Monday, June 20, 2005

down with o.w.w.



Today was weigh-in day for my diet. Through four weeks with Online Weight Watchers, I'm down 12 pounds. I would feel better about this if I hadn't felt a real drop in resolve this weekend. While the result was nothing catastrophic--such as me lying on a sofa cramming the contents of box after box of Hostess cakes into my face--I seriously doubt the last two days contributed anything to my desired Trajectory Of Loss.

In any event, by this point, it has become clear what will determine whether/how well this is going to work for me. If I use their tracker system to keep track of everything I eat during the day, I will do a reasonable job of keeping within the allotted number of POINTS(tm), and I will lose weight. If I slack off on this, my de facto diet will be over the allotment and I won't lose weight. In other words, the uncertainty is about my keeping with the tracking system, not whether I will successfully stay under my allowance if I keep with the tracking system or whether I will lose weight if I stick with it.

The problem this weekend was that I had much trouble mustering The Will to Track. A nontrivial part of this, in turn, I attribute to not coming into my office and so having to track by plugging my laptop into my phone jack. So one can chalk this up to being another negative unanticipated consequence of my hasty decision to yank the Internet at home. What's more, it's not like I can reactivate DSL service, since I am moving so soon and reactivation requires a whole new contract.

Overall, I have been more successful with the diet (eat-less-calories) part of the program than the exercise (burn-more-calories). I suppose this makes sense: if a goal requires me to both do some things and not do others, I'm generally better at not doing things than I am at doing things.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You'll probably start to move around more as the weight comes off. (Cupcakes? Well, better than a pound cake, I guess. Anyway, keep up the good work.)

Anonymous said...

Yeah, because skinny people exercise more than fat people. Except that they don't.

Anonymous said...

That looks like awesome progress, congrats!

Instead of eating less, I'm trying to go with eating different things.. more precisely: drinking different things. I've given up sodas and mostly just drink water now, plus milk in the morning. I'm also going to more dance classes and that's helping. Or so I tell myself.:-)