The benefits of being sick and a weight wake-up call

I am feeling a million times better today. I finally broke down and took some medication yesterday morning (I try to avoid meds as long as I can) and before too long I could breathe again with very minimal loopiness. Success! Plus, I had a major work victory yesterday, which contributed to my glee.

I took another night off training yesterday, meaning the extent of my activity was making nachos for dinner and watching the season premiere of Better Call Saul. (Get your act together, “Pryce.”) Because we are hard-core party animals, my husband and I went to bed shortly after 9 p.m., where I read a few pages of an actual book before turning the lights out at 9:30 p.m. I had my alarm set for 5:40 a.m. and didn’t even need it.

Is this what normal people do with their evenings? Go to bed early instead of spending hours training and prepping healthy meals? I could definitely get used to going to bed at 9:30 every night. I haven’t felt this rested on a weekday in a long time.

However, the not training and nachos for dinner brings me to my second point: The weight loss isn’t going as well as it could be, unsurprisingly. I’m not comfortable with sharing exact numbers, but because I like charts and graphs, here’s a visual with the actual numbers cropped out:

Overall downward is good, but that upward trend, not so much.

When I stepped on the scale Jan. 1, it gave me a number I have never seen before. I knew the end had come for the free-for-all eating and relaxed training that had filled much of November and December. Two weeks later I was 3 pounds down and thrilled to see it, although logically I knew much of it had to be water weight and other easy weight loss from simply getting back on a plan and back on the treadmill. But my Feb. 1 weigh-in was back up by 0.4 pounds, and this morning’s was up by another 0.8 pounds, reducing the total loss from 3 to 1.8. Which, although the downward trend is good, includes gaining back 1.2 pounds in the last month. Which is not good.

Now, I’m not a slave to the scale and I know that the be-all-end-all is not a number but how I feel and perform. I’m also realistic about weight fluctuating through the month, week and day. Really, my overall weight goal is “don’t NOT fit into my work pants.” But a number that keeps going up is a good indicator that things aren’t going great, and vice versa.

TLDR: I need to be less of a fatass and get my butt back in gear. Except for a treat on Valentine’s Day (ok, a couple treats) and the nachos yesterday, I’ve actually been pretty good this last week with limiting the sugar and junk. But now it’s time to get serious once again. They’re not “treats” when you have one every day; it’s not a “rest day” when there are seven in a row.

The true test will be the next time I step on the scale in two weeks… or if I stop fitting into my work pants. Whichever comes first.