Encouragement!

Friends, let me encourage you.  Here's what I learned this week ... which is ironic, because I already knew it.  On Wednesday, I just wanted to drink a salt shaker.  Really.  I just. wanted. salt.  So I finished the leftover potato chips from Saturday.  Then I went to the store for groceries and something else jumped into my basket.  They're new! They're from Tostitos!  They are BAKED THREE CHEESE QUESO!  (whatever that is)  And so of course when I got home, I ate them too (no, not the whole bag! what do you think I am - a monster?).

Baked Three Cheese Queso!

I know what you're thinking:  "how is this encouragement, exactly?"

Well, I'll tell you.  You know I'm using loseit.com to track what I'm eating/how I'm moving.  I watch it like a hawk from day to day, to be honest.  But it's also great for watching cumulative data.  For example, in looking at this week's summary, I can see that already for this week, I am 1,114 calories under my budget.  Those are all exercise calories (believe you me; I am NOT starving myself!), but regardless, I am under budget.  So after I ate all the salt in the house on Wednesday, I was sure I'd wake up on Thursday with an "up" arrow on the scale.

SHOCK OHMYWORD I AM SHOCKED!

I was down a half pound.

And that, my friends, is the power of cumulative activity in combination with eating well.  Many "diet" programs have the concept of a "cheat day", or a down day, or a day when you don't count points, and believe you me, I am not a medical professional, so you probably shouldn't listen to me anyway,  but ... if you pay attention to what you're doing, and are in a regular exercise program (walking counts!), then the occasional Baked Three Cheese Queso day will not kill you.

One of my brothers put it this way:  "Day-to-day variation seems to be related more to the water content of your body and the material content of your digestive system than to the fat content of your body."  In other words, try to poop before you weigh yourself :)