To weigh or not to weigh....?

Since I had to give up on LighterLife and Cambridge...oh, and Slimfast, I've set my own personal weigh-in day to first thing Monday morning (you know, after the first wee, before I've drunk anything and before I've dressed - to be as low as possible!!). Well, sometimes it's gone well and sometimes not so well. I still can't get below 12stone. I'm up and down by 2 or 3 lbs and it's getting so annoying. So, this week I've deliberately not weighed myself. People are still commenting on the changes, especially the girls at work in my Saturday Branch, so much so that Karen said, 'You're not going to lose anymore though, are you Chris?' in a very concerned mannner. And that's coming from someone who's about the size of a matchstick!

I feel that by getting on the scales every week I'm not doing myself any favours. It's only a number, and I'd love the scales to say something like 9stone 7lb, but it's never going to happen (especially now I'm not doing a VLCD). Even if it did I'm sure I'd look like a skinny waif which would be great at 18, but not at over 30 years older than that! I was reading 'The Power: 11 Ways Women Gain Unhealthy Weight and How You Can Take Charge Of Them' by Sue Ellin Browder and she actually says it's healthier for a woman to carry a little weight as she gets older than to be too skinny - something to do with bone density if I remember. This is a fantastic book and one you can dip in and out of as not all chapters will be relevant, I'd recommend it, if only from the library. I'm keeping that in mind, what she says about holding a little weight as you get older as I've always thought too skinny women of a certain age always tend to look a lot older than their years. I will still try to get down, as my BMI is still at 28, and although BMI is NOT the be-all and end-all, I am fully aware that my health can only improve by losing another 1/2 to 1 stone. As an aside, I had my blood pressure taken when I was in hospital the other week and it read at 117/72. Absolutely brilliant! It's never been ultra high, even when I was pregnant, but before Christmas it was a lot higher than that and I'm sure the weight was a contributory factor.

I see comments on a number of the other blogs, or on minimins, where girls are trying to get into a size 10 or get down to as low a weight as they can. For a time I thought, Yes, I want to do that, but reality has set in. I don't have the luxury of ketosis any longer. I don't have the luxury of not eating and not needing to worry about food - and it is a luxury. You don't realise that when you're abstaining. You just notice what everybody else can eat, or what you can buy in the supermarket when shopping for the family. Yes, that's when it gets hard, but you know you can't have any of it and, if you're keeping to the diet wholeheartedly then you get over it. But, when you've been there and that option's been taken away from you, as in my case, it's a lot harder to keep to the straight and narrow.

The straight and narrow I will keep on though. I will weigh myself occasionally and if and when I have an 11 to report then you, dear reader, will be the first to know. But I'm not going to beat myself up about it. If, on the 1st January, I'd known that 4 months later I would weigh 21/2stone lighter, that I'd be back in my size 14s, which I can't remember when I last wore, and that my uniform skirt, which I've had since April last year and never been able wear, would be back to front by the end of the day, I'd have gone, 'Oh, yeah?'. So I'm going with that and living for the moment.

Freedom from the scales!