For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been tracking everything I eat. I did this, along with tallying up the points value of those foods, while I was trying to lose weight with Weight Watchers. As I got the hang of eating the right foods, I stopped actively tracking as I continued to lose weight and eventually reached my goal weight and WW Lifetime status

I’ve been in maintenance mode for a year and a half. I’ve been semi-successful. I gained 10 pounds back. The first 5 came back pretty easily. I alluded to that in February. The next 5 came back in the late spring/summer.

I’d be dishonest if I said the weight gain didn’t bother me. I explained this to Stacia in the comments of her post on pre/post pregnancy self-image.

I don’t have a pre- and post-pregnancy view of my body image. I think I have a three (maybe four) broad views. There’s the me I knew for so long as always overweight, which I still thought was beautiful. There’s me as I lost weight over the course of a year. There’s me at my low weight. And me now about 10 lbs above that. If there’s a time when I’m most stressed about my looks, it’s probably lately…

[Stacia replied and asked if it the stress was wedding related.]

Nah, it’s not about wedding stress so much, at least not yet. I think it’s more about some pants not fitting and feeling like this extra weight is keeping me from improving and being a stronger runner. I also think this anxiety about any weight gain probably is going to be with me for a while. I’ve never lost a significant amount of weight and everything you hear is “it’s gonna come back… plus some!” I don’t want to undo the work. And frankly, I did feel more confident and better about my body 10 lbs lighter… but I’m a stronger runner now. Strange.

I’m not actively trying to lose weight while training for the Long Beach Marathon, but I don’t want to gain more. Enter tracking sans points and limiting eating out to weekends. I didn’t realize I was snacking so much, especially when bored at work and late at night after dinner. I don’t think snacking is bad, but I need to eat more nutritious snacks and reign in my sweet tooth. After all, I do want to get back to goal weight, the wedding pressure is no joke.