October is done, which means that the October Shredheads Challenge is complete.  I have to say, I’m pretty proud of myself!  With pretty much only a single exception, I stuck to my plan of doing the Shred 3x/week, and going to the gym 2x/week.  I did pretty well on my food/Points, too.** The end result in numerical terms is that I’m down 5.5 pounds from October 1-31, for a total of 15 pounds overall.  Only about 11 more pounds to go on my end-of-the-year pre-pregnancy weight goal. Woot!

The big asterisks on that one was our weekend away.  The food was a total disaster because I made virtually no effort to stick with the plan and just ate whatever the hell I wanted.  The payback was a pound and a half gain. Boo!  It was also surprisingly difficult to get back with the program after I got home. I was feeling pretty defeated for a few days last week.  I think the big difference was that I went whole hog off the wagon that weekend.  Other days that I’ve allowed myself indulgences, they were pretty limited. Maybe a single bad day, or single bad meal, but otherwise I was pretty good.  Last weekend, it was a free-for-all, and I paid for it.  Thankfully, I found my way back to the plan and have erased the gain.

I have noticed something very interesting recently, with regard to eating. We were taking the kids out for lunch at a nearby Tex-Mex restaurant (not a good diet choice, of course, but I survived).  As I was sitting on my hands and biting my lip to avoid the bowl of chips, I started to say, “but I’m just so huuungry!”  And then I stopped halfway through my whine and realized that it simply wasn’t true.  I wasn’t hungry.  I’m just not really that hungry anymore.

Obviously, I get hungry.  But not as often as I think I will.  Not as badly as when I first started counting my points (when all you can think about is how fricking hungry you are).  And most of the time, when I start to have the thought I’m hungry, I’m actually not.  I’m munchy. I want.  But that’s not the same as being hungry.

And that, I suppose, is where the larger struggle actually lies.  The hard part of sticking with a weight loss plan is not hunger.  It’s those munchy, snacky, WANT feelings that got you to this point in the first place.

So, I will continue to fight the good fight. Drink more water to stave off the munchies. Exercise or sew or catch up on the DVR instead of eating. Exercise some more.  And exercise a little more after that. There is much more work to be done.

Tags: 30-Day Shred, Shredheads, weight loss, weight watchers

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 7:55 pm and is filed under Just me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.