Weighing In

My blog is not about weight loss or about weight maintenance after a big loss. My weight has been stable my whole adult life (except for when I was pregnant of course). However, I have always had a strong interest in nutrition, weight loss and fitness. In fact, I would have gone into this profession had I known it existed! I took a nutrition elective in college, but my school did not have a nutrition or dietary sciences degree. A lot of nutrition is about numbers, and I ended up working in finance, which is all about the numbers, so there you have it.

Back to my weight. About seven or eight years ago, I had a health crisis and lost around 15 pounds. Believe me, nobody wants to lose weight that way. I regained half of  those pounds back and my body came to a new set point. It is where my weight has stayed for the past five or six years, and is an ideal weight for me. I am hesitant to put the number down and have people say or think “Oh you are fine” and “how can you be worried about weight.”

What I want to dispel is the idea that thin or average weight people don’t have to think about the scales, or that we can eat everything. That is so not true.

I was a chubby kid and preteen. I was fat at 14 but normal weight at age 17 when I graduated high school. Somewhere in those years I became aware of my weight and slimmed down. I didn’t play sports (I dreaded gym class!) and I didn’t diet, but I started to pay attention to what I ate and drank.

I have done so ever since. It’s not an obsession but rather as Sean Anderson says, it’s a daily practice. I eat the same handful of breakfasts and lunches every day. I have a routine variety of dinners on rotation. I drink water but I also like Coke Zero. I measure the half and half in my coffee. (My coworkers call me precise). I ignore the doughnuts and sweets at work; I think “that’s not my food”. I have fast food once or twice a year, if that.

I do eat at restaurants, bake, enjoy holidays, have cake at birthday parties or showers, have an occasional glass of wine and an evening snack (or two) when I watch TV. I enjoy life but it is a daily awareness.

I weigh myself around three times a week; the days may vary except for Monday. I have a hard and fast rule about weighing myself every Monday. I also always weigh in on the 1st of every month regardless of the day it falls on. I have a three pound happy range; if I see even a pound higher, the alarm bell in my brain goes off!

Today is Monday and my weight is up and it’s time to rein it in.

Chicken + egg salad on lettuce + strawberries = healthy lunch