When it is cold, I apparently get more motivated.

After a time of not really doing WW, gaining 10 lbs in a few months and going to 4 meetings in 9 weeks, I am proud to say that I have gone to meetings two weeks in a row!

After going to last week's meeting and gaining 2 lbs for the second meeting in a row, (I'm not sure how many weeks were in the middle of those meetings....) I decided I should probably make going for walks a priority, and track at least one full day.  I did all of those things. I even tracked most days.  And I stayed the same.  Exactly. I was shocked and a bit uppity when the weigher in told me that.  She was trying to tell me that it's good to maintain during the holidays and I told her that I was not trying to maintain but loose.  And especially loose the weight I gained in the past few months. I think I have gotten comfortable and focused on other things.  I need to make planning, exercise and going to meetings a priority. I started putting WW meetings in my calendar again and here I am writing about my feelings.

I am saying this right here to remind myself. I want to loose the 10lbs I have gained recently and I want to loose MORE than that in 2014.  2014 is the year of getting closer and closer to goal. 2014 is also the year of remembering that I know how to lose weight on this plan. 2014 means remembering that this is the longest I have lost weight (-25lbs right now) without gaining it all (+ more) back, sure I have gained little bits but I have lost them again and I will again and I am still here.  THAT IS A HUGE ACCOMPLISHMENT. I am going to remember to be proud of myself. BE PROUD OF YOURSELF TOO!

This week my goal is to keep up the exercise (and using more public transit) and make time to make meals at home to bring with me when I go to SF with me when I am teching/running the awesomely exciting dance show I am designing this week.

Here are some walk photos:

Late Afternoon Winter Walk

Geese, I hate their poop...

Walking to Bart to go to Rehearsal

Lighting Store in SF

Abandoned Berkeley Car Shop

I maybe walked home in the rain

It was really windy but quite pretty.

at the Print store

More Print store

A little bit sad, kind of blue.

I'm sitting in our living room typing away, staring at the vacuum I hope to use soon.  We normally have some thick red curtains that cover the side windows a bit.  They are making their theatrical debut right now and it is a bit shocking to me how much more light our living room gets when they are not here. I should tell you about the plants!  I have two tiny succulents and a cactus on the window sill, a spider plant, a basil plant, the creature, a bright light house plant (which has some sun burn, so it got moved to a less sunny place), and a cool plant who's leaves are supposed to roll up in the dark.  I worry a bit that it is not happy because our living room never gets dark, because when the sun goes down the streetlight turns on. The basil plant and a plant, I have started to refer to as the creature, are the happiest.  The creature is a part of a succulent that I bought at Trader Joe's. Since I re-potted it has gotten much bigger and has two new shoots.  It's going to be even bigger and crazier!

I've been feeling a bit sad recently, nothing too bad, just a general level of sadness. The sadness/crankiness started when was I working on two projects that overlapped and had very different working times, one we worked all night then the other I worked in the day times.  For a few days, I stayed up till 4:30 or 5am then woke up at 10 or 11 or one day 7:30am and went to the other theater for the day/early afternoon and then went back to the Night time theater till 3:30 or 4:00am.  At first I  chocked the sadness mostly to exhaustion and having a very weird waking/sleeping schedule, but the feelings didn't go away once I was only working one job.  Then I started craving salt and realized I was due to get my period this week.

I woke up this morning, made breakfast and decided to tackle the full sink of dishes.  However, I was twice thwarted by shower takers, so I decided to clean the counters and sweep the floor. In just a little while the whole kitchen was clean and once the floor dries, I'm going to put all the dishes away before I go to the theater.  I think it must be a good thing that one of my first new responses to not feeling well is cleaning.  I don't think I would have ever seen that one coming!  A clean kitchen means a good place to make good healthy food and good choices.  A dirty kitchen does not inspire me to clean, it just inspires me to get the hell out.

Fast forward to the next day, Sunday a weigh in day.

I went to WW today and guess what! I gained 4 lbs in 2 weeks.  I want to blame a lot of that on the period and having a few beers last night but really I ate a bunch of crap last week.

Here's to a week of tracking, walking and celebrating a birthday.  :)

It's loose for good time again, (and 2nd anniversary of the rejoin.)

This week marks the second anniversary of my Rejoining WW.  I thought today would be a good day for a little state of the state, but before we begin, here I was on Sept. 11th, 2011.

Here I am today, Sept. 15th, 2013, with much longer hair and having lost around 30lbs.  I re-read the first post and my anniversary post last year, and I realized. I have done a really good job of maintaining (gaining and loosing the same 8lbs, sometimes less and sometimes more) last year but not really loosing any more weight.

One of my friends has been quite successful the past few weeks with exercise and tracking and I have been very inspired by her.  Over the course of the last three weeks, I've gone to WW for the first time in 4 weeks, I've been mostly tracking. I've also been doing a pretty good job of getting 100% of my activity goal on my active link. I've been trying not to stress about food too much, and eating what I want within reason.  Guess what? I've lost 3lbs in the last two weeks. Not too shabby and I am feeling pretty good about it all.

I do feel a bit sad that I have been wasting time (and money) this past year but I also feel quite proud that I have mostly been able to stay in my clothes. I am doing a much better job of going off plan and gaining but then turning around and getting focused and loosing the weight again. I need to remember that when I rejoined I wasn't going to give up and this is not an easy or fast process. I am hopeful that I can continue successfully for the next few months. I really need to remind my self two things. I am capable. I need to do this for my health and mental health.

It is loose for good right now (WW donates money for every pound lost to food related charities). My leader brought in how much she lost in different sizes of rice bags. It is kind of shocking to see what 20lbs looks like in a bag of rice. It's quite a bit.  I look forward to seeing how much I have lost on a table and feeling good that it is not on my body anymore.

My new goal is just to get to -40lbs. It's only 6.4 lbs away. The last time I was that close was in February. Maybe I can get there by the end of October.

"How did it go last week?" I thought many times about the fact that I am capable of doing this. (We got some simple I statements to choose from last week, and I choose capable.) It was very positive.

"Little Change I'll make this week" I want to plan, go to the grocery store and make food ahead of going into tech next week.

Total Lost: -33.6 lbs, -1.6 this week.

Most people would really enjoy the summer I've been having.

From the past:

Freelancing provides the ultimate flexibility. I can work when I want to, but sometimes I don't have work when I want to.  I worked on a music festival at the beginning of the month for 11 days, but for the rest of the month I've been off.  Originally when I realized how many days I'd be without work, I decided to think about trying to schedule my time so that I felt like I was taking a class. My parent's house was empty for a week or so, I planned to bring a bunch of reading, including a book about freelancing, and do a bunch of writing and soul searching.  The day before I was going to go my brother called me and asked me if I wanted to go to their cabin in two days for the weekend. Surprise Vacation! We had a good time except that my nephew got sick and I wound up spending an extra day watching him.

I realized something last week. It's been a long while since I have been tracking.  It's been a long time since I've been paying attention to how many fruits and vegetables.  I got home today and I managed to eat food that was in the house, but included a snack and a main course featuring apples, which were the only fruit that lasted the 6 days I've been gone.  I've been going to meetings kinda sorta. (Read very sporadically.)

Fast forward to this week:

Since I wrote this I've gone for a walk almost every day.  I've encouraged a few others to go with me and I have been both tracking mostly and eating a healthy, mostly fruits and vegetable based diet.  I did go to two parties last week that threw me off a bit but I tracked mostly.

Yet, I still haven't gone to a meeting. I really need to go to a meeting before I go on vacation again.  I think I am getting to a place where I am afraid of the scale. I'm sure that if I managed to go to a meeting I'd see the scale and be able to make some downward progress.  I am tired of being at my plateau but I also have clothes that mostly fit right now. I need to get to some more motivation.  I think it's time to re-read my weight loss notebook and write some more in it.

Tomorrow people. Tomorrow there is a meeting and I can go to it before my work meeting.  Then I am going on a hike.

It's gonna happen and I am going to deal with whatever the scale says.

Breaking News, I have seen Pelicans every time I've walked the lake this week.

PELICANS!!!  I wish I had a bigger better camera with zooms because this shot is almost fabulous.

Hello, my name is Stephanie and I have some news.  After a long break from the blog and WW, I am back!  (I feel like this is a bit repetitious but so is life?) Since we last met, I have designed and teched 4 shows, gone to the UK for work and watched tech of another one and watched a bunch of plays. Also, my hair is getting longer and longer.

Once again, I have done a pretty good job of maintaining. (Whoo!) Before I left for the UK I was doing really well at the loosing of a little bit of weight I had gained during some of those techs. When I was in England, I did not do a very good job of tracking. In fact I didn't track at all.  I was looking forward to coming home from England late Saturday night and then waking up on Sunday going to WW then going to my friend's wedding. Then there was a plane crash at SFO and we got diverted to PDX and didn't fly home for another 24 hours. When I finally got home my whole schedule got crazy and then I got nervous about going because I had waited and not tracked for like 2 weeks. (Also, this other thing happened two days after I got home, which I am now working on resolving but is quite stressful for me and I didn't really want to do a whole lot of things for a few days.)  I am working on a post about England but bear with me.  There will be a lot of photos

But I went to WW on Sunday! And I gained 3 lbs. When I got home I decided that I should probably start tracking and do some planning.  I am happy to report so far so good. I made a grid and a list of food to make and eat. I've been sticking to the plan, I've made food for my week of work and I'm hopeful that with my extra weekly points I can survive the three parties this week (one congratulatory and two going away parties). I am even going to try to walk before work since I am working afternoon/nights for two days. (We'll see how it goes.)

I saw this today at a meeting at Pizzaolo.

(Break for a walk.)

After a conversation with a friend, I remembered some of the cool Oakland photos I took of the neighborhood when I first moved here.  I've been feeling that the lake photos that I take are a nice seasonal/sky experiment but very repetitious and I kinda feel like I've covered most of the territory already. Tonight, I was looking for new non bird/sky/lake things to take photos of and I mostly succeeded. Apparently, all I want to do is post photos! Maybe I really should use Instagram more.

Grand Lake bulbs 1.

I really like the clouds.

Grand Lake bulbs 2

I stopped and thought about composition and contrast for a while.

Do what you love?

[I found this post today, it's from 4/29/13.  Not sure where I was going after the last paragraph but perhaps I'll finish it sometime soon. Enjoy!]

This week's post is highly motivated by this article, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/apr/26/james-rhodes-blog-find-what-you-love .  I read it on facebook yesterday or the day before and it got me to thinking.

I'm the first to admit that having a career in the arts, more specifically theater, is not easy.  It is highly stressful, you have to work really, really hard to get your work done with other people who are tired and stressed  and then you make not very much money.  Every show has it's strengths and weaknesses and challenges and lessons.  Freelancing is hard, I do not have a monetary cushion.  I have a huge list of work related expenses that I have no money to pay for. I need to pay for program updates, a good digital camera to take production photos and I would love to not have to buy groceries on my credit card.

However, theater is amazing and life changing.  It is full of wonderful smart people who are my collaborators and my friends.  I can't really express, nor have found an experience that is comparable to birthing a production. I love my first read of the play. I look for images to convey the way I see the play in my head. Then we have production meetings 6-9 months in advance of the first performance, to critical thinking and dramaturgy, to listening to the first read to the design run.  It is so wonderful and nerve wracking to sit in a first audience and watch and listen to the actors and audience playing with each other, in the world that I helped to create.  I think maybe that is why I love new plays, so much as there is so much more to help with and watch as the playwright has an active voice in the room.   

Since, I freelance and spend most of my time not at the theater or at meetings at home in the office/design studio part of my room. (I also spend time at my various part-time/overhire jobs which are all in theater too.) When I am in the theater, I spend two or three weeks with people then I go back to being alone. I had a pretty big crash after my last opening and I've had a bit more free time to think. 

Take a walk...take a walk!

I forgot to post this but I last saved it in the beginning of March.  This is an example of how much I have been blogging and/or thinking about blogging.  (Not very much.)  These photos were all taken on walks around Lake Merritt. They have been doing a lot of renovation and upgrades to the path most of this is open now. I took most of these photos for friend Leslie who was on a work trip to China and Hong Kong, so she could see all the landscaping progress.

Isn't Oakland beautiful?  No wonder I don't want to move away.

New Sod!!! Waiting to be picnicked in.

There were lots of birds flying through the lake and this was my favorite kind. It has a blue beak!

Seagulls and shadows.

Morning

Early Sunset

Later Sunset.

Installing light bulbs.

Suprise gain blues.

Last week, after a very steady 6 weeks (or longer) of loosing or gaining 0.8lbs,  I gained 2 and a half pounds.  I didn't feel like I had gone too crazy the week before but in truth I didn't really track all of my points and I did go out to a dinner and have a cocktail the night before I weighed in.  I was a bit shocked but not super confused. This week, I had kinda hoped if I tracked super well and did a lot of exercise I would be able to do an impressive -3 or 4lbs in one week and finally get to -40lbs.  I did a ton of activity but didn't really track at the end of the week and in the end lost only 0.8 lbs. Which is the normal that I have been loosing.  BUT I AM PISSED.  Because I had a dream that I would loose a a lot without actually doing all the work. And now I am maybe acting out a bit because of it or at least I did yesterday. (I went to two parties and drank a few beers when there was a lot of foods I don't normally eat near by.)

As they have been rolling out all these new topics each week for WW in the new plan, I have been realizing that almost everything is something I do when I am focused on WW but do not always do when I am not.  It is a good reminder to do these things but also I am not really wanting to do everything. I have a bit of the "I don't wanna's" and the "why me's".

I've mentioned on the blog before about how in the success journal, Liz, the author and a real ww leader, talks about how motivation should be thought about as a clock. I really like this, especially as you can move from one part of the clock to the other in either direction.  When I started writing this, I was feeling kinda annoyed that I ate all my weekly points yesterday. I foolishly took a bunch of candy home from one of the parties and kind of can't stop thinking about it. When I have been depressed, stressed, sad, I used to binge on candy specifically anything peanut butter and chocolate and sour patch kids.  I have both of those things in my cabinet right now. If I didn't have them in the house I would not think two seconds about them.  (This is a good example of having good things in your house and not bad.) Anyway, I just re-read the section in the journal about motivation and she suggests using songs as motivators.  I have been loving Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and the song, "Can't Hold us" is my new buoy to combat the motivation drain.  It is catchy and I just want to dance when I hear it. :)

I think I also need to mention some sucesses! After a winter of not much exercise, I have been walking everyday and/or making it a big priority to get to 100% of my activity goal.  I have been planning most meals and last week I managed to eat all the food I made.  (Sometimes I make too much and wind up getting tired of the food. Not so this week as I managed to space out each meal really well!) Here's to adding more good things next week.

One of the things we do at the end of every meeting is write down a small goal for the week.  (If you write it down then you are more likely to actually do it.) I am going to write mine on the blog at the end with the rest of the weekly weight round up. 

This week's goal: To track all 7 days.
This week's total: -0.8 for a total of -38lbs.

 So far so good! Two days of 7 done.

It was summer now back to winter.

As often happens in the Bay Area, we had a week of glorious 70 degree weather in the middle of February.  It was glorious and sunny and warm and I had to work most of it.

Thanks to both Amanda, my housemate and my friend Leslie, I've been walking around the lake almost every day. The city is making amazing progress with the next section of the renovation.  (Can you call a landscaping project a renovation?) Anyway, the new path is down and they just laid the sod but they are not letting people go around there yet, so the birds have turned it into a mini bird sanctuary. 

Accidental blurry aka artsy photo from last week.

It was very cold outside and I decided to wear my midwestern coat to walk around the lake. Also, this is part of the living room.

Tech. X2 (also I went to Vegas.)

BEWARE THE GLOWING ORB. (or the sun rising)

 Last time in Stephanie's life: (Imagine this like the beginning of a West Wing episode.) Stephanie went to Vegas for a Pirate Wedding.  She had a bad cold, talked the entire drive with Tori, (they had a blast.)

It's the road.

 

 

 That night bachelorette party in Vegas and lost her voice.  She communicated via texting.  It was great. She stayed up all night. (More on that another time.) Then she made it through a brunch with french accents and wonderful friends and stayed relatively sober while enjoying the drunk people around her.

Look Vegas NEON! FLASHING Lights

Sunsetty Casinos

Stores I can't shop in!  (But with really cool lines and florescents!) Real research for a future show.

  There was a naked pin up photo shoot, walking around casinos playing AVN or NRA, drinking margarita out of giant skull cup, a successful operation cupcake, the Bellagio fountains, meeting most of the people at the wedding, having too much fun at the Cosmopolitan, laughing, amazing pastries, baths, naps, and a failed pool adventure. 

PIRATE PANDA CUPCAKES! Made by Alia.

Then Amanda and Mike got married. ON A PIRATE SHIP! It was amazing and I am so happy for them. I failed to take any pictures of myself.  I was in a bunch of photos and someday I'll get to look at them and then I will share them with you. (Ok I kind of lied.  I have a kind of crappy photo of most of the costume from when I was doing a fitting.)

Arrr!

Cue Opening Credits and Theme Music

This week I am in tech for a show and focusing another.  The show I am teching is a world premiere and is a lovely lovely show with a great team.  We just have no time in the space with all the things.  Sometimes that gets stressful. It is a musical and I have written a show with a lot of complicated cues on a lightboard that I have never seen in another space and don't really understand how to program it well. And we (I) have no time for notes outside of time when they are loading in the set.  (Which they have to do everyday.)

The other show is going pretty well so far, I'm a bit concerned about how to light scenery that I can't really light as it doesn't exist yet and I don't know how much it will morph from the model/drawings. I also don't know what I really need that I don't have as I haven't really thought about the show except for when I am there because I need to think about other show.

This is for me to read before I go into tech every time. When I got home tonight at 11:30 it was so nice to come home to a clean room and a made bed.  I feel very calm and happy about the fact that even though I didn't eat dinner tonight till I got home, (oops. remember to eat dinner tomorrow.) I did bring two good for me meals and a bunch of snacks.  Tomorrow I have more food to eat and I picked out my clothes, so I can sleep to the max.  It is so worth it to have a big push before tech to have all the food in the house, cook the meals, do the laundry and have the house moderately clean. I am stressed enough and not having to think about these things makes me very happy.

I haven't had time to go to WW this week but I continue to enjoy the new program and the lack of focus solely on willpower. I went to a couple of different meetings on different days and times.  I'm forever convinced that a good leader makes the meeting but so much more does the people who attend that meeting. I have managed to loose the little bit of weight I gained in Vegas, but overall I've been very successful at maintenance.  For about 6 weeks.  I think I need to shake it up. I have not been doing super fabulous with the exercise and I have been starting to slack at the portions and the tracking and willpower.  But as big victory comes through lots of little victories, I had one delicious cookie today instead of two, I've been trying to walk around when I can to get more activity points, I caught myself eating crackers out of the bag and stopped and pulled out the scale and a bowl, I am prepared to eat 3 delicious meals tomorrow and I have a walk scheduled on Thursday AM. YAYAYAY!!!

Hopefully, I will be able to fall asleep soon. :)

Boy, is it cold here.

 We've been having a very cold winter and this past week was quite low.  It was in the low fourties and I was working at a theater which tend to be cold, mostly based on cost saving measures and the fact that they are big empty spaces often made of concrete. So, I wore a lot of layers and including my big wool coat.  I was warm!  I went to WW today and because I am stubborn and want to have as accurate a weigh in as possible, I wore shorts and my wool coat.  I wear the same thing every week and remove any extra weight including my socks.  This is a picture of what I wore: shorts, tank top, sweater and wool coat.

I am happy (or not so happy?) to report that I am currently experience a plateau. Or as I like to call it I am practicing maintenance. I don't think I have ever been this consistent in terms of my maintenance.  I've been within +/- 0.2 or stayed the same for the past 4 weeks. Part of me wishes that I did have a gain so that it would shock me into doing what I need to do. I have been tracking and eating great but I have been having some exercise motivation problems.  I think a lot of that has to do with the cold and that I have been working and the sun goes down after dinner and I have no desire to go out in the dark to walk.

This is a good lesson.  How do I get motivation when I am maintaining? Maintenance is a huge positive for me, as I can loose weight, I just always find it again. Staying the same weight is awesome!  However, right now I want to loose more weight.  I am super proud of how far I have come and I am beginning to see where I can go.  I am stoked to be very close to being able to wear clothes that are in regular stores.  WHOO HOO! I am hoping that I can magically get some money soon to buy some new clothes and donate my old bigger ones. I am excited to be close (10 lbs or so) to how much I weighed when I joined WW in high school, (I lost 35 lbs). I am curious to see what that weight feels like as I didn't loose that much weight when I lost weight in 2008-2009 ( I lost 38.5 lbs).  The last time I weighed that much was when I was a junior in college and I lost 31 lbs.  Can you see a pattern here?  I am really good at loosing 30 lbs! This time I am going to be really good at loosing all the weight that I want to loose and then I am going to maintain it. 

WW did a request on Facebook about good slogans and I found this gem of an idea.  "I am looking forward to being an 80 year old lifetime member who has been at goal for 40 years."  I LOVE how the woman who posted this phrased this.  I can't wait to be a an old lady at the WW of the future.  Won't that be a trip!  I could even be alive for WW's 100 year anniversary.  2013 is the 50th anniversary of WW.

I was looking through the photos on my computer and I found a bunch of good ones that I have never shared so I figured I might as well feature a few.

Puffy Clouds at the BART Station

Sunset at the BART station.

 This week I committed to scheduling my exercise. I am going to walk and it is going to be cold but I will wear a cute scarf. I made some yummy soup with pesto in it and I am excited to eat it.  Then I go to Vegas for a Pirate wedding and I am going to walk like crazy and try very hard not to drink too much. Wish me luck!

New Year, New Room!

Hello 2013.  How are you doing? Guess what? I have a clean room and a workstation and it is amazing. I have made some projects on my new project table and I LOVE it.  This week I get to use it to do real work.

As many of you know I have a problem keeping my room clean.  This past month has led to the cleanest my room has been in let's say quite a few years. It's taken two friends who volunteered their time (THANK YOU SO MUCH!) and many months on my part of thinking, planning and actually doing things to get to this point. I'm not totally done but done enough to post a couple of photos so that you all can see (and prove to myself that it does look good and I can keep it this way.)

desks and wall decorations!

 A clean floor. nay MY clean floor.

These past two weeks have been busy. Before Christmas,  I got my family to go to a meeting in Hayward on our way to the mountains which was led by the leader that I went to when I lost 30 lbs in 2008-2009, which was nice and her meeting was fun. I managed to...drum roll please!  loose 0.2 lbs!! Whoo hooo! Then we went to the mountains and it was not very snowy till we arrived then it was very snowy.

Max, Sam and Jake on a walk.

But instead of getting stuck in the house we went for walks with the dogs . And thanks to the big empty lot next to my brother and sister in law's house, we made a luge run for the sleds and a path to walk up back up the hill.  My brother in law and I went up and down the hill maybe 20 times in a row.  It was so much fun.  I also volunteered to shovel snow. (Which is something I have never done before, growing up in a place with a lack of snow.) I also did a bunch of laps around the house upstairs and down and down the hallway to the way downstairs.  (My sister tried to do them with a cocktail and did the cocktail did not make it.)

Lots of Snow. It was very pretty.

When we got back to my parent's house I went straight to the airport to pick up my old roommate who was in town for work.  We got a day to hang out and it was so much fun! We walked all around the hood and saw the Hobbit. The next day, I took her to the airport and went to my old WW meeting on Sunday am. Then I drove to my friends house where we proceeded to play Star Trek settlers, regular settlers, and cards against humanity for 10 hours. SO FUN!

At my meeting I realized that what made the new meeting so fun was really the people (who were very vocal and had good things to share with everyone) and the leader.  I still like my Sunday leader, I think I just need to go to one of the earlier meetings where the people are more talkative.  I am very happy to report that after no computer and no phone (which led to not very much tracking) and quite a bit of drinking more than usual, I only gained 0.2 lbs. So between the last two weeks I am at even. That is amazing!!! I am so excited about that. I went out for dinner and to a bar last night and I maybe ate and drank too much (all my extra points in one day). But I tracked and continue to track and will exercise.  Hopefully, I will stay the same or maybe even loose a little.  That would be great.

2013 is going to have clean rooms, more games with friends, lots of laughs, walks, and not being afraid to do things that are scary. Wish me luck.

Happy New Years!