No more excuses

This was kind of a funny/sad sign I saw at the gas station this morning. Notice the poor guy in the contest looks like he needs to lose a few pounds.

Then check out the meal combo they offer for $3.75. I calculated the calories for this little snack. If you ordered a regular Coke for your 44 oz. Thirstbuster drink and had a small packet of mayo with your hot dog, it would be 1,008 calories! The cola alone is 526 calories. Unbelievable!

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Your comments about my 180.2 post yesterday really touched me, and they made a huge difference in my life. Everyone had great advice on how I can stop the binge monster from attacking me every night. Thank you all so much.

Because of all your support and because some of you said you suffer from the late night eating/binging problem, I was determine to beat it last night. I thought if other people can conquer this demon, I can too. I had a binge-free night last night, the first one in months.

Even though I wanted to eat last night at around 11pm, I made a conscious effort not to binge. Instead, I read some more of "The end of overeating". I'm in the "Rehab" chapter which was perfect.

I put a lot of thought into Tony's post: "Why are you binging at night? Once you figure this out you can solve the problem."

I came up with a long list of reasons why I eat at night. Things like job stress, my imperfect marriage, feelings of loneliness, not feeling loved, boredom, lack of self worth were a few of the things on the top of my list. Unfortunately, it was a very long list.

Then it hit me, I can't fix all this stuff. I can work on some of these things, but I can't fix them overnight. Some of these things I'll never be able to fix.

The bottom line is that I'll always have issues in my life. The trick is to not use these issues as an excuse for my overeating. Therefore, no more excuses.

Weight Watchers
My meeting rocked today! I LOVE my leader, Janis. She is funny, informative, supportive, sweet, honest and a wonderful person. Every time I go to one of her meetings I leave inspired.

Here's my weighin for today, the first for 2010. This is up 4.0 pounds from my last official weighin on 11/19/2009. I'm not going to dwell on my past mistakes. What's happened has happened. It's time to move and start fresh.

The meeting today focused on tracking our food. I've been extremely lax about this for the last several months. Almost everyone in the meeting (which was packed with newcomers) agreed to track for this entire week, myself included.

The second task was to set a goal weight for February 20, 2010. That's six weeks from today. My goal is to lose 10 pounds in six weeks, or 1.7 pounds per week. I'll weigh 170.4 on February 20. I'm adding a countdown on the right sidebar with today's weight and my weighin each Saturday. I feel more determined than I have in months.

Yoga
I'm starting yoga on Tueday night. One of my girlfriends is really into yoga. In fact, she's retiring in a couple years and going to yoga instructor school. Her plan is to teach yoga during her retirement.

I tried hot yoga the summer of 2008. I hated it! I loved the yoga moves, but couldn't stand the heat. My friend promised me I'll love the class she goes to, she said there's a lot of "chanting" and to keep an open mind about it. She says it's changed her life. :)

It's called Kundalini Yoga - “The Yoga of Awareness" uses movement, breathwork, mantra and meditation to help relax and heal the body and mind.

I'll still be going to the gym in the mornings. I don't really consider yoga "exercise". It's more for the mind.

The end of overeating
I'm still reading this book and the jury is still out. It talks about setting up rules to follow to control your overeating. This is what I read last night right before I fell asleep, page 191/192:

"Rules aren't the same thing as willpower. Willpower pits the force of reinforcing stimuli against your determination to resist, a clash of titans that can become very uncomfortable."

Then it talks about the difference between using willpower to resist food and having a rule.

"If you develop a rule, that will allow you to better inhibit the behavior, because you'll have a context that provides some kind of reason for inhibiting in the first place. A rule makes explicit the negative consequences of giving in to your impulses and the positive consequence of not giving in. Without any kind of context or motivation, there's really no reason that you would inhibit the response of wanting it."

I don't know if this is really all that helpful. It kind of sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo. However, it was so boring I did fall asleep and not eat. So I guess you could say the book is helping me.