Weight Loss Wednesday: Week Three

While minding my own business at work this past weekend, my friend Suzanne came up behind me and exclaimed, "Oh My God! I didn't even recognize you! I swear - your ass has gotten smaller! What have you been doing!!!?"  Thank you, Suzanne.

So maybe all of this calorie-counting, weight-training and elliptical-swinging for the past 21 days is doing some good but it's sure as hell not evident on the High Altar of Weight Loss...the bathroom scale.

My weight loss this week? Zip - Zero - Nada - Zilch - The Big Goose Egg - Squat.

But I will soldier on. My commitment is to lose 20 pounds and I will do it. I don't care how long it takes me. My drive to succeed is bolstered by knowing that controlling calories and exercising regularly decreases my chances of acquiring Type II Diabetes and/or Alzheimer's Disease by at least 25%... and when you are pushing 55...that's nothing to sneeze at.

So I turned my weight loss (not) dilemma over to 'Mr. Something', my sweet husband who is all about fitness and asked him to explain why I have not lost any weight...

Me: "So I haven't lost a pound in two weeks and I've been working out at least five days a week and not eating anything more than 1500 calories a day ((except for when I went off the wagon a couple of weeks ago) - what's up with that?"

Him: "You had popcorn last night. Sodium. Two glasses of water retained equals 1 lb weight gain."

Me: "But popcorn doesn't have a lot of calories."

Him: Sodium. How often do you weigh yourself?

Me: "Once a week. On Weight-Loss Wednesdays. Do you think I'm building muscle?"


Him: "Nope. That takes at least six weeks. Weigh every day. Watch the fluctuations from day to day."

Me: "I'm afraid I'll become obsessed with the scale."

Him: "You already are."

Yes, it's true. The bathroom scale and I have had a proverbial love-hate, on-off obsessive relationship since my early teens. Oh, I've placed it out of my sight, I even had Mr. Something hide it from me but it always came back. Taunting me on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor by it's very existence. There were times when I would refuse to step on it for fear that the displayed number would dictate just how I would feel about myself that day. That is why I choose to weigh myself once a week.

This morning, Mr. Something advised me to try to "make nice" with the scale by weighing daily and embracing (my word - not his) the weight fluctuations as a natural flow in life, accepting the changes in body weight that occur daily and recognizing that a body weight increase of two pounds overnight is not fat.

Dr Phil has a "Script of the Month" that he posts in "O" Magazine that has given me an idea...

Dear Bathroom Scale,
Avoidance has not been working for me and since we have to see one another every day, why don't we try to be friends? I am choosing to weigh myself daily and accept the numbers you show me are just numbers and do not reflect my value... Hopefully, we can move forward and repair our fractured relationship of the past


Things I have learned this week...

• My fitness center is located around the corner from Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream. I bring a piece of fruit with me to eat immediately following my workout - it gets me past Baskin-Robbins safely.
• We've all see the book "Eat This - Not That" but I have found "Cook This - Not That" at my library and it has some seriously fantastic recipes. This past week, I made Coconut Shrimp (200 cals), Lamb with Tzatziki (260 cals), Steak Nachos (360 cals) and Chili Mango Chicken (240 cals). They were all very tasty and easy to make. Leftovers were for lunch the next day.