Okay, okay. I'll Exercise.

Excercise.

I've started incorporating more exercise into my weight loss journey.

My weightloss stalled out in March. I didn't gain. But I didn't lose. Basically, I ate too much. Though here's the kicker...I didn't really each more than I had been eating a couple months ago.

One ironic weightloss twist is this: the less you weigh the slower your weightloss. And there's a very simple reason for that. In my case, I'm no longer lugging around an extra 33 pounds of fat everywhere I go. As it turns out, carrying 33 extra pounds with you everywhere you go really helps speed up the weight loss.

But now I'm 33 pounds lighter and I need to stay ever more strict about my caloric intake. There's a lot less wiggle room now. UNLESS I exercise. I'm going to continue trying to stay at 2100 calories per day to meet my ideal weight of 180. But with exercise, it's going to give me a little more freedom for if I go over a bit...and it'll pick up the pace of my weight loss to what I'd become accustomed do. Besides, it's probably good for my heart.

Getting Sucked Back into the Fatness Vortex

Hmmm.....I had a good week of weight loss. After a long period of very slow progress, all of a sudden the weight came off. BOOM. Like in a week. Boom.

Now, it's back to a crawl again. I've been about 224 pounds for most of a week. Maybe these peaks and valleys are just something I need to get used do.

Or...or maybe I'm a sleep eater. Or maybe my body pulls some alien abduction mojo on me. It blanks out my mind and takes control while I stuff random things into my mouth, then clears all memory. I guess it didn't clear my memory yesterday. Yesterday I definitely jumped into a pizza and kettle chips with abandon. And beer. Don't forget the beer. That didn't add up well at the end of the day. Set myself back maybe 900 calories, which is almost 1/3 of a pound of fat.

At times I think "Wow! this weightloss stuff is EASY!" And at other times it seems like I'll never really change my dietary habits long-term.

As something special I took the kids down to Crazy Bounce. It's these massive, 30 foot tall inflatable bounce structures. AWESOME. Heh... I ran around on 'em too to burn off the energy. Anyway, there was one thing where you attached a bunjie cord around your waist and ran as far and as fast as you could.....but eventually you couldn't pull the cord anymore and it would yank you back hard. You'd go flying back into a massive inflatable wall. Whee!

That's what dieting feels like at times. Like you're gonna get sucked back into the vortex of fatness. Like you can feel your will to make your goals fading.

So far it's helped a lot to talk about this stuff. If you're in the same dietary fix...I highly recommend opening a twitter account and finding other dieters there. Or blogging. Or finding some other diet community. Even Facebook. Folks are generally very supportive. Talk about the challenge honestly...maybe you can talk yourself through the hard parts, and with words of encouragement from supportive folks.

But we trudge on, eh? Moving forward.

This is gonna be a good month. This month I can set my new weightloss goal. I'm GOING TO be below 220 by the end of this month. That's a big landmark for me. I've been 220 for years. I'm around 224 to 225 now.

Time warp..wonder if it's got anything do do with the diet

It's been a weird time warp over here. Suddenly it's four or five days later from last time I've really visted any portion of the blogosphere. I'm wondering if the time warp sensation has anything to do with the weightloss itself.

I've made pretty good headway with my weight over the past week, but man am I currently feeling tired, and my mental capacities seem to be somewhat diminished, particulary focus.

I'm thinking this week I'll look up the effects of weight loss on the brain.

Aha! Take Body Fat Measurements With a Grain of Salt

False alarm. Maybe.

My fancy new body fat scale and I are still getting acquainted, apparently. Yesterday evening the scale told me I had a body fat percentage of 34%. That seemed a bit high. This morning it's saying 28%.

After some research I arrived at this conclusion: When using a body fat scale, use it at a standard time of the day, like in the morning.

As it turns out, body fat scales measure your body density, which can change throughout the day depending on if you have food in your tummy, the amount of water you have in your body at the time...poo. Anything in your body.

So, just like a regular scale, what you're really measuring is a trend rather than exact weight. That cheers me up a little bit. 34% seemed like an awfully high body fat percentage. 28% isn't great, but it's better. So I'm somewhere between 28% and 34%, give or take.

The point is, I still need to lose weight.

Here's a page which has some great information about body fat scales and 10 tips for standardizing your body fat measurements.

Got a New Scale: Some Good News, Some Bad News

BLARG!

I've finally done it. I invested in an actual scale, instead of the spring operated one my tiny wife thinks is sufficient. I was tired of the scale telling me radically different weights several different times in the same 5 minutes.

"You're 230 pounds! You're 235 pounds! You're 232 pounds! You're 240 POUNDS?!?!? GAH!! JUST TELL ME what you want me to SAY so you'll STOP STANDING ON ME!!!!"

My new scale is steadfast in its opinion. I am now 227 pounds!

Yay! That's consistent with what the fancypants scale at the gym tells me.

I've lost about 23 pounds so far. And that makes me crazy happy. Not sure if I'll make my 10 pound goal this month. I ended December at 233. I'm down 5 pounds. For sure I could wring a couple more pounds out of myself in the next 8 days.

But my scale had some unfortunate news for me as well. I got one of them there newfangled (in my house, anyway) bodyfat scales and it tells me I'm at 34% body fat. OUCH.

To get down to an average healthy body fat I'll need to lose another 25 pounds to get down to 202 pounds...which I guess is sort of my general goal weight for this year anyway. So what am I crying about?

Way back in 2003 when I weighed 220 pounds I was about 24% body fat, so apparently I've lost some muscle between then and now.

I need to hit the gym. Or get out and move around more. Or go back in time and be 10 years younger.

Bundle Up and Move Around

Ice skating is a wonderfully human activity. To go from "WHOOOOAAAHH ooohh nooo...gaaah...it's COLD and this ice is SLIPPERY!" to "WOOHOOO! It's COLD! And this ice is SLIPPERY!" is just about as optimistic as a mammal can get. It's cold, it's slippery, we're stuck inside....let's strap some steel to our feet and slip around on the lake for a bit.

That's what we did yesterday, the boys and I. Except it was more of a parking lot than a lake. We rented skates. The bigger boy got into it right away. The smaller boy kept falling on his bottom. Me, I gracefully stumbled around the rink like a massive drunken cupie doll. Good for morale for the boys to see their father as uncertain on the ice as they are....or maybe more uncertain on the ice as they are. At least that's what I told myself.

Anyway, the point is, it was a concerted effort to get out of the house and move around, and darnit...it was fun. I burned about 500 calories and spent some quality time with my wee boys.

The notion of working out at a gym is great and all. And I highly recommend it...**cough** for myself, as well. But it can be intimidating for some of us who are a bit on the doughy side.

Even in the winter there's stuff going on:

- sledding, which is free if you get creative with the sleds. Or you can get a nice plastic one for under $8.
- ice skating, often for the price of skate rentals - used skates can be found at the local second hand stores if you shop around for a bit.
- trudging through the snow
- ice fishing....which...is really more about drinking beer while sitting on the ice than exercise I guess.

Bundle up and get out there. I'm going to try to do the same.

Warning: Your Tolerance for Alcohol Will Drop as You Lose Weight

Ooooooooooooohhhh...hello....

So, why am I wearing a bag of frozen peas on my head?

It's because I am not a smart man. As it turns out, when you lose weight, you become less tolerant to alcohol.

I went out with some friends last night for some beers and did not have more than my usual Evening Out amount. What I didn't take into account, however, is that there is about 25 to 30 pounds less of me than there used to be, and the beer hit me harder than I expected. Fortunately I hadn't driven there.

I feel awful this morning.

Uuuuuggh...so, if you are losing weight, keep that in mind. Your tolerance for alcohol is going to drop.

Dude, Weightloss Seems to be Totally About a Morning Plate of Veggies

Okay...this is worth noting:

If I eat a HUGE PLATE of vegetables in the morning, I'm not terribly hungry for most of the rest of the day. I'm talking a full dinner plate with a mound of fried vegetables for breakfast with a couple of over-easy eggs on it. Huge.

And then, come dinner when I'm finally hungry, I eat just about anything in moderation, and I come in at a healthy caloric intake.

Vegetables are so low calorie but so high volume and filling that it seems to keep me full for most of day.

I had a massive pile o' vegetables with eggs this morning coming in at about 450 calories and I had a very light lunch around 2:00 of 7 tortilla chips and some guacamole and some rice and beans, bringing me to about 750 calories.

At about 6:00, after bringing one of my boys home from daycare I had made him some cookies and we each ate some cookies. I had around 4 cookies, bringing me to about 1100 calories. I had a couple of beers, bringing me to 1400 calories, then I made some home-made pizza and ate three slices bringing me to 1900 calories at 8:00 PM.

And I'm feeling pretty darn stuffed.

Consider that 2100 calories is the intake I need to be 178 pounds instead of 228 pounds and you can see how 1900 calories at 8PM seems prettey impressive to me.

So far as I can tell, the major factor is that HUGE plate of veggies in the morning. It's not like pizza and beer and chocolate chip cookies are terribly low cal. I'm eating them in relative moderation...but still......if not for a low calorie breakfast that keeps me full until after lunch, I could EASILY eat more calories than I need.

Hopefull I can keep this up.

Sleep Them There Pounds Right On Off With the Power of Sleep!

One thing I haven't spoken much about is sleep.

A healthy amount of sleep is important for tons of reasons. Blood pressure. Memory. Good skin. Sanity. And of course maintaining a decent weight.

Think about it for a moment. On the most basic level it's pretty simple, the less you're awake the less time you have to cram stuff into your face. When you're awake more, you eat more. When you feel your energy level tubmle bacause you have horrible sleep habits, you're going to eat more food to drive the energy back up. And more likely than not, you're not burning significantly more calories.

One change I've struggled to make is to try to get a healthy amount of sleep every night. This is a huge change I've been making toward living an overall healthier life.

If you have trouble getting to sleep, here's a nice lullaby;



I've always had lousy lousy lousy sleep habits. Always. Not sure why. I, persoanlly, blame a lifetime habit of procrastination. I keep putting it off until it's 3 AM. Oops. Then the kids, or work, or school woke me me up at 7AM. Day after day. Year after year.

I used to take some warped sense in pride in my ability to get little sleep and wander around the world in a half-awake zombified state. Used to.

But one can be fairly sure that if the human body begs and pleads for something naturally Most Every Single Day day, it's most likely for a good reason. Your body needs it. Things like Breathing, Eating, Crapping, Blinking, Getting It On, and of course Sleeping.

Seriously...being proud of ongoing sleep deprivation is tantamount to proving your machismo by going around all day every day minus a pint blood....that you didn't donate....to...the...blood bank, cuz if you DID then you SHOULD be proud that you donated blood....

...okay it's not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.

The body and brain need sleep.

Now...some folks out there have to work two or three or fifteen jobs and come home to a house of wee little kids who need attention, and dinner, and some mommy/daddy time, and if you're in that situation you've got bigger challenges in the world than not getting enough sleep. Ya do what ya gotta do.

But for the rest of us, if you're like me and you have simply neglected your body and it's basic sleep health for no good reason...ya may want to re-think that. You'll feel more alert, you'll eat less, you'll be a less grumpy person, your memory will improve, your blood pressure will drop. You'll just FEEL better. And you'll probably LIVE LONGER. And you'll lose weight.

My New Weight Loss Photo-Update

Today is my birthday, and I'm starting off my own personal new year with a photo-update after losing about 22 pounds.

Old Picture:



New Picture



In retrospect I'm not sure why I've only taken head shots. My FACE hasn't lost 22 pounds. Perhaps I'll take a whole body shot of myself today (CLOTHED...I'll save you guys the horror and do it clothed) and make a comparison to it in a month or two.

Also...I'm not sure why I look so grumpy in my pics. I'm just trying to look normal, which makes me wonder, now, if I always look disgruntled. Geesh.

Also, I normally wear glasses. And apparently I never comb or cut my hair.

Damn. I need to use a mirror more often.

I do clean up well, though. Or at least I THINK I do......

Anyway...as I said, it's my birthday and I'm going to make my three year old take me out to Long John Silvers. Yes! I said Long John Silvers. DEAL wid it homies.

I Weigh Less Than I Have For Nearly Two Years

Today I weighed in at 229.somethingsomething. But who's counting? Other than me, I guess. The point is, I haven't weighed below 230 pounds for over a year and a half, meaning that my current weight is the least I've weighed in well over a year, and maybe two.

That makes me happy. Ive approached the line of 230 before, but never quite crossed below it. I'd lose resolve, lost interest, some holiday would come along, the summer would come and I'm not sure what the hell I'd do because that's when I was supposed to have been exercising more...

...ah wait. I remember what happened this last year.

I had gone to a gym every day for a couple months out of a resolve to lose weight and I lost quite a bit, almost down to 230. That was last winter. And I told myself, that as soon as the weather was warm and the snow was gone, I was going to become a Running Guy!

"YEAH!" I thought "I'm gonna become one of those RUNNING GUYS!" You know! One of those GUYS you see RUNNING at 6AM downt he street with spandex and special running shoes. I'd become one of THEM. So as soon as the weather warmed up I stopped going to the gym.......................but I never ran. I never became a Running Guy. Never had the shoes. Or the spandex shorts. And I never got up at 5:30AM to get prepared to run.

Never happened. Instead, I slept until my boys woke me up...climbed in bed with me and rolled and rolled and rolled until I got up and made breakfast for the boys. And that was my morning over the summer. I gained quite a bit of weight over the summer. Probably in addition to not exercising enough I ate way too much. Too many grill outs with the friends. Too much summer-afternoon Sangria.

Anyway...to make a long story short, today I am about 1 pound less thatn I was after working out daily for most of a month.

So...huzzah. After this point it feels like progress...weighting less than I have for years. Pretty encouraging. Just gotta keep it up.

My Weight Loss Plan Is Easy! Er...EasiER than a Quadruple Bypass

Chorizo Uptade: I survived the 33 cent per pound chorizo. And it was GOOD.

In other news I've been hankering for sweets, lately. At the moment I'm tiding myself over with a can of Diet Rite but not sure how long I can hold out. I did have a bit of avocado and a massive bowl of leaves. Plus some delicious chorizo.

Losing 50 pounds...it's hard. But I need to get through it. I need to get through it and then maintain, and make sure I never go back again.

And sure, it may be hard...but it's a lot easier than a quadruple bypass, right?

Yeah...YEAH! It's a lot easier than managing diabetes. Sure...yeah! That's how I'll think of it. Sure...sure....ugh...this is hard.

Retractions, Additions, and I FEEL LIKE CRAP! 10 Pounds in a Month is Hard

Well, I stand corrected on the avocado thing. PikkuManda of Twitter fame tells me that PikkuManda, PikkuManda's self has lost weight AND has consumed an avocado per day, and possibly BECAUSE of it instead of in spite of it. However I still maintain that high volume, low calorie foods are working best for me. And they may work best for you if, like me, you are a frumpy, middle aged man with a dimming metabolism, fading energy, and who has been beaten down by the whips and scorns of time and had all the joie de vivre sapped from the grind of his humdrum, empty existan..........what? To much?

Moving right along.

N8Armstrong
of True Fitness Fanatic fame offered some counter-mayo-clinic information about Negative-Calorie-Foods. At the end of a diary I wrote a few days ago I added a link to a lame Mayo Clinic blog entry that raised the question of negative calorie foods and then ended the post with a shrug and a "I guess we'll never know" sort of let down answer. INCONCLUSIVE, they said. Well...better than the Mayo Clinic in my opinion is SNOPES, a well respected website that was basically doing the Mythbusters thing Before the Mythbusters. And that's where N8Armstrong got his source from.

Celery, according to the Snopes article, is in fact a negative calorie food. Good enough for me.

Anyway...I'm on Day 4 of my trek to lose 10 pounds by the end of January and I FEEL MISERABLE. To lose 10 pounds I need to have a calorie deficit of 1250 calories per day. I've done that for 3 days so far. But MAN I can barely THINK. It's like my mind is all muddled, and I'm hungry all night long. This probably isn't a good thing. BUT! I'm going to do it. I've gone 3 days, I can go 25 more.

I'm a 230 pound fellow trying to get by on the equivalent of 1500 calories per day to reach my goal - more if I exercise, but same difference. I think. There's still gonna be a 1250 calorie deficit.

I'm avoiding the breads and the carby things, more or less, had bacon this morning and a large pile of veggies again. Before bed I fill that void in my tummy with leaves, like.......like...............

....see, I can't even think. That stuff Popeye eats. I eat that.

Anyway, I've publicly committed myself to this and I'm going to do it.

Why did I publicly commit myself to this? Because right now I'm 230 and if I lose 10 pounds I'll be at 220.

And 220 is a milestone for me. I've been around 220 for most of a decade. Sometimes a flabby 220, sometimes a burly 220...but 220. If I can get down below 220, that will be a long-term accomplishment. If I get below that, all other weight loss will feel like a major improvement in my life, long term.

Another thing. 220 is the point at which I technically cross over from the O word (Obese) to merely the other O word (Overweight). I want to get THERE this month.

Huff, puff, huff, puff...okay....did my exercise for today.

There are always reasons not to get exercise. Because you're sick. Because you're terrified of getting mugged or "jumped" by your neighbors during an evening stroll. Because you're busy.

I ran down my own personal list of reasons this morning and finally came to the conclusion that for me, I was just being lazy. I had dropped my boys off at my wife's store so I could have some time to get some work done. On my way home I stopped by the State Park, jumped out of the car, and walked up the 200 step dune climb. Then I came back down and drove home huffing and puffing.

The exercise session took all of 15 minutes out of my day.

Honestly, I'm feeling quite a bit more alert than if I had not exercised at all. So I'm hoping I'll be more productive today.

My pants, my pants, my pants are falling down.

Good god it's been a busy week-and-a-half. Scrambling around...doing this, doing that. Much doing. Haven't had time for the pithy commentary I prefer to do.

But I do have some good news to report: my pants are falling down. Repeat, pants falling down.

This morning I was scrambling to get ready for a meeting, and was met with this loose pants business, and grabbed a belt just before I flew out the door. As I put it on on my way to the car, I found the belt did not have holes enough to make the belt snug. So I went to the meeting with loose pants. One of the hazzards of losing weight, eh?

Shoot the Messenger, Get a Better Scale

Okay, now that I've cooked myself up a high spice breakfast and I'm sitting down I'm going to vent some of my frustrations...namely that:

1. My scale is a piece of crap and
2. My weight loss has slowed

Now, I know what you're going to say about this scale thing. You're going to say what my wife says: that I'm just upset at the scale because it's not showing me what I want to see. And, okay, yes. But our scale is more of a ballpark figure scale. For example, my scale will tell me I'm 135 before a shower and might tell me I'm 149 after.

I don't think i use 14 pounds of soap. Or maybe I'm a lot more absorbent than I realize. I should try drinking water like Mork some time to see if...what? I said Mork.

MORK!

That's right, I made a Mork and Mindy reference RIGHT here in 2011. Deal with it (for the kiddies, I've included a reference at the bottom)

Anyway, the moral of the story is, get a good scale if you plan to be obsessing about weight loss for any length of time.

In other news, I think I need to start setting shorter term goals. Sure, my goal is to lose 50 pounds over the next year. And maybe that's a bit too distant to really keep up the enthusiasm.

Maybe I should start set the goal of losing 4 pounds by the end of December. That's a 14,000 calorie deficit over the next 24 days. Totally doable.

Become a Hot Pepper Fiend - Forget the Weight Loss Benefits, It's DELICIOUS

Now here's a nice change of pace. Ever since experimenting with spicy foods as a weight loss help, I've really stopped caring one way or another if it's good for weight loss because it's SO GOOD. Why haven't I been eating like this before? Hot peppers are FANTASTIC.

For the first couple of days I had to psyche myself up to put jalapenos and other peppers on my food. But now I pile it on with gusto. GUSTO.

So far I can't much vouche for the weight loss benefits of capsaicin (peppers)...but holy smokes is it good once you get over the initial hump of having your mouth be on fire. And I even seem to be choosing spicey food over salty or high fat foods by choice rather than discipline.

As a side note, the same pals who recommended eating hot foods came over with some spicy asparagus spears their relatives canned. BEST pickled food I've eaten IN MY LIFE. Transcendent. And very spicy. With occasional hints of lime or cardamom, or garlic...

This hot foods thing is a whole new world. Plus there's some evidence it helps lower blood pressure.

And now, who else, the Red Hot Chili Peppers...

Stick to Workouts You Like: Such As Attacking Things With an Axe

I hear it's important to find an exercise plan that you actually enjoy and that's why I've given up running.

I can't stand it.

The whole world of weight loss seems somehow festooned with self deceit. Convincing yourself you enjoy rice cakes. Convincing yourself that fat free dairy is actually food. Convincing yourself that tomorrow you'll do that super-healthy thing, or stop doing that horribly unhealthy thing.

I seem to have an easier time with it when I stop with the lies. And one of the lies I told myself was that I was going to become one of those running guys. For the longest time I told myself I was going to become a running guy. I'd get up at the ass crack of dawn, put on my Speedos and running shoes and I'd run around the neighborhood waving, all grins, at my neighbors. All summer long I planned to become that guy.

It never happened.

Why?

Because I HATE running. I HATE it.

It's not the exercise. It's the running.

Do you know what I like? Like splitting wood. I love it. I love to beat the crap out of massive logs with a maul, and hear that satisfying crack as the massive stump finally gives in, the high pitched pop as the smaller segments fly apart. I love bearing down on oak and beech with as much force as I can muster.



Yessir...There really is nothing more satisfying or stress relieving to me than attacking things with an axe.

I hope the FBI doesn't take that out of context.

Plus, chopping wood burns about 600+ calories per hour. And stacking and carrying it takes up about 500+ calories per hour. Not sure how many calories cutting up logs with a chainsaw is, but dang that chainsaw is heavy.

The point is....when you're working out, stick to the stuff you enjoy. Or you'll never do it.

Oh the Wisdom of Yoda: "Do or Do Not, There Is No Try"

This morning I'm feeling weary of counting calories. WEARY.

As I put some of my homemade bread into the toaster, I dreaded for some reason going to my computer to tabulate the caloies........what?

Why YES, I DID day "homemade bread"! Why do you ask?

Oh it's very delicious. What the recipe, you ask?

Well, perhaps if you guys are REALLY GOOD, some day I MAY share with you my GLORIOUS bread recipe.

But where was I? Something about calories?

Oh yeah, I'm getting weary of counting calories. I think what's going on is I want to eat without contemplation. I just want to enjoy the food without reducing it to contemplation of energy in and energy out.

This could very easily be where I slack off. Where I say "Oh geeze, one day won't hurt." And one day turns to two. And two turns to a week...all the while I feel like I'll get back into it. Get back to keeping track until the idea is far in the distance.

I could think about how I'm tired of being fat, and there are two swirling blue portals in front of me. I can pick to enter the portal where I continue on as I have, or I can pick to enter the portal where I could actually lose weight and be done with it.

The second one is really what I want. I'm SICK of TRYING to lose weight. I'm sick of feeling heavy and tired. I don't want to TRY.

It's times like these I seek the advice of Master Yoda Do or Do Not.

There is no try. I know what I need to do. I know that if I keep counting calories, get myself acquainted with healthy portions, and keep going, I will succeed. I need to do it, or not.

The trickery of water weight and the hard second month of weight loss

So yesterday I weighed myself and was pleasantly surprised.

I had lost 15 pounds. In just 25 days!

Yay!

Flattering, but it's impossible I lost 15 pounds of fat. By my own calculations I should have lost between 5 to 8 pounds (of fat). NO WAY did I blow through 2100 calories per day for 25 days. I would have had to have been fasting on an orbital machine to lose that much fat so fast.

That sill leaves an extra 7 pounds unaccounted for -- this is where we enter the murky world of water weight and the false sense that SUPERFAST weight loss is something that can be maintained over a long period of time.

Here's an interesting article on the subject.

During the first few weeks of weight loss due to dieting, a rapid drop in pounds is normal according to the Mayo Clinic. When you reduce your caloric intake, your body gets its needed energy by releasing and utilizing its stores of glycogen, which is a type of carbohydrate found in the muscles and the liver. Glycogen holds onto water, so when glycogen is used and burned up for energy, it also releases the water it holds onto. This is about 4 grams for every gram of glycogen. This results in the initial "water weight" loss that accompanies early weight loss from dieting and calorie restriction.

See...here's what I'm afraid of. I've been here before. I've lost weight super-fast in the first month, then hit a brick wall and got discouraged at how slowly or not-at-all I was losing weight compared to my first month...then I went back to eating fried butter smothered in maple syrup with a side of beer sauce. The end.

So if you're out there and you're reading this, I want YOU to know and I especially want ME to know...that sustaining such a rapid pace of weight loss is just NOT going to happen unless you're into some really unhealthy eating disorder mojo.

There's a LOT of weight in water: 8.3 pounds in a gallon. Even if you're losing a cup of water per day due to water weight, you'll drop 8.3 pounds in just 16 days. 8.3 pounds of pure water.

It's a good sign. Don't get me wrong. It means we're on the right track and doing the right things. But we simply can't sustain that rate of weight loss.

So, you know...be aware of it, be ready for it, and be ready for the next month to be much more slow going. I'm trying to psych myself up to be prepared for it, too.