It's been a significant week for a lot of reasons:
1. It was my last full week at my temp job answering phones and getting the mail
2. My house is yet again one giant step closer to being clean
3. I was diagnosed with an arrhythmia and mild PVCs
4. I weaned myself off of caffeine (believe it or not, I began this before #3 happened)
5. It was my first week of CORE
#1 and #2 are kind of old news. Now when I start my new job and actually have my house clean AND decorated for Christmas, then we'll talk. So, on to the rest... the first thing you need to know is I LOVE Coke (the yummy, dark, bubbly, clean your toilets with it, sickeningly sweet stuff--not the other kind.) But if I'm going to try to commit to Weight Watchers, I can't be using all of those points for Coke. And I really don't enjoy diet sodas. Partially for the icky taste, and partially because I feel icky ingesting all of those chemicals (yes, forget about all the chemicals in regular Coke and all the fast food I was eating... it's only the nutrasweet that puts me over the edge--I know, I'm crazy.) Unfortunately I get horrible headaches (migraines?) when I cut out caffeine. But it seemed silly to keep trying to drink those diet sodas just for the caffeine. On top of that, I was starting to get headaches anyway. I think because my caffeine consumption schedule was thrown off over Thanksgiving. And I was trying to get back on WW after Thanksgiving, so everything was a little off. So I decided to wean myself off.
From what I found on the internet, cutting back the equivalent of 1/2 cup of coffee a day will help avoid withdrawal symptoms. Then I went looking for how much caffeine was in the sodas I was drinking and the diet sodas I was willing to drink (not to mention the Excedrin I was taking for the headaches) and found The American Beverage Association which lists the caffeine content of various soft drinks. Cool! So my anal, list-making self, calculated everything out and figured out how to cut back about 50 mg a day. And my last caffeine was on Friday! And, yes, I still ended up with a headache, but not nearly as bad as it would have been. Tylenol knocked it out quickly.
It was two days into this extravaganza that I went to try to donate platelets. In the vitals check they heard an irregular heartbeat. Now, I've been deferred for this once before (over a year ago) but there were extenuating circumstances at the time (I had just stayed up all night for a lock-in with the youth.) They didn't seem particularly concerned then since I get regular physicals and donate blood products regularly and nobody ever noticed anything. But this time, they told me to see my doctor and that I couldn't donate until I was cleared medically. So two days later I'm in my doctor's office getting an EKG and they tell me I'm having PVCs. Although my doc's not concerned, especially considering I'm having no shortness of breath or chest pains (and she says it's quite possibly due to the caffeine or stress anyway) she's still sending me to a cardiologist for a stress echo. This is partially due to my family history of heart disease as well as, I'm assuming, my weight (even though she didn't say that.) But it's mostly for peace of mind.
Now I'm finding this all pretty scary but also ironic, considering that I was in the middle of the best week on Weight Watchers ever! I've finally decided to try CORE. For those of you not in the know--CORE is Weight Watchers' no-counting plan. You eat off of a certain list of foods until satisfied. Which means, if you are hungry, you are allowed to eat! And then you stop once you are satisfied (not stuffed!). But it's ok to stop because you haven't already allotted those points or anything so you don't feel compelled to finish. Plus you know that if you get hungry again you are allowed to EAT. The list of CORE foods is basically all whole foods: fruits, veggies, beans, eggs, lean meat, fat free dairy products, whole grains, and healthy fats. Plus you get 35 points a week to do with what you'd like. Right now I'm using them for nuts and low fat dairy. After several weeks, I may splurge a little more, but I'm hoping to actually lose my taste (and cravings) for sugary/fatty food. That's what they say happens. I'm finding the WW CORE board very helpful (not to mention that they are missing much of the drama found in some of the other boards.) I weigh-in in about 2 hours, and I can't wait. But even if it doesn't show a huge number, I already know how much better I feel. This is truly something I can do for the rest of my life.