  6:49 a.m. Thursday, Day 198. Feeling quite reasonable today. I had decent sleep. The late afternoon coffee yesterday doesn't seem to have affected me. I usually drink one cup of coffee in the morning, so I'm fairly sensitive to additional amounts. I had anticipated being awake all night. 1364 calories yesterday, not bad. The week got off to such a bad start, I'm glad to have a good day.
Oh, and here's the really good news: weighed myself at Daisy's. I've lost three pounds. Yay! It's not much to show for months of effort, but I was pretty terrified that I've been gaining weight recently, so I'll take it. I'm crediting the Cardio Blast. For a month or two I haven't been exercising the way I should, and I think that caused the glacial rate of weight loss. I don't want to lower my calories any further; I need to increase exercise. 10:20 a.m. 45 minutes of Cardio Blast, legs and core, I'm EXHAUSTED. I'm thinking about this whole weblog experience this morning. I had never read a blog until my weight loss attempt, and now I read several of them every day, including some non-weight ones.
I publish my own, and I occasionally post comments on others' and email with them. It's been a really important aspect of my effort, because I've learned a lot from these writers. Sometimes by example and sometimes by "what not to do"! I can't speak for anyone else, but I think sometimes we start a cycle together. I mean, we all read each other, we get ideas from each other and add our own particular perspective.
Sometimes it's like a big game of telephone (purple monkey dishwasher). You can almost track an idea leaping from blog to blog over the course of a week. It can be good or bad. Sometimes it makes me reluctant* to write anything pessimistic or negative; I don't want to bring anyone else down, or start a negativity cycle. For the most part I refrain from criticizing or overly-analyzing anyone else's blog; expressing disagreement with someone else's life is just too close to openly contradicting or invalidating their experiences. And that seems to be the way most bloggers operate, and it's really really neat how supportive and encouraging we all are to each other.
Eventually there comes a point, though, when each person is on her own. The support of others is absolutely necessary to the process, but it doesn't do the work for you**. And as much as you can learn from other bloggers, you're not going to agree with everything they write, and at some point you have to say "That worked for them; but this is me. What works for ME? " You can't compare yourself with others; measure yourself against them; adopt all their strategies, their eating plans, and definitely not all their philosophies. I'm not sure what my point is. I guess just to say that I'm appreciative of what I've learned from other bloggers, and at the same time cautious about equating me=them, them=me, and hope others feel the same. Yep, that's it. *It makes me reluctant; it doesn't stop me. The whole purpose of a blog is personal experience. If I'm hiding my experiences, what's the point? **Remember when Oprah was on her giant weight loss/fitness crusade?
And she did shows about it, and put out a tape called Get the Picture or something like that. And a lot of people were very critical of her, saying things like "It's easy to lose weight when you have a personal trainer and a private chef. " Oh, puhleeze. I don't care one way or the other about Oprah, but I'll defend her here. No matter how much money you have, no one else can do a sit-up for you. You can't hire someone to run a marathon for you, or diet for you. She did it, by herself. Same as the rest of us. 
