Weighing in

Today, like every Monday is weigh-in day. Not that I mind, as weigh-in has been quite a positive experience so far. In fact, I find it all quite exciting. Weigh-in is like the race after the week's preparation. I haven't put on weight once since starting, though did go through a period of not seeming to go anywhere, staying the same for a few weeks (see The Journey)... Generally, my weight loss has been pretty steady, never really over the 1-2lb recommended per week, aside from an unexpected first week loss. However, lately I've been getting a little annoyed with small losses. I think the fact that I decided to use metric units has made things a little more difficult, as most of the people on the Weight Watchers forums seem to work in pounds, so I can only really compare my losses to my own progress. It also doesn't help that one of the machines I've been using from the start seems to weigh a little high, so I don't feel as if I'm getting as far as I really am.

For example, today I went into uni to weigh in, and on this one particular machine, it shows my weight at 64.4kg (10st2lb), but according to this machine I've lost 400g (just under a pound) this week. However, on the other machine, which weighed me at 64kg last week (10st1lb and a bit), I'm now at 63.5kg (10st). Why does this all matter? Well, I checked my weight using a third machine, which confirmed the lower reading. This means I will have lost half a kilo this week (a psychological boundary, sounds more than 400g), and that I am within half a kilo of goal, rather than being over a kilo over. It's all a bit silly, but that's how things are.

Back over on the Weight Watchers forums, some people are happy to have lost, others are being told that staying the same is good too, and others are being commiserated at a gain. Sometimes it is unclear exactly what happens when you don't get the loss you expect. You can try your hardes all week, stick to your eating plan as well as you want, but somehow everything falls down. Sometimes it can be that you haven't drunk enough water (see here for the reason why), that you haven't really stuck to your plan (for some strange reason, some people justify not counting things like milk in tea or alcohol!), or even that you haven't eaten enough food, and your body goes into starvation mode, holding onto every last ounce of fat. Whatever the reason, we all keep our fingers crossed when this happens that next week we'll end up with a loss, and sometimes it happens in a rather spectacular fashion, with a loss that makes up for the previous week...