Weigh-in, and "Whatever the scale says, you've earned it!"

First, the scoop:

Starting Weight: 290.3
Last Week: 282.6
This Week: 283.7
Net Loss: +1.1
Loss-to-Date: -6.6

Okay, sure, I'm bummed. But as the title states, I earned this fair and square. First, I was coming off my cycle, so I expected this. I had a weekend full of not-so-great choices and then good choices that I should've eaten less of... we went out to dinner on Monday to celebrate/mourn a friend's new job (said job is going to relocate said friend to Richmond, two hours away from us), and all week I've just had a tough time staying on track, which I mentioned earlier in my stressed out post. Honestly, I'm surprised it wasn't more than this. I'll take it, and live with it, and learn from it. This week will be challenging (as I'll mention below) but we're going to be doing a lot of walking around this weekend trying to get some wedding stuff taken care of, so hopefully I can undo some of this without much pain and heartbreak. :)

Although Derek and I did get a little off track in the beginning of the week, we made up for it by the end of the week. Perhaps just a little too late. Several weeks ago I went a little crazy on a trip to Barnes & Noble and bought five (yes, 5!) new healthy-recipe cookbooks. All of them looked to be chock-full of delicious recipes and I figured that if I had a huge arsenal of tasty recipes, I couldn't get bored with cooking healthy and go back to cooking crap. So far, it has worked. My favorite of all these cookbooks so far is Cooking Light - Complete Meals in Minutes. It's full of recipes that look like food I would've cooked long before I was on a health kick, and none of them take more than 30 minutes. Most of the ones we've had so far have been 15 minute recipes, which is awesome, and there hasn't been one we haven't liked. I definitely recommend this book! Most of the other books we bought were Cooking Light books, and the same goes for them -- good recipes, quick recipes, and I can trust that I'm not salting or fatting myself to death. 

The stress situation has come down a little bit -- I've resolved most of the issues that had come up earlier in the week. I'm still frazzled, as anyone could guess, judging by the fact that my wedding is now literally FIVE weeks away. So much to do, so little time, yadda yadda yadda. 

This week, I have two challenges: 1) this coming weekend (President's Day weekend) is Derek's bachelor party, and as a result I'll be on my own all weekend. This could be bad, or this could be good. On one hand, I could choose to be totally lazy and stay in my pajamas just about all weekend and nibble on whatever's in the house... on the other hand I could be totally lazy and decide to order all of my dinners in, and then on a third, mystery hand, I could call my local friends and beg them to go out with me so I don't have to rattle around in my tiny little shoebox all by myself.  My second challenge is going to be Valentine's Day. First I have to say that I hate this dumb holiday, even now that I have Derek, but still for some reason feel compelled to celebrate it. So, we're going out to dinner... two days before weigh-in. Haven't decided where yet but I'm hoping beyond all hope that we can pick something sensible. Anyway, my real challenge is that I have the overwhelming urge to bake something... something red and chocolatey and maybe cheesecakey and of course, delicious. I'm challenging myself to find a recipe that won't break my calorie bank, and then to not eat more of it than I should. On top of that, my boss has proclaimed that she's bringing a box of Valentine's donuts from Dunkin Donuts to work on Thursday, and I'm determined to allot myself the points for them because I've been craving a donut for weeks now and haven't caved. I will do it. I can do it. That's the point of WeightWatchers. To not have to say no to what you want, but to be compelled instead to make better choices to make up for it. I'll keep you posted on the results!