Thomas has always said he hates biology. Unlike math, or chemistry, biology is unpredictable. In chemistry, if you add X element to Y element and add Z amount of energy, you always, always get R. Two plus two always equals four. Every single time.
Biology? Not so much. Sometimes you breed red-eyed fruit flies with white-eyed fruit flies and you get pink-eyed fruit flies. And sometimes you get all red-eyed fruit flies anyway. And from time to time, a brown-eyed fruit fly will show up in the mix. And while there are percentages and trends, you cannot predict. Ever. Exactly what will happen. (For instance, sometimes some idiot might decide to OPEN all the fruit fly tubes during the weekend and infect the entire school with mutant freaking fruit flies so that your English teacher decides to give bonus points on the final exam based on who can kill more of the little bastards. And wrote points up on the board WWI Flying Ace style so you could see who bagged the most fruit flies. Not that that happened, or anything... no, no, of course not. Purely hypothetical.)
I always liked biology, back in high school, because it wasn't predictable. You never quite knew what was going to happen, or why, but you could run experiments and find out.
I find I'm liking it less when I am the experiment. Didn't get in all your waters this week? Are you up, or down? Is it consistent over the weeks? Did you eat all 35 of your flex points? Forget to journal? What's the scale say?
Of course, I'm up again this week. 1.2 pounds, as a further matter of fact, which is the largest gain I've had since starting Weight Watchers. Sigh. I've been journaling though, so I've been pouring over my journal obsessively. The only things I can really see that might be the problem is 1) I ate all of my flex points and most of my activity points, which put me at 38.5 flexies. and 2) it's the week-to-10 days before my time of the month and sometimes I have a gain/small loss/maintain that week.
It never fails, however. As soon as I gain, I get el sticky globules of sympathy, advice, excuses, and theories about why I gained.
"Did you step up your exercise? That might be it."
"Time of the month?"
"You know, that's normal, right?"
I know. The entire point is to make me feel better. And honestly, I do appreciate the sympathy. I don't, however, appreciate the excuses.
I'm perfectly capable of coming up with my own excuses. Trust me, I am the Reigning Queen of Why-it's-Not-My-Fault.
But in all honesty, that's not what I need right now. I do not need to be blasé about my weight loss. I don't want to shrug off a pound with yet another round of how the world is out to get me. I don't want to get complaisant yet.
What I'm most afraid of here is becoming apathetic.
This is the weight my body is comfortable with.
That's the place I don't want to go. If I make too many excuses about why this isn't my fault, why I couldn't do better/try harder/be more vigilant, I'll get back to that place where I was blaming my ballooning weight on steroid pills that I haven't taken in five years.
For years, I blamed my size on steroids. It wasn't my fault that I was this big, it was doctors who didn't warn me about the side effects of the medication I was constantly taking. It wasn't my fault I couldn't lose weight, there was no way I could exercise, not with my ankle the way it was. My asthma is bad, I can't even walk a mile, much less enough to do any good! It's not my fault.
It's long past time I owned my own mistakes.
Next time I gain weight, please, please just say "Oh, that sucks. I'm sure you'll do better next week."
I can find my own excuses.
- Lynn
- Chesapeake, VA, United States
- "How does one become a butterfly?" she asked pensively. "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar." - Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers
9 comments:
Oh, that does suck, I'm sure you'll do better next week. :)
I know how you feel though. I understand, in the meetings, they are trying to help you through a difficult week so you don't give up. But sometimes the pat reasons why I had a bad week just irritate me even more. I'd rather my leader say, well, look, you ate (for example) way more fats and carbs than lean protein, that could be a problem. At least that would be something to go back and try to fix.
At the risk of sounding pat :) Hang in there. You are doing a fabulous job so far. This week just sucked.
Gains always SUCK!!! And yes, you'll do better. Keep going. Think big (or should I say small) picture. That's what's motivating me, to think ahead to next week, next month, next year and how I want to feel.
FOR ME there is nothing worse than what I perceive to be platitudes...or people making excuses to me for what I know are oft my own failings (again, this is me---not you).
so I completely get this post.
and admire your self awareness and honesty.
Miz.
Ugh, my worst nightmare is gaining, and I seem to do it quite often. Just get back up on the horse, know what you are doing is right, stay on track, and let's see how you do next week :)
Oh I hear that. For a long time I blamed my weight gain on my zoloft. I do think that had something to do with it, but I absolutely could have controlled it if I had counted my calories, eaten healthier, etc.
Now I'm doing what you're doing -- telling my whiney self to shut up and get with it. One pound isn't bad, but like you said: one can lead to another and another. That's my fear.
That DOES suck. You WILL do better next week. It was all your fault! :)
That sucks. I'm--oh, shoot! I forgot my line. I have no other magic words, so I'll just wish you strength and perseverance.
I loved it. It was much better than Cats. I want to see it again and again and-- oh wait, wrong line. :D
Yeah, sucks when that happens, especially when you feel blindsided by it-- but GO YOU for putting the journalling to use and looking for things to work on, so you *know* you'll do better next week!
Oddly enough, the thing that annoys me the *most* on no-loss/gain weeks is the little blah-face ( :| ) the WW online tool gives you when you record your weigh-in. YES, thank you, I *know* I didn't do as well as I'd like, a little encouragement here, please???
Totally sucks. And I am SO with you. Time for me to stop making all the f***ing automatic excuses (oh, TOM, water retention, building muscle - oh, BS is more like it) and just grimly admit that I've been screwing around instead of doing what I should.
So.
That really sucks. I'm sorry. But I know you'll do better next week. :-)
V.
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