Conflicted

I'm very mixed up and confused about my weigh-in this week.  And I've put off posting to try to work out my feelings and maybe compose my thoughts a little, but it didn't seem to be working, so rather than put it off any longer, maybe I'll just try to work through it while I ramble.

I felt kinda meh all week. Fine, but I didn't really feel like I'd lost anything.  Although not exactly on point with my eating, I did watch my food and intake very carefully, and never went above my calorie allotment once.  I got all my water in, but I never got the chance to exercise.  So I had very mixed feelings at my weigh-in on Friday morning.

247.  A two pound gain.

There could be several reasons for this, but the most likely culprit is probably that three nights in a row, Keith called me to pick up dinner on my way home.  So....Tuesday night, it was Chick-fil-a, Wednesday night, Chinese, and Thursday night, Zaxby's.  I ate grilled chicken salads, except for Wednesday night, when I got curry chicken and hot and sour soup, which I divided into two portions, and had the second half for lunch on Thursday.  But still....the sodium must have been horrific.

So...I decided to weigh again on Saturday morning, AFTER I had eaten strictly on point all day and drank twice my normal intake of water to flush my system.  And lo, and behold....I was back down to 243.8....a 1 1/2 pound loss.  And much more acceptable.

(TMI Alert!) After breakfast, my tummy started rumbling, and I realized that my system had been very sluggish all week, which probably also contributed to my meh-ness and water retention.  Once my...er...business had concluded, I felt tremendously more like myself....lighter and full of energy, which I had been lacking this week.  All this, I contribute to the fact that I started on some serious vitamin supplements this week, which contain iron....known for causing folks to be...er....irregular.  At least until their systems get used to it.

So....although I AM down this week, I'm not feeling great about it.  I feel like I could have and SHOULD have done better, although I'm not sure how, given that I couldn't really exercise this week.  Standing on that scale Friday morning, I felt like such a failure, like I was gonna turn around and magically be 37 pounds heavier....back to square one.  Of course, my mind knows this is not possible, but it also knows how fast I do gain, and the thought of having to do this all over again terrifies me.  I've worked so hard, and I don't want to either backslide, or go into a plateau that will leave me so frustrated I give up.

One thing I am coming to understand and accept:  my body takes far less food than I have ever given it to sustain itself. It is an efficiently burning machine that I have spent years overfueling, simply because I could.  It is time to change that.  Even after I go into maintenance mode, I don't think I will ever see the day I go over 1500 calories again; it's just not necessary for me.  And although at some point, I am sure that I will go back to eating some foods that are not acceptible right now, I will ALWAYS have to modify the amount to a fraction of the portions I've always been used to....it's simply a waste I can't afford.

So....I'm .8 pounds away from hitting my next goal.  With a big long-weekend trip coming up next week to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday in Atlanta, I was really hoping to go down and be able to say I'd lost 40 pounds so far this year.  As it stands right now, I will need to lose 2.8 pounds between now and Thursday morning to accomplish that.  Not out of the ball park....but a long shot, unless I can somehow find a way to stoke my metabolic fire between now and then. I don't know if I can do it...but I'm sure gonna try.