A new plan is in the works! and Christmas chat

So yet again I'll have a new trainer beginning Jan 1st 2014. I can't keep a trainer. They all move away. I think it's part if living in a town with a university. They graduate get a job in their college town as a stepping stone to the job or town where they aim to be. I'm always happy for them but sad to make a change again. 

My new trainer will be awesome. I think I'm going to have the consistency I had back two years ago with my trainer Chad. He trained me for about a year. My new trainer has already started planning my Jan., what I'll change in my eating, what I'll do each day and what I'll do in my workouts. The best part about my new trainer is that they don't cost a thing and I'm able to meet with them any time I need/want to. My new trainer for 2014 is me, Bethney. 

Sounds silly huh? Not really. I've worked with 5 trainers in the past few years. I've learned so much in that time through workouts with them and other research I've done. I realize that it's time to use my own knowledge and resources to just do it myself. Do I know everything I need to know?... No way! But I know more than I probably give myself credit for and I have resources to learn more. 

I think this may be the key and may be my best year yet. I'm back to calorie counting so I'll be using myfitnesspal again using username findtheskinny and as we all know it's about calories in/ calories out so I'll be utilizing my Polar heart monitor as much as I can to track my calorie burn. My biggest key will be tracking and blogging. Blogging to keep myself accountable. Tracking to find trends and areas to improve on. 

I told my husband this a few days ago and he was thrilled. Zero cost! Haha! He is getting ready to return to the gym and go with me. I'm excited about that. Yay!!! 

I'm working on Jan right now. I'm looking at the month as a whole, each week, and each day. If anyone has any advice or tips for creating my own plans please share. 

Merry Christmas everyone! I'm three meals in and a few to go. We are just now traveling to see my family.  I did great Christmas Eve and Christmas Day though . Little spoons of several things. No big servings. Lots of open space on my plate!  I totally enjoy it because I don't usually do things like mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole (and never together). 

Christmas Eve at my husbands aunts house I came in over 500 calories but just imagine if I filled my plate how much worse it would have been. 

Christmas Morning breakfast at our house with my parents. 

Christmas Supper last night at our house with my parents and Brandon's parents. We definitely cooked deer on Christmas. Watch out Rudolph! We cooked pork too with a fabulous cranberry sauce. 

I'm very proud to have stayed within reasonable calorie counts on these two big food days. Even including the two desserts I had yesterday. All gluten free too!

Oh and I took a Christmas run too! Which helped yesterday on multiple levels. Got me out of the house, helped with calories, made me feel accomplished, etc. 

Merry Christmas! 

Downward trend... Who knew?

So I weigh in weekly as most people (especially us weightwatchers) do. Each week I have three outcome options: loss, gain, or stay the same. Each week I hope for a loss and settle for staying the same but despise gains. Normal right?

I often feel agitated by the ups and downs. Why can't it all be downs?. I told my husband the other day that if I had never gained back any pounds I've lost in my lifetime that I would have lost more weight than I actually weigh! I'm sure most people fit that description. 

So I recently noticed a trend and its easy to spot in my weight tracker graph. It's two low "peaks" where I had significant losses with a significant gain in the middle. Now this is pretty personal and I don't mind that just a warning. 

With PCOS and endometriosis both I must be on a hormonal birth control. No option. Well I went off the prescription for a week while I was on another medication that really didn't mix well with it. Well that week I lost 5-6 lbs. wow! So when I started back I maintained for one week and then gained 5 lbs. I was not happy. I felt that the prescription was maybe holding back my weightloss progress which I needed in order to control the PCOS. 

So I called and made an appointment with my doctor (OBGYN) and over the next week took a risk and stayed off the medication to see what happened. I lost 3.4 lbs. of course I did!

I went to the appointment yesterday and as always my dr was amazing and talked and listened and he said that the weight loss was likely water that the hormones make your body hold onto and the loss would likely stop/ level off if I stayed off the medicine. I cannot stay off the medicine for medical purposes so we had to chose something else. So we chose to change the type of medicine that Im on. I'm pleased with our decision and he said that a change could be beneficial. 

So next ...

He said. I do want you to notice something. He had written my weights down from the last four appointments including yesterday. They we're :

203 (Dec ish)

200 (Jan ish)

198 (March ish)

193 (June 21)

So he said you've actually lost 10 lbs (5% of my weight) since we first determined you have PCOS and began discussing your weightloss. I hadn't really noticed that downward trend. So I said look at my weight watchers graph with me. I did the landscape view where it goes back 24 weeks and ,by George, there was the downward trend. Now it did look like a mountain range but overall it's going down. I was excited. 

I guess I get so caught up in the weekly that I lose sight of where I'm going. He told me to keep it up and it would get easier as I lose to lose more (hormonal lay due to PCOS)

I felt encouraged when I walked away yesterday. 

I write this post or a few reasons:

1. To encourage others to advocate for themselves and talk openly with their doctors about how their medications affect them. 

2. To remind others, as my doctor reminded me, to look at the overall not just the right now. It's about losing in a healthy way. Not losing fast. In the long run losing slow will be more permanent. 

I know this post was personal and I hope you don't mind. I need some feedback though. As you may notice my weight watchers app lists 200 as my starting weight because it's what I weighed the day I started but from the time my doctor and I talked and I headed in the glutenfree/weightwatchers direction I was 203. So I'm thinking if changing my ww starting weight to match. I have 203 as my start weight on myfitnesspal and would kinda like to see it all match. Opinions?