Progress

So picture this...you have a day or two of excess.  A fast food lunch, birthday foods at work.  You don't go too far over your calories, but you do eat more "junk food" than you have been.  You step on the scale.  You have "gained" 3.2 pounds.

I put the word gained in quotes because those of us who have tried to lose weight before know all about water weight.  Eating more junk food usually means eating more sodium.  Eating more sodium means that you end up bloated and retaining water.  However, no matter what the reason is, seeing that higher number on the scale is not fun at all.  That is where I was on Monday.  Even though I drank a lot of water and Crystal Lite on Sunday in hopes of diuresing a bit (that's a fancy nursing term for "peeing a lot"), I still found myself looking at the scale Monday morning in horror.  I weighed in at 250.2 pounds.

I knew that it was a false weight gain.  And within another day, I was back down to 248.8 pounds, and two days after that, I was down to my current weight of 245.6 pounds (29 POUNDS LOST SINCE JANUARY 4!).  But those first few days of the week were a morale-killer!  I know that I should not be weighing myself every day because of the events that lead to these false weight gains.  However, I just can't help myself.  The scale is there.  I need to know.  So I step on the scale and acknowledge to myself that I will not always like what I see.  It makes it a little easier to take.  I only record my weight once each week, though, so I don't necessarily "count" every pound up and down.

I do see myself making progress, however.  The pounds are still coming off, as they have consistently since I started taking better care of myself in January.  I am making my way through the C25K program, currently planning to finish Week 2, Take 1 tomorrow.  Next week, I will do Week Two again, and the week after that, I will be attempting to run three minutes without stopping.  I am paying attention to my body when on the treadmill to try to gauge how I will take this jump from jogging for 90 seconds at a time to jogging for three minutes at a time.  Yesterday, I didn't want to go to the gym at all, but thanks to the encouragement of some of the girls on the Health & Fitness board on The Nest, I got out the door and got it done.  I have been having some pain in my non-arthritic knee, and I was all set to use that as an excuse not to go.  However, I went, and I felt so good about myself when I was done.  I then spent part of the afternoon with an ice pack on my knee, and today, it feels good.

While on the treadmill yesterday, there were times that it was a struggle to keep going.  And I was trying to decide if it was my legs or my lungs that were making it such a struggle.  If it was my legs, I really thought I could soldier through.  If it was my lungs, it was a case of my stamina being lower than I needed it to be, which is another story then.  I did not really decide yesterday which it was.  I know that my legs were really tired by the end of my workout and that I stepped gingerly off the treadmill after my cool down and stretch.  I know that by the time I got to the grocery store after leaving the gym, I was very stiff and had to hobble into the store to grab a few things.  But I also know that my lungs were ready to switch to a walk by the time each jogging segment was over.  So I guess that I am making progress in both areas equally?  I am hoping by the end of next week, the 90-second runs will feel like cake and I will be more than ready to move on to week three.

Make it a great day, everyone!