So far, so good

It's been a week now since I hopped back on this wagon. Today was the first day I stepped on the scale since last Wednesday. I was nervous, excited, and scared all at the same time. What if I hadn't dropped any pounds? What if I went up in weight? I didn't think those things could possibly happen, so I was fearful of my state of mind if they did actually happen.

Fortunately, I had nothing to worry about, as I ended up losing four pounds in the past week! Yay, me! This is an enormous motivator to continue down this path. At the start of any weight loss plan, I always feel that, without a noticeable improvement early on, I tend to get defeated. I swore I wasn't going to let that happen this time, so even if I had only lost one pound, I think I would have still continued, but having lost four pounds just motivates me to keep at it more than anything else could motivate me. This loss is a symbol of what I can accomplish if I just set my mind to it. And the great thing is, it wasn't very hard. Sure, I have been hungry now and again throughout the day, but I think that for me, that's almost a requirement in order to lose weight. How can I lose weight if I never feel hungry, because I'm eating too much at each meal? That's what happened back in the spring, I think. I was eating more than I needed to, just because I could, without going over my calorie burn for the day. But as a result, it prevented me from losing much weight. Remember how much I struggled to just drop one pound? And now I've dropped four in one week!

This time around, I've decided to stick to my 1500 calorie intake goal, rather than let it fluctuate based on how much I worked out. This seems to be working. Also, back in the spring when I was more focused on just maintaing a deficit, when I had calories that I could still consume for the day, I didn't pay close attention to the make-up of those calories—I was eating more junk. But this time around, I'm paying attention. If I have calories to spare, I'm craving things like nuts, or dried fruit. I'm not craving a cookie.

But I still find it hard to resist a good cookie. So I've taken care to input my homemade cookie recipes into my bodybugg program so that I know exactly how many calories each one is. And I've discovered that most of my cookies are about 100 calories per cookie. When you're trying to stay below 1500 a day, every calorie counts, so now I'm just eating one, instead of the typical three or four I might have eaten before. Sure, I wish that I could eat more, but I'm ok with this. I still get to eat the cookie. I'm happy that I can even eat one. I'm trying to savor that goodness.

So here are some interesting statistics. My daily average calorie burn for the past week was 2270 calories. Based on my food log, my average intake was 1412 calories, which leaves me with an average deficit of 858 calories. Now, remember from posts back in the winter, one pound of fat equals 3500 calories. So, if I had a deficit of 858 for 7 days, that would equal a total deficit of 6006 calories for the last week, which equals 1.7 pounds. But I lost four pounds. So my bodybugg program does this calculation and says, ok, I know that you burned 2270 calories a day for the past week. And I know that you lost four pounds, which equals 14,000 calories. So the program says that for this statement to be true (burned 2270 calories a day, and lost four pounds, which is what my scale said this morning), my daily calorie intake could only have been 770 calories. But I know that's not true. Granted, I've really been cautious about what I've eaten. Breakfast is less than 200 calories, my lunch salad is about 150 calories, a daily apple is maybe 100 calories, yogurt is about 100 calories... these are things I eat practically every day, so breakfast, lunch, and two snacks is about 550 calories, and I'm certain that my dinners and other incidentals throughout the day are totaling more than 220 calories (the difference between 770 and 550).

I'm not sure what to make of this discrepancy. I weighed myself twice this morning. So I'm pretty certain my scale is correct. But mathematically, there's no way I could have lost four pounds. I guess I'm just going to have to chalk this one up as a mystery and not worry about it. I'm so grateful that I have a good starting point to go from today. I have a day off tomorrow, which could be dangerous, and then the weekend, which is guaranteed to tempt me in ways I can't even predict right now. And then next week, we have a catered breakfast at work one day, which will be very hard for me, as breakfast foods are my favorite foods to eat. And we're also meeting a friend for lunch at Fat Head's one day next week. For those of you not from Pittsburgh, the name alone should provide a clue that it will be very difficult for me to eat a low-calorie meal there. It will be a struggle. But I'm not going to disappoint myself by giving in, but I'm not going to deprive myself, either. I'm going to practice moderation, and I will succeed. I have to.