Week 6

230.6/234.9

"I was eating bad stuff. Lots of sugar and carbs, junk food all the time. It makes you very irritated." - Avril Lavigne, when asked why her songs are so angry.

Well, there you have it. Life's most important lesson: junk food = irritation. Thanks, Avril.

It's mowin' season, and I've got the pulled quad and sore back to prove it. Good thing I was already on the road to being fit with daily exercise, otherwise I may have had to take a day or two off of work. The good news of my overexertion is that my ankles are strong. I found that out when I stepped on an exposed tree root the wrong way, buckling my foot off to the side and putting a great deal of my weight on my ankle at an unnatural angle. No pulled ankle, and I was walking fine shortly thereafter. I guess the standing on one foot exercises I mentioned earlier are actually productive.

This week had its ups and downs, both in my weight and my struggle with hunger. John Walker warns of bad days in The Hacker's Diet, giving mental suggestions and how to cope, low-cal filler foods like unbuttered air-popped popcorn, or the cup of hot bouillon, and reassurance that as long as your daily weight is below the trend line, you're still on the right track. Yesterday, for example, I hit 230.0 pounds when I weighed myself in the morning. I ate 1800 Calories that day, drank lots of liquid, worked out in the evening, and went to bed exhausted and hungry. When I weighed myself this morning, I had gained .6 pounds.

Is that possible? Sure, and it's happened before during my diet. I'm still on the right track, and even though I'm .6 pounds heavier today than yesterday, I'm 24.4 pounds lighter than March 14, when I started. Maybe I have a digestive track full of heavy food, or maybe my body is pausing its fat-burning cycle for a moment, trying to regain a balance after having lost so much weight so quickly.

On the exercise front, I'm doing better physically after playing DDR, and my scores are getting better. I've managed to make it all the way through "Workout Mode" to 150 Calories a couple times now. Each song has about a 7-15 Calorie output, according to the in-game math, which has to be a wild estimation -- your familiarity with the steps in a given song has a lot to do with your energy output for each step, since the better you can predict where you need to be, the easier it is to stay on balance and not have to use your leg muscles to make quick balance shifts and recoveries. The song I'm on now that is the most productive for me is the Ceasers' "Jerk it Out" on Basic level (I'm off of Beginner level for most songs now -- yeah!), which gives me from 13-15 Calories, and has steps that are continuous and only difficult in a few places.

I'm still feeling good about the plan, even though this week has humbled me a little with more realistic results. Why am I still feeling good after only average loss in a week? I can't wear my old pants up any more, they're officially too big! I had to buy smaller jeans and a new belt, and pull some old work pants that are smaller out of the closet.