Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

Yesterday, I showed the graph of my weight loss progress, but that isn’t really how I keep track of how much weight I’ve lost. Sure, I put my weight into the Lose It! app every day and that’s how the graph was made, but that’s not the motivating progress that I use.

I use gold stars…

When I went back to Weight Watchers for the last time, I recorded with shame, my highest weight ever: 231.8 pounds. Weight Watchers gives you stars for each five pound loss and Bravo stickers for sharing in the class. So, I created this weight loss progress sheet to mark off each pound I lost. It works with WW stars, but it also works with the foil stars you can buy at any office supply store.

Click to download: Weight Loss Progress Sheet from Starling Fitness

You can see that I lost my 5% and 10% while I still went to Weight Watchers, but at pound 24, that was my last pound I lost with them. Honestly, MOST of the weight I lost at Weight Watchers this last time was because of Overeater’s Anonymous. I wasn’t willing to give up WW until I was SURE that OA would work, so I went to both meetings for months until I felt safe leaving what wasn’t working behind.

As of today, I’ve lost over 55 pounds, more than half of it after I quit WW for the last time.

There is something incredibly pleasing about putting a shiny sticker in the right spot when I have lost a pound. It makes each pound feel like a huge accomplishment, and honestly, it IS.

No matter how many stars I put on my sheet, however, I know that I am just one binge away from complete and utter failure. All it would take is for me to allow myself ONE binge and I would be right back where I was before. There would be no stopping it.

And the strangest of all is that this time around I’m not starving. This time around, I’m not exercising so much that my toenails fall off. It’s amazing how much weight my body will release when I’m not bingeing. I don’t have to exercise until my toenails fall off because I’m not eating too much. I’m not starving because I have worked through the steps and have had my hunger taken from me.

All I know is that I feel a surge of joy every time I put a little star on my progress sheet…

Overeaters Anonymous does not endorse anything on this entry or blog.