The rollercoaster ride I call "weighing in"

Calories consumed: 1644

Calories burned: 2932

Calorie deficit: 1288

Wow, did I do a lot on Saturday! It's funny, but you sometimes don't even realize how much you're doing. But when you have something like the Bodybugg that's calculating your burn, it's shocking how it all adds up. Saturday, I went to Zumba in the morning, which lasts for an hour. Burned about 400 calories then. Later, after lunch, we cleaned the house. This took about 2-1/2 hours, but I burned another 450 calories while I was doing that.

On Saturday, I had my usual oatmeal with blueberries for breakfast. That was good. For lunch, I had a 1/2 banana with 2 tsp. peanut butter. I then made us all ham and cheese paninis for lunch. I had two thin slices of italian bread with not even 2 ounces of lean ham, and maybe 1/4 cup of low-fat shredded cheddar cheese. I used about 2 tsp. of light butter spread over the two pieces of ham. I also had one serving of Sun Chips, and an orange. Guess how many calories in this average, "light," lunch? 600! Yup. And my calorie target for the day is 1550. So I ate more than 1/3 of my calories at lunch. Imagine if you had ordered this panini in a restaurant. The bread would have been thicker, there would have been more meat on the sandwich, and they would have used regular cheese, and certainly more butter, and it wouldn't have been light. Plus you might have received some potato chips on the side. And you may not think much about how many calories you're taking in because gee, it's just a sandwich. But my goodness, if my "good for you lunch" was 600 calories, imagine what you're eating when you go to a restaurant? I wish I could ban restaurants from my life because most of them just insist on overdoing it. Is this really necessary? Why can't all restaurants care about the well-being of our country, and start to feed us healthy and appropriately sized portions? I need to find the ones that do, and ban the ones that don't.

Now, we did end up going out to dinner last night, ironically enough. We went to this cute pizza shop on Banksville Road called Azzeria. I like it there. It makes Jack nervous, though, because they're usually crowded, and there aren't a lot of places to sit. Anyway, we ordered one pizza to share between me, Jack, and Lila. Half pepperoni for them, half roasted red peppers for me. It's a 12" pizza, and I ate three slices (it was cut into 8 pieces). We also got a salad which had no cheese on it. They serve it with their house balsamic dressing, which is more vinegar than oil, and they only give you about 2 tablespoons of it. So all in all, I think that it was a pretty reasonable dinner, and the portions were not ridiculous. I did end up splurging for dessert. They have gelato there, and I've always wanted to try it, so I shared a scoop with Lila. I probably had 1/2 cup, which is a normal serving size. Another reason why I like this place—nothing was over the top, and it was all delicious. I went home full but not overstuffed. Plus, I burned a lot of calories that day, so I felt like it was ok to go over my calorie goal a bit.

But guess what? I woke up today (Sunday) and I was up one pound. Again, one step forward, two steps back. It's driving me crazy. What went on in my body that caused me to go up a pound, after having worked out like a freak? Shouldn't I be able to eat 3 small slices of pizza and 1/2 cup of gelato (which is supposed to be lower in calories than ice cream) without gaining weight?

In a couple of weeks, I have an hour long session with a trainer at Bodybugg. This is number one of my list of questions. How can I work so hard, yet still not have anything to show for it? Am I just being too impatient?