Not the result I expected

I woke up excited this morning expecting the scale to have a nice lower number. I did exactly as I’ve been doing all week. The numbers have been going down. I shooed the cat off the scale—she’s a trim 12.2 pounds—and hopped on. Up 0.4. Whaaaat?

OK, any number of things could have caused it. Maybe I ate more cottage cheese/bacon/sunflower seeds than I thought. Maybe my food was saltier than it should have been. Maybe dinner was too big. Maybe I just had to use the bathroom.

The point is, I encountered a tiny bump in the long road. In the past, how many of us would think, “That’s it, my diet’s ruined, it will never work, I’m meant to be fat, I’ll never be thin, might as well eat the entire top two shelves of the refrigerator …”? At work, I mess up a spreadsheet, I fix it and move on. Doesn’t mean I’m a bad worker. By that token, a tiny, tiny gain does not make me a bad human. “I am not a number,” as The Prisoner used to say. I am not my weight.

I’ve heard other banders say they don’t want to do the shakes because they want to eat more normally. That’s good if it works for them. For me, I think I will continue with the protein shakes for now. It’s an easy way to get in all my protein. I know I won’t eat like this the rest of my life, but for now it’s working, and that’s the important thing. Another plus of following the program—haven’t had any food make a return trip, and that’s a benefit.

See you tomorrow.