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Healthiness is only vaguely like truthiness

So today I took the plunge and went to a Weight Watchers meeting.

I am so confused by the core plan. My head says, “Oh, well that’s what I’ve been doing all along and maintaining, so that’s no good.” So I really think I should have planned ahead and done a food log for this past week so I would have written down the fried egg and bacon on rye bread with cream cheese sandwich I had for breakfast yesterday. I mean, sure, I had a nice moderate lunch and a pretty healthy salad for dinner, so it really might have still fit within the plan, but I’d at least have something I could compare either way.

And there are the random whole chocolate bars. Nom nom nom…

So I might have to do the point system… which is sad, since one of my secondary reasons for leaving Weight Watchers last time was that I was just obsessing over food way too much, and you all know that I love obsessing over food (but, man, there wasn’t much room for obsessing over anything else!).

*waffle*

So here are my thoughts on Weight Watchers –

  • the main reason why I quit last time was that I ended up feeling cold and getting sick more, but that was only after I had lost 60 or 80 pounds (I forget – this was more than 10 years ago, but it was some nice round number like that)… so I am thinking this time that I only want to lose 50 pounds and then maintain that for a year or so before even considering whether I want to lose more.
  • $15/week is a decent-sized chunk of money to just do what I’ve always been doing.
  • While I am only mildly thinking it wouldn’t hurt to weigh less, I certainly don’t want to weigh more than I do right now… and that means that failure doesn’t get to be an option… and I don’t like that type of scenario very much. It’d be safer not to mess with things and know that I can just stay at this same weight that I have managed to keep perfectly stable ever since I got my own apartment and settled into my current lifestyle.
  • On the other hand, not trying is for cowards. Grr!

~*~

And I am having trouble figuring out walking. Who knew it could be so hard? Okay, so I did – I have always suspected that I had no idea what a proper stride was supposed to be like, but I never had anyone to tell me.

Well, in physical therapy (for my knee), I have had someone tell me! It’s been awesome. Apparently, my toes are supposed to come up and hit the ground last. And, yeah, when my knee is better, I do have a little bit more of a heel strike, but when I’m limping I set down with the ball of my foot first… which has saved me from many a fall, since I can adjust a lot better to uneven ground that way. But she told me to walk around on just my heels, and I gamely went ahead to give that a try and found that I just don’t have the muscles to do that! A whole set of muscles in my leg completely unused ever. So we’ve been working on that. And my therapist keeps looking at me and sighing, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to try walking in sneakers?” And I am all, “Sneakers are the work of the devil – they weigh a lot, don’t bend enough, and when I go to sit on the floor they get all in the way and dig into my thighs and feel, in general, like lead weights.” But it comes out more like a bit of a wince and, “Yeah, sneakers and I don’t get on so well.”

So then I went and read a timely article on New York magazine on how to walk… and they are all – sneakers are the work of the devil, and everyone walks with way too much of a heel strike.

*flail*

So I’m not really worried because I figure it’ll all even out and all of this heel walking will eventually mellow out into a more proper stride, but what I really want is a walking coach who will walk next to me and give me pointers on every pitch and yaw of my feet. And how much my knee should bend. And how fully should you straighten your leg while it’s in front of you before you put your foot down? Do you balance the forward and backward extensions? Why do I get this weird wear pattern on the bottom of my sandals? Really – I have no idea how to walk.