All she wants to do is dance, dance

Okay, actually all I want to do is write, but being a longtime Eagles fan, I was reminded of this Don Henley song. Anyway, I was thinking about how I have an hour to kill before Nathan's swim lesson, and I could spend it doing something useful, like laundry, but all I really want to do is write. I think what's hard about having a not-so-popular, not-so-paying blog is that you have a hard time justifying the use of valuable time to write a blog that seemingly has no purpose. (Can you say your time is valuable if, in the previous sentence, you used the phrase "time to kill"?) But, I like to write, and it makes me happy, and I think happiness is a good purpose.

Besides, I re-started Weight Watchers yesterday, and when I'm on WW I try harder to do non-food-related things I like, rather than fill my life with pure drudgery. You know what I mean, where it's like 9:00 p.m. and technically you could go and clean your kitchen, but what you really want to do is read? With WW, I decide I deserve leisure time, and I don't feel bad about the chores that don't get done. (Besides, I'm too exhausted from my day of planning, purchasing, preparing, carefully measuring, and tracking all my food.)

I suppose that taking time for yourself is one of the gifts of WW. The other gifts are things like being thinner, feeling better, living longer, not having diabetes ... you know, little things like that. But none of those benefits are immediate, and so you find yourself in a big ball of frustration.

I'm frustrated that when I went to WW yesterday to weigh in, I weighed exactly the same as I did last year at this time, before I lost 33 pounds on WW. Which means, yes, I gained exactly 33 pounds. Oh, for crying out loud.

And on the one hand, I feel very frustrated that over the course of the winter/spring, I pretty much undid what I worked so hard for over the course of last summer/fall.

BUT. First of all, I think it's good that I only gained back exactly what I lost. If I had gained back 34 pounds, even though it would only be one pound more, I think it would be light-years more psychologically devastating than gaining back the exact 33 pounds I lost. (Though, really, this is all ridiculous because weight varies slightly according to what clothes you're wearing, hormones, whether or not you just peed, etc.)

Second, I think this time around, I at least have a good basis for my fitness routine. I've done almost every class the gym has to offer, and I actually have a tiny bit of muscle underneath all that fat. I have definitely slacked in terms of the hard classes in recent weeks (months?), partially out of laziness and partially because these classes are usually in the evenings when my suddenly-not-napping child is having meltdowns. However, I have had enough gym experience in the past that stepping up my workouts has not been too much to bear, even in conjunction with the other lifestyle changes I have made this week for Weight Watchers.

So, my current plan is to work out in the mornings. Unfortunately many of the morning classes my gym offers are in the early mornings, like 6 a.m. Now that I can't grab a nap in the afternoon, 6 a.m. classes are to be avoided. I might try to make it to one this week, on Thursday. The other days, I'm shooting for later in the morning. Nathan has swim lessons from 9:40 to 10:10, so I think Monday/Wednesday I will try to do a Spin class before the lessons. Tuesday/Friday I will swim after the lessons (different pool, unfortunately), because I think swimming is good for my mental health. Thursday morning is the dreaded 6 a.m. Spin and Sculpt, and then Saturdays are Muscle Pump. (I should note that the Wednesday Spin is also a Spin and Sculpt, so I will have a total of 2 hours a week of weight work. Because I know you were concerned.) Sundays I automatically get off because the gym daycare is closed Sundays during the summer.

Here's what I want to tell myself: If I skip a day of working out, that is not an excuse to skip the entire rest of the week. The philosophy of "I've already blown it, might as well keep blowing it" makes no sense, but I think that's how we all think. That's how we think about food, and don't try to deny it. There is something about the human mind where you just feel like you need to wait until the next day or the next week to start over again. And I wonder if maybe the WW weekly weigh-in contributes to this line of thought. Like, "I didn't work out Monday through Thursday, so no point in working out Friday when it won't show on my Saturday weigh-in." Which is a dumb way to think, of course. Every day belongs to your overall lifetime, not just to a particular weigh-in period for Weight Watchers.

In conclusion, although WW seems pointless because I feel like I always gain back the weight, I think maybe I gain a little bit of wisdom with each WW experience. (Could I be a little more cheesy? But that's 2% low-fat cheesy.) And maybe by the time I come to the end of my life (which, hopefully, will be prolonged just a little bit from weight loss, and not shortened by yo-yo dieting), I will finally have the whole weight loss/fitness thing completely down.

And here's a little chub who doesn't care about her weight: