  7:00 a.m. Monday, Day 91. First day of Week 14. Woke up a bit groggy, but feel okay now. I had a couple bananas right before going to bed, and as always that disturbs my sleep. Lot of tossing and turning, but at least no long periods awake. Just finished my “chart” for last week, and I’m not sure it makes sense anymore.
When I first started doing this, I figured out how many calories, theoretically, I should eat to lose one pound per week (oppw) and two pounds per week (tppw). Divided by seven, and I get a target range of calories for one day. So at the end of each week, I add up how many calories I’ve eaten in the past seven days, and figure how much weight I should, theoretically, have lost. It’s a crazy system, but I had to have SOME measure of progress, even if it was make-believe, because I simply cannot bring a scale into the house. Maybe someday, but at the beginning of this little project I knew the psychology of the scale would defeat me before I could even get started. It was better, although sometimes maddening, to NOT KNOW if I was losing weight.
Then the only choice was to continue the dieting/exercising in hopes that eventually I would get a positive proof. Which psyched me into continuing, to the point where I did one day get proof (the mPants). The scale, you see, would have most likely given me negative proof for quite a long time, because I’d be hopping on five or six times the very first day, and I would have quit trying by the end of the first week. So anyway, my current chart says that I should have lost 13 and three-quarters pounds since December 29. My original goal was ten percent of my body weight, or around 26 pounds, which means that as of today I have 12 and a quarter pounds left to lose. Well, I think it’s apparent I’ve lost more than 13.75 pounds.
It’s more like 25 to 35. I’m not being precise with that because my weights were on two different scales. But that’s the range. At this point, I now KNOW that I’m losing weight, so maybe I don’t need the Pretend Chart to convince myself that it’s happening. Maybe it makes sense to continue recording my calories, but stop recording the pretend weight. 9:47 a.m. Just did 40 minutes on the glider, and I’m running out of steam.
Stopping for a water break. I’m going to put the resistance on and try to get another 5 or 10 minutes — I can’t go very long with the resistance. Watching Pushing Tin, which is very good. I didn’t know what to expect from it, but it has Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack, both of whom I like, and it’s turned out a good choice. I was so involved in the story I didn’t even look at the glider calculator until I was up to 37 minutes. That’s a first; usually I’m counting the seconds after about 12 minutes.
10:26 a.m. Managed ten minutes with the resistance on, and another ten without. It’s so hard, I can barely move the footholders more than 6 inches either direction. It becomes more like strength training than cardio. I feel like I’m stomping grapes in a barrel, or maybe doing a stair climber. In other good news, I am now on my fifth glass of water already.
I know I’ve been dehydrated for a week, but haven’t been able to get make myself drink enough. Had a little lettuce salad for my morning snack, and I’m still hungry and want to eat MORE. I have to reestablish some of the patterns I used at the beginning — drink a glass of water every time I feel hungry; if I’m still hungry after eating, wait 20 minutes before I eat anything else; delay eating by finding something else to do for 15 minutes or so. 12:48 p.m. About halfway through the little box I’m painting. It’s going really well, and I am SO happy to be painting again. My back is killing me from leaning over, I had forgotten about that.
Need a better set up. Anyway, the boxes look lovely, and now I’m taking a lunch break. The leftover salmon, I guess. 9:45 p.m. Back from the Flying Saucer. Met Bucko’s boss, Sally, and had a great time. She’s interesting and fun and kind.
Good combination. It’s a long drive to downtown, and I am impressed with myself that I had no problem getting there and back. A few moment’s qualm, but nothing major. That’s a big deal for me, because I tend to a certain amount of agoraphobia, which frequently takes the form of being afraid of driving to anyplace complicated or where I haven’t been before. Going downtown in rush hour and having to parallel park is a situation that would normally get me in a cold sweat and I probably wouldn’t do it. But this went okay, partially because I pep talked myself and partially because I was going against traffic and ended up being able to park in a lot, straight in.
A funny thing about that: it’s the kind where you have to go to the money-collection box at the front of the lot and put in money for your spot. It cost three dollars, and all I had was quarters. So I started feeding them into Number 5, my spot. And for some bizarre reason, probably because my brain was all the way filled up with the logistics of driving someplace by myself, I didn’t seem to think it was necessary to make sure I put in the exact three dollars. I just put in SOME amount, which could have been three dollars, but might just as easily have been $1.75. I dunno, it was some sort of mental hiccup where apparently I thought it was okay to just make the GESTURE of paying for the spot.
We got to talking about it over beers, not the hiccup part, but how do those places work? Does anyone actually count the money or do they just peer out a window somewhere to see if you go up to the money thing and pay. So when I got out to my car, there was in fact a guy opening up the money things and checking whether everyone had paid. Paid the right amount, in fact, I’m guessing. Fortunately he had started at the other end of the lot, and I just squeaked out in time. I think he gave me a LOOK as I peeled out of the lot, probably he had just opened up Number 5 and found a SHORTAGE.
Hah! Once again I’ve managed to stick it to The Man! 
