We caught the train down from Penn Station. Kevin had to work on Friday, but I called in sick so I could be part of a segment that the Rachael Ray show shot at The PIT, the theater where I perform with my improv and sketch comedy groups. I didn't have to be there until 1:30pm so I spent the morning cleaning, packing, exercising, and getting organized. The segment taping was a fun, easy afternoon. I had a great time and am excited to see it when it airs. (I'll try to mention it if I find out.) We were done shooting by 4:30pm and after I grabbed a quick bite, I met up with Kev and we hopped on the train.
We arrived in Philly two hours later and dropped our stuff off at the hotel, where we had a room on 24th floor with a nice view.
Then we headed back out for a really fun dinner at a place called Friday Saturday Sunday. It was lovely. We really liked the food - we shared a salad, a few "small plates" and a bottle of wine. The atmosphere was cool and romantic and I had a nice time.
When we got back to the hotel, a little tipsy, I proclaimed, as I often do, how much I wish we'd picked up some chocolate or a sweet treat. And what did my sweet boyfriend present to me, but a big box of Godiva truffles. He knows me. And he's awesome. I was elated. We shared three of them.
We woke up late the next day and eventually made our way down to breakfast at the hotel.
Breakfast was not that good and it was over-priced, but it did the trick and we had fun people-watching and hanging out.
And then we headed out to sight-see! It was a chilly afternoon, but we had a really fun time walking around, taking in the different neighborhoods and tourist attractions. I'd never been to the city of Philly before (only to the outlying areas) so Kevin showed me around.
It was a really good day. In the evening, we met up with Kevin's friend John and John's wife Casey. I'd never met them before and Kevin's known John for years, so it was great to finally get to know them. We had dinner at a cool place in some part of Philly - no idea which part - and eventually made our way to the concert. I don't know much of Ben Folds music, but what I do know, I like. It was a good time, a little bit long to be standing up, and I couldn't see that well, but the music was great and I enjoyed myself.
After the show was over, John and Casey drove us back to their new house in a Philly suburb and we stayed the night. They were very gracious hosts and we had a comfortable night's sleep. They have two cats who were really adorable and snuggly. The cats slept with us, which I loved.
We slept in the next morning and after Casey served us a yummy pancake breakfast, they drove us to the train station that afternoon. We were back at our apartment by 5:30pm. We were glad to be home. We really enjoyed our trip, but it also reminded us that we love living in New York right now. Plus, our cats were glad to see us.
All in all, it was such a great Valentine's weekend. We aren't huge on this holiday, but we don't ignore it completely either. And it was mostly a perfect excuse to get out of town, do some different stuff, and spend time alone together. Kevin planned and organized the whole thing and made sure I was having a good time at every turn. I'm madly in love with the guy and our relationship is a wonderful aspect of my life.
We came home to some sweet Valentine's cards from our parents, along with a little spending money from my mom and a suggestion that we treat ourselves, so we turned right back around and headed for Park Slope to go to our favorite restaurant, Santa Fe Grill. We briskly walked the 35 minutes to the restaurant and we were starving by the time we arrived. The food was amazing, as always, and we each had a margarita, and split a second one.
We spent Sunday evening crashed out in our apartment, me watching TV and stealing a couple pieces of Godiva chocolate and a couple homemade cookies here and there (woops!), and Kevin finishing a video he's been editing. I was dead tired around midnight and was asleep before my head hit the pillow. Kev stayed up working on his video and woke me up this morning to say goodbye before he left for work. I fell BACK to sleep, and slept until 11:30! I couldn't believe it. I was dead to the world. It was amazing. I must have really needed the sleep after two nights of staying up way past my bedtime, eating weird things at odd times, and generally being away from my usual routine.
I have today off work - hooraaaay!! - and I've really taken advantage of it so far. I've done NOTHING. And I love it. Sometimes I stress myself out by trying to cram a certain amount of "relaxing" and me-centered activities into vacation days like this one. I end up half enjoying myself and half obsessing about what time it is and how I'm going to get to do all my enjoyable things before nightfall. So silly! So I've taken my body's advice, let myself off the hook for having slept so late - I honestly couldn't have helped it if I wanted to - and I've lazed around in the living room. I've watched some tv, had my coffee, done some email checking, web surfing and blogging, and I finished the rest of my (really delicious) veggie burrito from last night's dinner. It was my breakfast and it was just as good, if not better, than it was last night. I'm still in my pajamas, wearing my glasses, and it's now almost 4pm.
Hi.
The cats are in the same state.
My current plan is to get dressed and make my way out into the world in the next hour or so, after I find some lunch in our bare kitchen. Then I'm going to go to the gym and do whatever strikes me for as long as I feel like it while I'm there, then I'll go to Trader Joe's and stock up for the week. I might also buy some ingredients for a few baking tests I'm thinking of doing later today. :) Then I plan to come back to the apartment, make myself some dinner (I need to cut back on spending for a while - I've been eating out a lot lately), do some yoga, and putter around the house. We'll see how much of that gets accomplished. No pressure either way.
I have really needed this weekend, it seems. Life, as usual, has been moving at quite a clip lately. When I'm not busy doing things, I'm busy coming up with things I want to do. It's not an awful way to live, but the contrast of this downtime is divine. I feel pretty relaxed right now, and even though there are things on my to-do list that are un-done, I know where my priorities are and things will get done as they will.
Next week is an incredibly busy one. I have something every night of the week, which is not unusual for me, but it hasn't been the case in for a couple weeks in a row now. So I'm currently spoiled and too used to this leisure. It's going to be challenge to fit in exercise, comedy rehearsals and shows, and my dayjob in this upcoming week, so the more I can power-down today and just organize myself and my house for the impending whirlwind, the better.
Food and exercise-wise, I'm feeling good. Here's a bunch of long paragraphs about it: ;)
I have to admit to scale-hopping a couple times since my Feb 1 weigh-in. *Blush* It has been hard to stay off that thing, but I've only gotten on it once or twice, and I am vowing not to do so again until March 1. I think I got on it partially due to an addictive need - I am more interested in that number than I want to be, I fully admit that. But I also got on it partially due to a desire to check in on where things stand.
I have come to a pretty significant realization recently, in my weight loss efforts: The amount of calories that I should consume per day, as suggested by Weight Watchers, is a lot less than what I actually should be eating in a day, in my opinion. I'm talking about myself now, and do not claim to know what is right for anyone else. This is just about me.
First of all, I have a suspicion that I burn a lot of calories in a day. Not only do I exercise religiously and pretty vigorously almost every day, but I also tend to be very active when I'm not exercising. I've said it before - I really think traversing the city every day can burn upwards up 300-400 extra calories a day. Despite almost always choosing healthy, filling natural, organic, nutrient-rich foods, I get hungry often and easily. If I don't eat 5-6 small meals a day, I will be ravenous. I'm very hungry right now. So I think I don't always realize what I'm burning in a day.
Even though I do try to consume a little bit more food to make up for those extra calories burned, I still think the amount of food WW suggests I should eat is too little, because I don't WANT to be losing 2+ pounds a week. I wonder if that sounds crazy. But it's 100% honest. I would much much rather lose .5 pounds a week, or even .25 pounds a week over the course of several months. It strikes me as bizarre to realize that I have been "losing weight" for over six years. Out of the last 6 years, I have spent probably a total of 4 of those years shedding weight, bit by bit, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. There have been periods of gain, but the majority of the time has been spent losing weight at varying paces. And losing weight at a faster pace is honestly a feeling that is not a comfortable one for my body. When I'm in that state, I'm cold all the time, I'm usually hungry a lot, I'm more susceptible to headaches, I don't feel comfortable in my own skin, I feel like I'm becoming thinner and my body is changing shape and size at a pace that makes me uneasy. When I lose weight at a slower pace, I feel secure, I feel like I'm living a healthy lifestyle that's natural by-product is slow and steady weight loss. And in THAT comfortable state is how I want to live while I work to finish meeting my weight loss goal.
If I ate the amount of calories WW suggests for someone my age and height to lose weight on their program, I'd be eating anywhere between 250-700 calories less each day than I have been eating consistently for the past year. And I lost 10 pounds last year. Granted, as I continue to slowly lose weight, I'll have to eat a little less and a little less in order to compensate for being thinner, but that tends to happen naturally for me anyway.
I have done a lot of research in the last several months about how much I should be eating to slowly lose weight. Also, there are plenty of online calculators out there that allow you to plug in your age, your height, how much weight you want to lose and how long you want it to take. It spits out a calorie-range you should stay within every day in order to achieve that goal in that amount of time. If I convert that range into WW points, the number is as much as 10 points higher than what WW suggests I eat to lose weight at what is likely a much faster pace.
Now, I'm not remotely suggesting that WW is promoting eating too little to lose weight. I think their program is a very healthy, smart system. I lost 115 pounds attempting to follow it. I say 'attempting to' because I never followed it 100%, by eating only the amount of food they suggested I eat. I did my best to eat that amount every week, and succeeded or came close a lot of the time. But the rest of the time, I didn't. My eating was still enough of a departure from what I'd been eating when I was maintaining my obesity, that the weight came off even when I slipped up.
What I am suggesting is that for me, now, 6 years into this journey, I'm very comfortable in my body, hovering currently around 15 pounds above the weight I'd like to maintain forever, and I need and want to be eating more than someone who's looking to drop 2 to 3 pounds a week or someone who's natural lifestyle isn't very active. The choice to make this change in personal perspective is important for me because it has been very psychologically beneficial.
I'm no longer looking at it like I'm eating MORE than I should be. I'm looking at it like I'm eating exactly how much I should be. I'm still losing weight, as predicted, slowly. But I'm eating, net (after exercise), about 6-12 more points a day than I "should" be, according to WW. The old mindset finds me telling myself, "You did your best, but it wasn't perfect. Try again next week." The new mindset says, "You are making moderate, smart choices that have put you within the exact range you're aiming for. You are a success." It has a big psychological impact but how many calories I'm consuming hasn't really changed. I feel, now, that rather than making a forgivable mistake, I'm actually succeeding with flying colors. And that little bit of positive self-talk like that goes a long way. I feel better about myself.
I'm not sure where my weight will land when I weigh-in on March 1. I'm hoping for a 2 pound loss for the month. It could be something more like 1 pound, but I'm okay with that. Because I don't have all the proper systems to measure what I'm actually burning and consuming, I can only use an educated guess. All I know is that every single day, I'm making the best possible choices given each and every circumstance and I have been doing that for a long time now. I avoid eating when I'm not hungry, I stop eating when I get full, I satisfy my sweet tooth every day, I rarely if-ever overeat to the point of discomfort, and I try to get in as many nutrients as possible every day. So even if my food consumption is more than WW says it should be, it's exactly right for my current lifestyle. I'm not sure I could make dramatic alterations to the way I eat even if I thought I needed to. I have been eating intuitively and re-learning, every day, how to stay thin, for a long time now. I just had to realize that that's what I was doing and it's perfectly in line with my goals. I had to change the rules, not the method. It's precisely and exactly where I want to be.
4 comments:
So, I usually read on Google Reader and thus don't comment, but I just had to come over and say YAY and CONGRATS on these realizations. Not that you need the approval of a perfect stranger, obviously. :) But I read several weight loss blogs and I often think that people attempting to follow WW have this exact problem you were describing - they are trying to reach an artificially low calorie level and then not only do they not usually make it, but there are all sorts of FEELINGS about that framework that interfere. I think WW is moderate and healthy for a diet program, but it's also a business. Like any diet business it needs a) quick results fast to keep people motivated and engaged, and b) to be seen as a success. I honestly think giving a low target ensures that people who do eat more, which they usually will, will still often lose some weight and the program is seen as successful. It's all about setting the bar - if the bar were set higher, people would eat more than that anyway, probably, for various reasons, but weight loss wouldn't occur and the program wouldn't be seen as successful. Anyway, WW's motivations aren't the issue - I am just glad to read about this new mindset. I've been working with a nutritionist for over a year, and losing slowly and steadily (25 pounds the first year or so), and I definitely eat WAY more points than WW would tell me to eat. But it's healthy and organic and natural and it works, and I would have way more trouble doing it if I were constantly feeling like I was eating too much or not meeting the "right" goal. So, uh, basically, a long way of saying kudos to you!
Hi! Thank you so much for commenting. I was having writer's remorse this morning, wondering if I overshared about all that stuff yesterday - all the numbers and details and patting myself too much on the back for "outsmarting" the system. So it was really nice validating to hear from you. It's helpful to know that I'm not the only person who's in this mindset.
And I think you are exactly, precisely right about WW. It's a business. And people are going to eat more than the business tells them they should. So if WW sets the bar low, knowing that people won't usually meet it, their business still provides success to their clients. Understandable. It's why I was able to lose 115 pounds and rarely stay exactly within points.
This knew way of thinking has led me to some OCD about the numbers and calories - checking and rechecking to make sure I'm not fooling myself or overeating. I don't want to practice this guilt-free for a month only to find that I've gained 5 pounds. That's it's own blog entry tho. ;)
Anyway, thanks for commenting!
Very nice tips. Thanks for sharing!
Weight Watchers Points Calculator
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