no more crutch

I took the plunge. I cancelled my membership with Weight Watchers. [EEK!] I learned a lot from them and made some very positive changes in my life, but I think this has run its course. I know what I need to do, to either lose more weight or at least maintain where I am. I cannot justify the payments for this service, especially with Sweet P's job hunt and the other stuff we really need to pay for.

The best thing WW did for me was to learn about portion size. I was eating too much. They encourage eating healthier, such as 6 fruits/veggies a day, focus on "filling foods", drink 8 glasses of water, etc. But I would often be frustrated as, at the same time, they would encourage people in eating fake sugars and overly processed foods. So, there was good and bad.

So, why quit WW? I need to take what I have learned, and am still learning, and apply it to myself for myself. I did find another good tool, called sparkpeople.com. SP doesn't have the weekly accountability of the WW meeting, but it does have similar (or even better) nutritional tools. It will chart my percentages of carbs/protein/fats and even micronutrients like fiber or certain vitamins. This is so cool! And it is free. Bonus!

I'm laying off the processed foods and focusing on whole, natural foods. This is a big step, but after doing some reading, I really believe this is what I need to do to keep my hormones in check. I'm not going totally organic, and I'm not a vegan by any stretch of the imagination. I am buying some organic products, but the main thing is whole foods. (Side note: One thing I specifically want to have organic is milk. It's probably a good idea to go for organic meat as well. Farmers pump their cows full of hormones in order to produce more milk. If drugs can be passed through human mother's milk to her babies, don't they come through cow's milk to us? That scares me.)

I think I've got the exercise thing down, but exercise alone is not enough. I can run 10 miles, but if I eat too much food I won't get any slimmer. And if I eat the wrong foods, I won't get any healthier. Despite the ups and downs of 2008, I still want to finish what I started. I'm just a little farther from that goal than I was last May. But I'm still going. And I just might be able to do it without the crutch.