Winning and losing. And gaining.

Sunday: 311.6 pounds

Monday: 314.2 pounds

Tuesday: 315.0 pounds

Wednesday: 316.8 pounds

Thursday: 317.4 pounds

Not cool, body.  Not cool.  It’s certainly frustrating.  I’ve had periods where I’ve gained a good amount of weight in a short time, but they’ve always coincided with a period of bad eating or inactivity, neither of which is a problem for me.  I had a great, ass-kicking spin class on Tuesday, and yesterday was my first real, honest-to-Sagan strength training workout in a very long time.  I’ve done some strength-type stuff, but I really pushed up some weights for the first time.  Yet, for the fourth straight day, the numbers are going in the wrong direction.  As I said, frustrating.

It’s not all bad though.  In fact, there’s a definite silver lining to gaining weight, at least in the short term, even when I’m eating right and exercising.  I need to separate the number on the scale from my feelings of success.  Yes, losing weight is good and I’m really, really excited to lose it.  But I also need to be happy about bettering myself, making myself healthier and stronger, without that feedback.  I need to be happy about getting healthy because I’m getting healthy, not because the number on the scale is smaller. 

In other news, I made some drastic changes to my appearance last week.  Thursday, I had Lasik, so I’m without glasses or contacts for the first time since I was in seventh grade.  It takes some getting used to; I’ve only had glasses for a couple of years, but they’ve become a part of my look, as it were.  I also shaved on Saturday.  My entire face.  This is, to quote Joe Biden, a big fucking deal.  I’ve had some sort of facial hair at all times since May of 2003.  It was not pretty.  I had some pretty serious Fat Face going on, and that’s the main reason I never shaved it clean again.  I shaved my beard really short at Thanksgiving last year and the Fat Face reared its ugly head again!  So I’ve been terrified of it.  But now that I’m only Very Fat and not Ridiculously Fat, I figured it was worth a shot.  After all, despite my Fat Face issues, I have never had a Chris Christie-like visage. 

Lo and behold, I look pretty good without a beard!  So much so that I’m planning to keep it this way, at least for the time being.  Other than that, things are holding pretty steady.  I’m still eating well, still exercising.  Really I’m just holding the line, waiting for my body to release this weight.  I appreciate the support and I’m glad to answer questions and I’m glad to know that I’m inspiring people.  So just got to keep on keeping on.

But before I go, I figured a quick before and after would help the morale:

Before:

Now: