My journey to the Warrior Dash...the very beginning...

Ok, how to even begin to document Warrior Dash – Minnesota, 2011 is, as of right now, a complete mystery to me. My original plan at the time of registration (November 16, 2010) was to lose a ton of weight and the conquering of this event would be my pinnacle. Well, so much for lofty goals. I never did get to the weight I “wanted” (or deemed necessary for that matter). I did actually do a very good job of waffling back and forth and though I did actually lose about 15-20 more pounds over the year I virtually maintained for the most part. Which…is great, don’t get me wrong, as any “normal weight” person will tell you, maintaining is hard and I have proven this year that I can, indeed, maintain weight. I want it written down, for the record though, that my dream was to actually maintain 150 pounds…not the 248 that currently reside on my 5’6” frame.

I did continue to watch what I ate, went the gym on my scheduled days (for the most part). There were a few months we didn’t get our “bonus” (a reduced membership premium for attending 12 or more times a month) because we didn’t meet the monthly attendance requirements but overall we did well. For sedentary people we do move a lot. I decided that I couldn’t do the nutrition portion of my journey alone. It was quite apparent early on that I could not be trusted. I could not trust myself to stick to my “plan” and eat the “good” and steer clear of the “bad”. I could justify anything at any given time and I found out very early that I truly am a wealth of excuses just waiting to erupt, each and every one of them very plausible (if not wholly believable).

Entering, stage left…Weight Watchers.

Weight Watchers is a great plan and it worked for me, it probably would still be working for me if not the financial implications of belonging to such a warm and welcoming group of “do-gooders”. For $39.95 a month, plus registration fees, snack fees, cookbooks, utensils, journal holders, 3 month trackers, water bottles, exercise videos, cookbooks, gum, special candies, restaurant guides and all those handy-dandy cannot do without, you name it, we got it, items you too can succeed. Don’t get me wrong, I truly did love Weight Watchers. I loved attending the meetings, hearing other people facing the same battles that I am on a daily basis, learning their tricks and tips to passing by the “too good to be true” donuts that just happen to always appear on the team tables and in the break rooms of offices near you. And all those “extras” mentioned above are just that, extras…you don’t HAVE to purchase them. But how can you not? Most of us wearing these shoes will do or try ANYTHING to make it to the next level of control. If it works for someone else, it MUST work for me. I’d be insane not to try…right? Well I tried…I lost, I gained…I maintained but in all honestly the most loss came from my bank account. So, even though I loved the meetings, my meeting leader and all those supportive people I’d come to really care for every Wednesday morning at 7:30am. I just couldn’t afford to “lose” anymore with Weight Watchers. Account closed.

I thought I could “go it alone” at this point, you know, follow the Weight Watchers plan on my own, using all those nifty gadgets I purchased during my membership and the knowledge I had thus far gained. I could do it on my own for FREE! Well, that lasted all of a couple of weeks. Without my weekly “accountability” my well of excuses over flowed and slowly but surely I stopped dropping. Here comes the waffling bits…up 2 down 1, up 4 down 5, up 3 down 1 and so on and so forth. Never really surpassing that special number on the scale, you know the one…the one that says “Oh no! I’ve failed again!”…but not really achieving that other special number, the “I CAN’T BELIEVE I’VE GONE THIS FAR…” number! The “one” number you haven’t been in 15 years or more. It wasn’t working and it wasn’t working in a big way. How was I EVER going to get to where I wanted to be in order to participate in the Warrior Dash if I couldn’t even conquer my kitchen cabinet?

19 days and going in the wrong direction

Having a really hard time. Here we are July 5th, my "mini goal" of 10 pounds by August 1st is looking like a pipe dream and only 19 days remaining until I run the Warrior Dash. I've been eating like crap the last 4 days and using the holiday weekend as my excuse to extend "treat day" from Sunday to Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Zero Gym days in there. What is wrong with me? Seriously, I KNOW what I want, I KNOW how to achieve it but I keep veering off the easy path and trodding down the path of self sabotage. I need some serious help, a 12 step program, an intervention, a shrink...SOMETHING.

Are you there God? It's me...Jennifer...