Weigh-In #2

It's Thursday, which means it's weigh-in day. I'm a little disappointed, if not surprised with my number today. I'd love to blame it on water weight or the fact that I've been lifting a bit and maybe it's muscle, but what I'd bet it comes down to is a couple pounds of water weight lost on the first weigh-in correcting itself today. I'm not concerned, really, because I know I'm doing everything right.

It could be worse!

According to the scale today, I'm 1.8 pounds heavier than last week, for an overall weight loss of three pounds since I've started, which is really normal, healthy, and what I'd hoped for. I'm in this for the long haul, and I know that a pound and a half of weight loss a week is healthy and great.

Here's my plan to deal with the numbers on the scale each week:

• If I lose weight, obviously my hard work is paying off and I'm officially the coolest person in the world.
• If I gain or maintain, obviously the body does some funny things sometimes and I'm just a victim of water-weight or other random fluctuations, which will make next week even better.

No getting sad about a number, especially if I've been doing everything I can and it's still not cooperating, and especially especially if it's only gone up one week in a row. I have no regrets about this week, other than a single shortbread cookie I ate in a moment of weakness. I have to remember that in the old days I'd eat ten Oreos or a McFlurry or something. One shortbread cookie did not make me fat. One shortbread cookie will not make me fat, either, if it's rare. Okay, okay, on to the weekly breakdown.

How I Ate:

According to MyFitnessPal, I ate an average of 1451 calories a day. That's one more calorie a day than last week, so that's consistent. We ate out twice this week, which is unusual, but the first time I opted for a six inch subway with turkey, cheddar, and honey mustard on wheat, and the second time Chris and I split a chicken/veggies/fried rice combo at Manchu Wok, keeping both lunches well under 500 calories. Dinners were all over the map in terms of calories depending on whether we ate the standard boneless skinless chicken breast + veggies or more caloric dishes of pasta and sauce. I've been snacking on fruits, veggies, nuts, and dark chocolate.

Today's lunch: a cheesy tuna and spinach tortilla, anise, baby carrots,
chickpeas, light sour cream, Yoplait Source yogurt, red grapes, and water.

How I Moved:

This was a pretty great week for exercise. Chris and I stuck with EA Sports Active 2 and did all four workouts we had scheduled. I wore my Polar heart rate monitor when I worked out to see how accurate the EASA2's calorie estimations were, and found myself to be consistantly burning over 200 more calories per workout than were measured by the game. I chalk it up to the game not counting calories between workouts, when your heart rate remains elevated, and just a more accurate measurement than the arm-strap the game uses. I still love the fact that there's an in-game calories burned measurement and would rather under- than overestimate the calories, but this is a little extra positive news.

Additionally, I challenged myself to use the barbell and weights we have in our apartment, and have been doing basic compound exercises a couple times a week. I got a lot of walking done on the day I took all those pictures for Mom's present, too, since we left the house around 1:30 and came back sometime after 5:00.

The ankle pain is almost completely gone after several days of icing it after working out. This week I've been experiencing a bit of knee pain after workouts. I've been icing it whenever I notice it, and just hoping that if I can jump in with the icing that I can avoid the really scary pain I had with my ankle. It's a bit worrisome to get weird pains like these, but it kind of makes me feel like an athlete, which is awesome.

How I Felt:

This week was good. I had the normal bouts of the blues, but I also had a lot of great times with Chris, a friend of ours who's in Toronto for a few months, Chris's family, and my family. I feel totally capable of handling this weight thing, and though I'm still struggling with the housework, I feel like I'm never moving backwards, just stalling a bit. The snowpocalypse was kind of disappointing, and our bowl we set on the balcony to collect snow never got a tenth full, so no snow ice cream. I don't know how well it would have turned out with skim milk, anyway.

This week I tried two new vegetables (anise and Brussels sprouts) and they both tasted great, so that was really encouraging, and I felt a lot more confident doing the intense exercises called for by the fitness video game. It was a nice week. I slipped up here and there and I got frustrated from time to time, but those are quickly being forgotten while the great times and special moments are rising to the top. I hope this week is just as positive, and that my good choices and good attitude are reflected more clearly in the scale's numbers.