Week 10: zero pounds lost. On the other hand, zero pounds gained. I was, I admit, awfully disappointed. It's the first week I haven't lost anything, but my co-workers all screeched at me for being such a big fat baby about it, and then I went on the WW website to read up on plateaus and discovered my average weekly weight loss is 1.83 pounds which is perfectly acceptable. Also, apparently the body goes, "Whoa, whoa, you've been losing weight, what's going on here?" at around the 15 pound loss point and slows down periodically thereafter just to make sure there's no untoward starvation going on. So I'll probably lose weight next week again once my body's decided everything's okay. And it is.
The funny thing is all the other women in my office have been on every diet under the sun and know heaps about the weight loss process, whereas I have only ever tried to lose weight twice in my life. Both times it was with Weight Watchers. What can I say? I simply did not care about being overweight enough to deny myself food and I've always hated the notion of counting and measuring and obsessing over fat grams. So I don't know how diets go. I know what happened last time, which is that I lost a steady 2-3 pounds a week until I'd lost 25 pounds, then I freaked out at being thin because I had no mental template for that, and immediately went off the diet.
I know how to be fat. I don't know how to be slim. Guess I'd better learn, it's not that many months away. But you know what? It's scary to be slim and attractive when you're used to hiding behind fat and being sexually invisible. Okay, sure, I'm married (a form of sexual invisibility itself) and I'm not looking for dates, but I don't think anyone ever stops wanting people to notice they're there. My real goal is to make all my friends who've known me for years as Fat Lucy to see Slim Lucy and say, "Hotcha! You are one red hot mamajama!"
But this means swimming out of the shallow end, that safe and easy area I was talking about the other day. It takes a certain amount of nerve to let everyone see how hot you are. I have rarely had that nerve, being either too ashamed or too distrustful of consequences. It's like wearing a hat, actually. There are people who wear hats and there are people who say, "You're so brave, I wish I could wear hats." And the only difference is confidence.
I have confidence that I will keep losing weight. I only need to lose six more pounds to get to my first big WW goal of losing 10 percent. Six pounds, three weeks. I can do it. And then I'm going to go get those CDs I've earned.
I don't think I could do this without the constant encouragement of fellow Weight Watcher members the Mighty Kymm, the Mysterious Lynn, the Scotlover Michelle and great pal Tracy Benton along with numerous other friends and readers including Denise who has been keeping pace with me in weight loss just by exhibiting impressive self control. Everyone's help and recipes are greatly appreciated, even if I do refuse to eat anything with black beans in it!
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