Clearly, I spent too much time working on that photo, hahaha–I forgot to take a picture of Jerry before he left for work, so I made one. I even downloaded Star Wars fonts (*groan* I can imagine the targeted ads I’m going to see now for Star Wars stuff!)

Jerry and I had a good conversation about weigh loss today and he brought up a very wise point about trying to lose weight in general and having weekly weigh-ins. I’ve thought of it before, but the way he said it just seemed to make better sense with a simpler explanation. So, that’s what he wrote about today…

Welcome back. 

Every week it seems like I have an epiphany about weight loss. And it always seems to come off as an excuse for my slow weight loss, but I don’t think it is. It’s more of a realization and I’m learning something new all the time. So let’s just rip the band-aid off, 190.6. That’s a gain of 0.6 from last week. 

I did fairly well, or so I thought. I felt heavier over the last couple days and felt a little uneasy about what I was actually doing as far as my diet was concerned. But something dawned on me last night and I think it might ring true with almost everyone that does a weekly weigh-in.

While I always feel like I might be doing okay through the week, I have a tendency to spend the couple days before my weigh-in trying to eat better because I don’t want to see the gain on the scale. So, if I can do that for the couple days before the weigh-in why can’t I do it every single day? Why can’t I just make it a lifestyle change as opposed to treating it like a temporary thing just to meet some number I want to see? 

I stress myself out on Sundays and Mondays because of the weigh-in and it doesn’t have to be that way. That said, I will be making another change in how I eat and approach this week and we shall see how well I do. 

Also, I’m a firm believer that old habits die hard. Habits are like Vigo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2. He was poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, stretched, disemboweled, drawn and quartered. Before his head died he said ‘Death is but a door, time is but a window. I’ll be back.’ Those are my habits. LOL. The bad habits die when I work on them and then after some time, they come back.

I talk of bad habits because I have a couple. One glaring one from this week was eating when I’m not hungry. ‘There are starving kids in [insert third world country here]’. Every kid heard it growing up. Every kid. As an adult it transformed into not wanting to waste food.

So, I eat everything. Even when I ain’t hungry I still eat just because I don’t want to waste the food. That’s stupid. So, new mindset with that as well–don’t eat if I’m not hungry. This will be the absolute hardest thing to do, for sure. More than portion control. More than eating healthy. More than eating slowly. Eating when my body is telling me I should and listening to it will be the hardest thing. 

So, I have my work cut out for me. Wish me luck.

I felt bad when Jerry said he feels stressed out on Sundays and Mondays because of his weigh-ins on Tuesdays. I wanted this to be a fun series for him! I told him that we can quit this series so he doesn’t think that way, but he wants to keep going with it. Hopefully with the realization he had last night about it, he can keep it in mind this week.

I *try* not to have that mentality before my weigh-in, and I’ve gotten much better about it. In the beginning, I was careful not to eat too much sodium the day before my weigh-in and not eat anything too heavy, etc–it makes no sense in the long run! It works great if you need to drop a few pounds within a week’s time, but if you’re working on losing a large amount of weight, it’s much less stressful to just make better choices daily rather than trying to “catch up” right before a weigh-in.

I’ve eaten really well this week and I hope to see that on the scale tomorrow–but not enough to stress out today, worrying about sodium and volume of food. I made a vegan version of chicken paprikash for dinner tonight and I had to keep adding salt to it–for a second, I thought, “My weigh in is tomorrow–that’s too much salt!” but I’m not going to worry about it. I didn’t overeat and the ingredients were healthy, so if I gain a little water weight overnight, it’ll come right off if I just continue with healthy habits.

Jerry has always had a hard time with listening to his body’s hunger/fullness cues, so I hope this week goes well for him!