Reboot – 2022

Once upon a time we were doing Weight Watchers, and doing really well. That’s when we started this blog, and then, well, life happens. Things get busy, and then a pandemic hits, and then in the middle of the pandemic we move to North Carolina, where frankly, all the food is delicious. Now, it’s March of 2022, and I am the heaviest I have ever been in my life, and I feel like garbage most of the time. How did I get here? Why am I like this? At some level I know that my eating habits usually have nothing to do with food, or being hungry. I eat because I am bored, or sad, or stressed. It’s been a coping mechanism for me all my life.

Here’s the parallel route of the story. There’s a pandemic, you’re working from home, staying home most of the time, what do you do? You watch a lot of TV. This journey starts with Jason and I watching “Dark Side of the Ring”. If you haven’t watched it, you should. Watching this show makes me nostalgic for my teenage years when I watched a lot of professional wrestling. It was the Monday Night Wars, it was the Attitude Era, it was crazy. Watching this show leads as to start listening to lots of wrestling podcasts and ultimately taking a peek at what current professional wrestling has to offer. This also leads to getting a streaming subscription to Peacock, where everything that was the “WWE Network” now resides. They have an entire series about the Monday Night Wars. We watch that, and then we move on to watching old episodes of Raw and Nitro from the late 90’s. This, of course, brings us back into contact with all those wrestlers I loved as a teenager, like Diamond Dallas Page.

During this period, I see a friend post on Facebook about his journey with DDP Yoga. What? Diamond Dallas Page has a yoga program? This was new information to me. I looked into and then hemmed and hawed for a long time, like months. I just kept doing what I had been doing. If anyone is familiar with the Enneagram, I am a type 6. We are great with plans, but not actions. I can think all day about the things I want to do and plan everything out, but when it comes to actually doing it… well that’s a different story. I also struggle with a lot of negative self talk. A lot of the time, I think, I won’t be able to do something, so why even bother trying at all. But I want to get better… not just physically, but mentally, and spiritually as well.

Last week I saw a post about the Positively Unstoppable challenge through DDP Yoga. March 31st was the last day to register for the 6 month challenge. Sure there are prizes involved, but for me it was more about connecting with others that are along the same journey as I am. There are other people that are struggling, that are working their butts off, and that are making progress. I am not the only person in this world dealing with any one of my problems. There are others. So I decided to sign up and start my first DDP Yoga program.

What’s that saying? “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” That’s where I was at. I can WANT to change all day long, but if I don’t actually put the work in, I’m going nowhere. So here we are, at the beginning of what I hope will be a successful journey. I know there will be slips and falls, but the most important thing is to get back up and keep on going. As part of the Positively Unstoppable challenge I want to document this journey. Maybe someday I can be an inspiration to other, as some have been for me. I hope you will join me on this journey and cheer me along the way!

Sorry this post is so long! I didn’t plan it that way. I guess I just had a lot to say! Keep your eye out for further check-ins along the way. I’d love to hear from you!

❤ Liz

Wake Up Call

Earlier this week, I set up an Instagram account for this blog (if you haven’t done so, go follow @shrinkingcouple, I promise you you won’t regret it) and I tried to look for a picture for our profile picture. I ended up picking our most recent picture together from the holiday party of Liz’s employer, a picture where we both look pretty good even with a good 10 extra pounds combined versus now.

Going through her pictures versus mine, I found that the next most recent picture of us that came up. This picture was taken last September 16th, our sixth wedding anniversary, as we were heading home from an anniversary trip to Vermont filled with food, fun, and what I eventually saw as the last straw.

Liz and I had entertained the idea of a diet for quite some time but for me at least this was the wake up call that I needed because I could not even look at myself without feeling disgust at what I had become. I had seen my pants size balloon up in the last couple of years and my weight tip-toe towards and way past 300 but this picture just made me feel somewhat gross about myself. The warning signs had been there, but I knew for me that a change had to be done. Of course, I wouldn’t be the one to lead here because strong husbands always let the wife go first!

Eight days after this picture was taken, Liz walked into Weight Watchers for the first time in many years. I wasn’t there as my work location and schedule at the time wouldn’t allow for it so I waited a week until I was comfortable joining which happened to coincide with the start of a new month, October. Today we both got our “orange” books after filling up the “blue” books we were given upon our first meeting and I can’t think of a better decision either of us could have made. We’ve bettered our lives and ourselves and the mind blowing thing is that this is only the beginning!

For the record, Liz was down 2.2 pounds this week, I was down 1.2. Together in just over four months we’ve lost 80.8 pounds, roughly shedding a Labrador Retriever or two four-year-olds in the process. We hope that the next four months can be, within reason, just as kind!

Introduction, Part II

Well, you heard from Jason, now it’s my turn.  This isn’t my first ride on the weight loss train either.  The first time I did Weight Watchers I was in the 6th grade!  I have always been up and down and all around on the scale.  When Jason and I first met I was somewhere around 180, which is still high for my short stature, but much better than the 290ish I topped out at last year.  I’ve tried doing online only programs in the past and it just didn’t stick.  My starting weight on this go around with Weight Watchers was 287.6.  So far I’ve lost 32 pounds.  The meetings have been very helpful for support and ideas.  But also, as Jason said, the amount of stuff online and on social media is incredible.  I’m actually starting to enjoy cooking and trying new recipes!

Anyway, I hope you are going to enjoy our blog and find it helpful!  Check out the About page for more of what to expect from us.

Look for more soon.

~Liz

Introduction

This blog is about the adventures of Jason and Liz, a couple that as of this writing has lost a combined 77.4 pounds (that’s 35kg or 5.5 stone!) over the last four months. We have accomplished this thanks to a combination of weight loss – namely Weight Watchers Freestyle,  increased exercise and far better food choices. We’ve been married for six years and are the parents of two wonderful cats who may end up on this blog from time to time. This is a Jason post so I might as well introduce myself.

Without getting into details too revealing, I’m 35 and I work for a well-respected food retailer in the Boston suburbs; in my spare time I try to write but I usually end up cooking, more often than not the last four months. I actually started my journey after Liz did by one week but my struggles go much further as I’ve always been a bit on the stocky side but in the last several years my weight which had been stable in the 260-280 range for several years started to balloon up and my clothes options began to shrink as I left the realm of “normal” and ended up in “big and [far from] tall”. The last straw came when finding new shorts that would fit became a procedure and that my “fat” pair (a 48 for the curious) was starting to fall victim to the dreaded “chub rub”. I knew something had to be done as had Liz before me given that we had both gone off the rails. My first weigh-in on October 1, 2017 was at 330.2 pounds, slightly lower than the 332 I had guesstimated in the app the night before. Seriously, I think that my “true” peak was closer to 340 pounds. This is not my first rodeo with Weight Watchers, I had lost 40 pounds in my teens and had kept most of it off for 18 months until some unfortunate medical events led me to pack it back on in one month which I never recovered from even going for years after that massive gain. Some flirtations in the past, often alone or via the online-only program, yielded limited results.

As of right now, I’ve lost 45.4 pounds, more than I had lost during my most successful go-around nearly 20 years ago. I could say the stars aligned for this – I took a transfer to a work location closer to home which ended a long commute and Liz found a gym she actually liked which motivates both of us to work out – but something just feels psychologically “different” in a good way this time. Having your spouse as an in-house accountability partner helps a ton and the bonding we share over finding and making recipes versus what we had before I couldn’t give up at this point. Having a consistent meeting “home” has also helped and is a benefit I couldn’t have had under my old work situation and has built additional accountability there too. Finally, having not really done Weight Watchers proper in the social media era, the amount of accountability and inspiration via the Facebook groups for our regular meeting leader and her backup, Instagram, Connect, Twitter, and more only inspires me more to try new things and be open about my struggles and triumphs.

I’ll let Liz tell her story then come back with some stories of my own. Keep fighting the good fight!