Point Six of One

Confession: I have no Zen.

I discovered this on Saturday morning, when, after a typical week of Amy-style Weight Watchers eating and the Flat-Bottomed Girl exercise program (see previous post for details), a week in which I could ordinarily expect a 2.5 loss, my scale showed a mere 0.60 pound drop from the previous Saturday morning.

Excuse me? I would have looked to clear the quarters from my pockets, except that I was naked.

No, there was no shoe-weight, no PMS water to justify, no chocolate cake fiesta on Friday evening. I did not spend the week substituting peanut butter for turkey in my stir fry, and I did not substitute ice cream for skim milk in my coffee. Nope. I had a week so utterly devoid of food drama that I was not once tempted to eye the fried monstrosities in the cafeteria, nor lick my lips at the gingerbread biscotti display at the coffee house. In my delight to save room in the weekly weigh-in post for this weekend, I blipped completely over my stuttered daily losses. Aw, it's nothing, I comforted myself. It's often that I'm flat on loss until Thursday, or sometimes even Friday. I'd do a thin meal on Friday night and weigh in down 2-ish in the morning. No sweat.

No chance.

Point-six pounds. Barely more than half a single, slithering, 3,500 calories slug. Point Six Pounds. I sneeze more than that sometimes. I wish I had sneezed that morning. I wish I would have coughed up the snickering lump that truncated my typical 2.6 pound weight loss to the atypical and noisome 0.60. I should have stayed in bed. It would have been more fun, and maybe I could have burned off another 0.40 and made it to a full pound. I’m 0.20 pounds from breaking 200 at WW, since I do not weigh in naked at the meeting, a fact that everyone is grateful for.

On top of getting cheated at the weigh-in, I endured this barely-a-loss at the Cranky-Pants meeting; the one at an hour so foul, it infects the group spirits. I heard grumbles where I normally hear laughter, snorts where there are giggles, and huffs instead of praise. It’s this weird reverse-telethon gathering where Maria the Leader, ordinarily chipper and cheery to the point where I expect bluebirds to tie ribbons in her hair, can barely keep her smile intact for a second before some Screwed by Food complaint crushes her. I'll tell you what: even if I'm up at 4am, I'm never going to that meeting again. I'd rather miss a weigh-in than endure that crowd even once more.

But it wasn't the crowd and it wasn't the hour, and it wasn't even that I was sick (strep throat again!) or the fact that I was about to see Howard’s parents for the first time in 20 years (OMG!), or that I had tried to get divorced earlier in the week, and my brain-forsaken attorney had forgotten a tiny, yet important and obvious detail, and so the judge told us to skedaddle, and, if we wanted to give it another go, we could try, try again next week.

No, it wasn’t any of those things. As Howard and Howard’s mother commented, it was just my body being goofy--holding out and refusing for no good reason to display my loss. I should just shrug it off, take the long view, realize that I’m doing all the right things, and keep plugging along. Consider it a little hiccup, and figure I’ll probably have a big loss next week. It’s no big deal. Even crazy-obsessed WWers like me have light-loss weeks. It happens to everybody. Keep on truckin’ Relax. Find your Zen.

Yeah. Not so much.

I rallied eventually, and even managed to have something of a normal dinner, despite my body screaming to forsake all things solid until the scale tipped lighter. I ground down the enamel on all my back molars, but I made it through. I lived through the Day of Barely-Worth-Recording-It loss, and I accepted it. There’s always next week.

Today I’m down an additional 0.75 pounds.

It lasted a day. This morning, I weighed in at 198.25 pounds, and I have only 7.25 pounds to go before I hit my pre-pregnancy weight. I ate a regular program for me yesterday, and I dropped 3/4 of a pound. I'm glad for the additional loss, but I see now that I do have to take the long road. It’s not a race. I learned that today, and I'm glad I did.

I’m still lower for the week than I’d prefer, but 1.35 pounds is more than double point-six. With respect to the Universe and all things good in it, starting with Grandpa and Nana Marvelous, the light loss is nothing. I’m still down for the week, and my life is so good, I’ve nearly forgotten how little I lost this week.

0.60 pounds.

Okay, so I remembered. Like I said, no Zen.

A the Z(enless)