healthy way and only if it’s necessary. From the about page on this site, this is a 17 year old girl. And she calls it an eating disorder but her entire site promotes being thin that the complete disregard of your health. I’m just horrified.

I’ve looked around for a way to contact her. I could only write to the main site as this is a subdirectory kind of like having your own Yahoo page or something like that. I’ve tossed around whether or not I should post the link to her site here. Right now I don’t think I will. I don’t want to encourage anyone to eat like this. If it’s that important to you, you can probably Google from the text I gave you.

I posted this so that if you’re the praying type, you can pray for this girl. Pray that she gets the help she needs. Pray that her family can help her. If you’re not the praying type, try it out anyway. It sure can’t hurt!

And if you’re “that girl.” Email me. anna (at) onmyweigh (dot) com. I’ll do whatever I can to get you help. Seriously.

Jonathan doesn’t believe me. Last night I told him I was willing my weight to be lower this morning. I furrowed my brow and concentrated on my weight willing it to go down… down. Well it worked! I was down a pound! Whoo hoo! I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that I totally have sodium under control. Or that I’m drinking all of my water plus more. It’s not because I’m keeping my calorie intake down (but not TOO down) and doing a good job balancing carbs, proteins and fats. And it’s SURE not because I’m making sure to have fresh produce every day. Or that I’m eating when I’m hungry and not when I’m not. That had nothing to do with it. It’s because I willed it to be. Really.

I was paying for my groceries at Walmart today. I was doing the self-check thing and a lady behind me asks, “Do those work?” She was referring to my Pria bars. I assured her that I thought they tasted pretty good and they’re good for you, too. But what she was asking was if the bars help you lose weight. We’ve heard it all before. Do diet pills work? Slim Fast? Hypnosis? How about that ear staple? Well, I’ve tried them. I tried the diet pills. I’ve tried Slim Fast. I’ve even tried the ear staple - a lot more recently than I care to admit and no, it didn’t work. Everyone wants something that works. When I got my ear staple back in May… I think it was May… I wanted so bad for it to work. I wanted some magic way for my head to know that my stomach was full. And I wanted my stomach to be really ticked off with me if it got over full. Well dang that staple didn’t do squat. Maybe it really does work for some people, maybe. But for me all it did was tell me that there’s no quick fix. That the right thing to do has been the right thing all along. I was talking to a co-worker about the staple. She didn’t have one. She was so hoping to hear it helped me lose a lot of weight. She was disappointed to hear it didn’t. And she said she’d tried hypnosis and that didn’t work for her. She said, “Anna, there’s got to be something that works.” Know what works? Diet and exercise. Let me say that again. DIET AND EXERCISE. Sometimes it takes a kick in the pants as a reminder. Or in my case, an ear staple. By the way, if you’ve already gotten an ear staple, I highly recommend when you give up on it, that you have someone with the proper tools take it out. Someone ≠ Jonathan. Proper tools ≠ needlenose plyers.

So I decided to track sodium. I should have left myself blissfully ignorant. It’s not outragious, but it’s been over recommended daily. I still don’t think I should have gained a pound over it because I didn’t have any unusual amount of sodium/salt on the day, but certainly overall it’s too much. I’m still just tracking. In a few days I’ll start trying to do something about it.

I mentioned a good-sized drop in weight and that I wasn’t expecting it to stay but it was nice to see. Well, I had another drop after that and I was expecting to go up again. This morning I realized I’ve been hovering around the same weight for the last four days or so. The same LOWER weight. The weight never jumped back up. Whoo hoo!

I still have a LOT of weight to get back to goal, don’t get me wrong, but I’m sure happy that it’s less than it was. And now that I realize that I’ve had a wee bit of a plateau at a weight I didn’t think I was at for good yet which means… which MEANS I’m about to drop again to even lower! Yippee me!

I’m still feeling better and frankly I look at the mirror and glare at my reflection because I feel much skinnier than I look right now. I think look and think, “hey! That’s not ME!” But that’s okay, because what I see will reflect what I feel soon enough. I’ve never liked the mirror much anyway. I’ve mentioned that evil here.

I think Jonathan probably likes that I think I look better than I do. But I’ll leave that subject alone.

Okay, Weight Watchers was really good to me. I lost 76 pounds with Weight Watchers, and I felt so good doing it. I met great people, I gained healthier habits, and I got into a size 4. Then I had a daughter, and Weight Watchers was good to me again. Then I had a son, and Weight Watchers WOULD have been good to me but I didn’t go to meetings and I didn’t have my heart in it. I got to goal but I creeped back up. I’ve told that story before. So that brings us to the present.

I’ve been counting points daily, but only to put in the food journal at the side bar over there —>. I’ve really not been following Weight Watchers. I’ve been doing SparkPeople. You’d think that I was getting kickbacks from them for mentioning them so much lately, but seriously, it’s awesome.

Weight Watchers me: “I’ll have fat free popcorn so I can eat lots of it”
SparkPeople me: “Did you know oranges have potassium?! If I eat an orange, I’ll have fiber, vitamin C and POTASSIUM!”

Weight Watchers me: “Mmm.. fudge cookies in a 100 calorie pack.”
SparkPeople me: “The fudge cookies really have no redeeming qualities except taste. I’ll have a Health Smart bar and get some fiber and potassium”

Weight Watchers me: “I can exercise so I can eat more.”
SparkPeople me: “I can do ten more minutes of cardio and get 2 more SparkPoints [which do nothing for me but make me smile that I earned them.”

Weight Watchers me: “I’ve had a lot of points today.”
SparkPeople me: “My protein, carbs and fiber don’t have a very good balance today. I need to eat some meat.”

I haven’t lost any more or less weight being more focused on SparkPeople than I would have with Weight Watchers, but I FEEL so much better. Like it really IS a lifestyle change. I’m making healthier choices and re-learning to think like the skinny person I am inside.

To Weight Watchers credit, they do talk about a balance and making healthy choices, not just choices that “cost” less in points. But SparkPeople is ALL about healthy choices.

And I didn’t believe it when I was told, but it’s FUN to get those worthless points. You can’t get anything for them, you can’t eat more for them, you can’t buy anything with them. They mean nothing to anybody but you, but it sure is fun try to rack them up!

Which, by the way, I do get points if people say I referred them (ahnmyweigh - NOT onmyweigh), but I truly get excited FOR someone that joined SparkPeople under my name and care so much less about the points. Whenever my little SparkPoints tell me someone registered, I think, “Oh good! I hope they like it! I hope they give it a chance and stick with it!” I’m not sure I would have revisited the site after the initial start up if my friend hadn’t reminded me about it. Man, do I OWE her!

So here’s the gratuitious link so you can get healthier, too!

Get a Free Online Diet