Physical? Or emotional, spiritual and intellectual?

Drum roll, please...

I lost 7.2 pounds this week!!!! =D

Can you believe it??? I don't remember if I've ever lost that much in one week.

Now, mind you, I had gained 10.6 pounds since my last official weigh in, two weeks ago. But, in my food journal, I wrote down what I weighed last Saturday morning at home (before I took the no-weigh-in-pass at WW), which was 10.6 pounds more than my weigh from the previous week. (Yes, I gained 10 pounds in ONE WEEK!)

So this week, I "officially" gained 3.2 pounds (documented in WW system), thanks to the no-weigh-in-pass from last week. If I would have weighed in last week, I could have "officially" posted a 7 pound loss... No More No-Weigh-In-Passes for me!!

I still lost the 7 pounds, though.

And you know how I did it?? I went back to to the beginning and did what I did when I first started WW. I journaled everything I ate. Wrote down what exercise I did and didn't do. Tracked my flex points as I used them. I became more active. And I kept my craving demons at bay.

It really was a sweet victory because I focused internally for benchmarks on how I was doing, not focusing on the scale. I don't know if I've ever done that before. I had to get my head straight and think about the weight loss from an emotional and spiritual and intellectual perspective, not a physical one. Weird because weight loss is a physical thing, right?

Well, kinda. It sure has physical results. Tangible. Visual. But I think I'm learning that it is anything BUT physical.

It's all in my head and in my heart. What a revelation, huh?!

I still need to be able to process this new perspective on weight loss. But I'll tell you one thing its doing for me is it's helping me keep my emotional eating in check. Funny, because the topic at WW yesterday was emotional eating. It's like WW is really trying to tell me something. I needed motivation last week, so they talked about motivation. I needed to conquer my emotional eating and they talked about it this week. Cool, huh?

I started out this past week just focusing on one day at a time and one meal at a time. But more importantly, I focused inward on what my heart was saying about the food I was eating and what my mind was thinking about it and I tried to separate the physical responses I was feeling in response to eating or not eating or craving.

Usually, by the end of the week, I've already planned out what I'm going to splurge on on Saturday. At one point, I got a craving for chips and cream cheese (Ruffles chips dipped in cream cheese, mmmmm!). So I set my sights on that. But as the week went on, I couldn't find the excitement about eating the chips. I just kept remembering how the last few times I ate them, they weren't as good as I remembered them. That's separating my emotional and psychological response to food from my physical responses.

That snack used to just bring the world back into balance for me. When I ate them, I'd feel this rush of warmth that would start at my tongue, travel to my brain, then warm my entire body. "Mmmm." or "Ahhhh." is what I'd say. But this past week, I kept trying to envision those feelings and all I could come up with was that the taste wasn't going to cure or fix anything in my body. It would just be a waste of points and calories that I'd have to work really hard to get back off.

So all day yesterday, I kept checking myself whenever a so called "craving" would hit. Nothing I thought of was worth eating. Nothing I thought of eating was worth having to work it back off.

So I didn't splurge.

And I didn't miss it.

I think I'm on to something. :)

I went for a bike ride this morning. First time I've gone for a Sunday morning bike ride in a while.

This whole thing isn't getting any easier, but I'm hoping I'm learning more about myself and I can start to keep it all in perspective a little more.

We'll see. :)

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