Weekly Meeting Topic : Bend With the Winds of Change

Yet again this week, I had to go to the Saturday meeting and it seems to be the trend this summer.  But that's okay because the meeting leader there is really cool and very creative when it comes to discussing the week's topic.

First of all I decided to get weighing in for this month out of the way since I know next weekend there will be so many temptations at my upcoming stitching weekend it'll be a surprise if I'm not slightly up afterwards.  I stepped onto my scale at home when I got up, 146.2 NOT BAD!  Down almost 1lb from Tuesday which is my "official" weigh in day on eTools and if I go to my regular meeting.  So I told the meeting leader, depending on how my weight was on the "official" scale I'd like to weigh in for the month.  In other words ignore me stepping on the scale if its not between 145 and 147lbs.  I was bang on 147!  Wooo hooo!  I was so happy for the first time since MARCH I didn't have to pay!  I've finally gotten back into my "safe zone" but I'm not stopping there, I WANT to get back to 145 and if my body will let me, perhaps a little lower?  So looking at my weigh in card, I'm down 2lbs from last month's weigh in, that's 4lbs in two months!  I'm so happy!

This weeks meeting topic was Bend With the Winds of Change in other words we are not all perfect and we need to learn to be flexible.  Instead of presenting us with the ABC's of being flexible she presented us with the "P's and F's"

• Patience - be patient with weight loss its not going to happen at once.  Also be patient with yourself, we're perfect people and you have to be patient with yourself when you have a bad week.
• Progress not perfect - Look at how far you've come, the setbacks you've overcome, make a chart of the weight you've lost the overall trend will be downwards, despite the odd bump along the way.
• Flexibility - life throws so many curve balls at you!  You have to be flexible to life's bumps and curves otherwise you're setting yourself up for failure.
• Feedback not Failure - So you've had a gain?  This is your body's feedback to what you've done during the week.  Did you track?  Did you track honestly?  Did you exercise?  What do you need to change this upcoming week to see a loss at the scale the following week?
• Forgiveness - learn to forgive yourself when you have a setback or eat something you now feel guilty about.  There are two ways you can deal with guilt, to get yourself back on program and track that item you ate or keep on binging your way to failure.

At this point the meeting leader brought up something I had said the week before when we talked about how to get yourself out of a binge and get back on program.  That "setbacks allow for comebacks" its something I had seen on the sign outside one of the churches in my community and it struck such a cord with me that I haven't forgotten it!  When she mentioned this at the meeting, one member spoke up and told us about how last Wednesday she woke up that day and started binging.  She recognized that the reason was emotional, she had lost a very close friend this past year and was experiencing a sense of guilt that she was still alive.  This triggered a binge.  She said that then she heard my voice in her head saying "setbacks allow for comebacks" she told us that this motivated her to get back on track and not let the binge go any further than that one day.  It was nice to get such an affirmation of something I said and to be publicly thanked for it.  At the end of the meeting I went up to her and gave her a hug!

Now back to the meeting topic at hand, the leader then pulled out a bendy straw and pointed out to us how the long part that goes in the glass is 80% of the straw and the part we drink from (before the bend) is 20% of the straw.  To keep this in mind and that if we eat properly, be active and follow the program 80% of the time and that the 20% is the curves life throws at us.  If we try our best to be on program 80% of the time we will be successful.  Also that if you take your daily points for 7 days that is 80% of the points available to you in a week and your extra 35 weekly points that is essentially that 20% we were previously talking about.  One strategy is to try to eat only your daily points and your weekly points for "life's surprises" for those times where we are not perfect or in control.

She also reminded us that so many members get stuck on the big picture your long term goal of reaching your goal weight.  For some members that can be a very large number and they give up right away seeing the big, scary picture!  We should focus on short term/smaller goals, 5lbs, 10% of our body weight, something that you can find obtainable.  These short term goals give us the motivation to make it to our long term goal.

As part of the group exercise for the meeting she asked each of us to share one of our accomplishments since starting Weight Watcher.  For me, it was being able to run something I could/would never do prior to my weight loss.  Now I run several times a week, and something I continue to improve on.

Before we left, the meeting leader gave each of us our very own bendy straw to remind us "be flexible and not to blow it".  My bendy straw is now tapped to my fridge!