A few years ago, when my parents still lived in Payson, some of their neighbors had horses. Not on their street, but in the neighborhood. One weekend, my brother and I were visiting with them. My dad was putting some hours in at work so it was just the three of us hanging out at the kitchen table. The TV was on and we were talking, but suddenly I heard something. Could it be? Going to the front porch I saw a couple of teenagers walking down the street, leading a palomino-colored horse. I'm he only one who heard it. Hahahaha. After watching them pass by, I went back inside, happy.
The second time occurred just this morning. As I was leaving my WW meeting I heard that sound again and started looking around the parking lot. Then I spotted "him" at the far end of the lot. The charter-type school in the same lot was having some sort of holiday thing for the families of their students and had brought in a bunch of snow, a train and a horse-drawn wagon. I think I've ridden in a horse-drawn wagon once. In Old Town Scottsdale back in the 80s, I think it was. Kind of cool. Nothing like riding a horse, though. Hahaha. Anyway, I, of course, had to take a picture...
And now I want to vent about something that is mostly not horse related so if you're not interested, you can stop reading now. Hahahaha
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The week before Thanksgiving I decided to start going to Weight Watchers meetings again. I had been trying to do it using the online program, but since I didn't know exactly how much I weighed, I could only guess and calculate my daily points based on that guess. Surprisingly, I was only off by three pounds and was using the correct Daily Points Target. But I decided to start attending meetings again. This is a rather personal thing to me. It's no surprise I am overweight and while I'm not embarrassed to say I'm going to meetings again, I am embarrassed by how much I've "let myself go". My weight is keeping me from doing the activity I love most and that's horseback riding and is a big motivator for me following the program. If I'd stuck with it the first time I'd started going, I'd probably be at goal now and riding as often as I could like I did ten years ago. It's been 16 years since I've been riding because somewhere along the way, I decided food was more important.
For the past four weeks I've been hearing about the new program they were going to roll out and today was the day for people who attend on Saturdays, which is when I go. I have always been a fan of the 7:30am meetings. I guess because I can get it over with and still have the rest of the day. Anyway, I had been doing well on the program so far. Even though it's been difficult at times to use up all of my daily points, for the most part things were goi well. My first week after re-joining, I had lost 12.2 pounds, which made me very happy. I'd never lost that much in a week before. The following week I slipped up a bit and ended up gaining 2.4 back, but today's weigh in saw a loss of last week's 2.2 plus an additional 4.2 for a weekly total of 6.6 and an overall loss of 16.4 pounds. I am very happy about my progress so far, but then they hit us with the new program today. I don't like it. Granted, I haven't tried it yet and I will commit to a week, but I don't have much hope for it going too well. For one thing, my Daily Points Target, which is now being called Smart Points, has gone up 10. I already have a hard enough time meeting the current DPT so now I have to try to get an additional 10 in? Oh, but that should be so easy. Why? Because the values of most foods have gone up as well. Before, a 12oz can of regular Coke was only 4 points, but now it's 9. Why? They've thrown sugar into the equation for how values are determined. Before, they used Fat, Fiber, Carbs and Protein to determine the values, but now it's those plus Saturated Fat, Sugars and Calories. They are pushing us to find healthier alternatives, which is fine since they've always done that, but now I feel it's more of a push and I don't like that. Something I've always liked about Weight Watchers is that you didn't have to follow a strict diet or guideline. You didn't have to buy pre-packaged foods. You could eat what everyone else was eating. If I can't eat that Reese's Peanut Butter cup because it'll now cost me 12 points, I feel like I'm being cheated. I may as well join Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem where you have to buy their food in order to lose weight. Like I said, though, I'm going to give it a week and if it works just as well then I'm going to keep doing it, but if I find I'm feeling cheated then I'll go back to the old plan. My meeting leader says there won't be any tools to support the old program, but that's okay. I still have my materials and the little calculator that works on that program and so all should be good. We shall see.
I don't know how long it'll take me to get down to a weight where I can go riding again. There's a rental stable in Phoenix that doesn't have a weight limit, but I'm still at a weight where I wouldn't even attempt to go to that place yet.
Well, that's it for now, I guess. Until next time...
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