Day 74: 283 lbs

I lost two pounds since my last weight check two days ago, and yesterday I stuck to my diet and followed all the Commandments. My calorie count for the day was 1,491 calories, below my quota of 1,500.

Yesterday was a little tricky because I had a business lunch. I wound up skipping dinner entirely in order to stay beneath my quota, since after lunch I had less than 100 calories remaining for the day. The only thing I had to eat after lunch was a small snack when I arrived home. All the airline snacks I stuffed into my back and brought home for the kids.

Interesting thing, airline snacks: I took two flights yesterday, both on cheap airlines which don't serve meals. But between the two flights, I collected 400 calories with of little snack bags. They serve astonishingly unhealthy snacks on airline flights.

The other remarkable thing is that I've now lost ten pounds since going back to the basics and publishing my Diet Commandments. That's after a month of basically losing no weight at all, even though I thought I was sticking to my diet. The only explanation is that I wasn't being as religious about my diet as I need to be, and the accumulation of small nibbles throughout the day was enough to add up to a lot of calories.

I'm also beginning to understand why I have a hard time staying on a diet after I lose about 10% of my body mass. The problem is that after a little success, I get sloppy. I start figuring that if I'm successful at losing weight, then I must be doing the right thing, and that lets me justify minor transgressions. But then I stop losing weight, I get frustrated, and I drop the diet.

Getting past that hurdle took a month of frustration. But daily weigh-ins and daily blogging have turned out to be the key (for me at least). On prior diets, I would have been silently frustrated until one morning I would just say "screw it, I'm not losing any weight, why am I bothering to diet?" and that would be the end of it.

But writing about my weight every morning forces me to be introspective. It makes me think about why things aren't working. Plus a blog is forever (at least a reasonable approximation anyway), and I would hate to have started this blog and then abandon it, and my diet, when it failed. In a sense, I feel an extra commitment to carry the diet through to the end because I don't want to leave the blog sitting out there and a permanent memorial to my failure.

In other words, this blog is telling a story, and I feel compelled to complete the narrative arc.

The most important thing is that I'm back on track and losing weight again. Next stop: 190 lbs.