Day 97: 275 lbs

I gained two pounds since yesterday. I stuck to my 1,500 calorie quota (with 11 calories left over), and followed all the Diet Commandments. I did estimate (rather than measure) the handful of chips I ate at lunch.

There was an article in our local newspaper yesterday about ways to lose weight and keep it off. I thought it was interesting that one of the tricks is to weight yourself every day (nothing about keeping a blog, though). There's clearly wisdom in that: if you weigh yourself every day, then you see the consequences of your actions. If you pig out at a holiday meal, you see the weight gain the next day. Or if you get in the habit of eating a big lunch, you'll notice that you're gaining weight within a few days, and possibly change the habit.

When I dieted in college and lost tons of weight, however, I took the exact opposite strategy. I didn't weigh myself at all from the beginning of the diet until I was over halfway to my goal. Instead, I looked for other signs (like loose clothing) that I was successful. And that worked for me at the time. I suspect it worked because I was living a fairly Spartan lifestyle at the time (so temptation was minimal), and because my parents had forced me to "weigh in" every week throughout my teen years and I had learned how to manipulate the scales. So I knew that if I just watched the scales, it would be easy to fool myself.