What the Scale CAN'T Tell You......

I'm writing a day early this week because this is an important topic. Grab yourself a glass of wine or some other refreshment and buckle in because this is bound to be a long one.

You all know that for the most part I'm an every day weigher. I have tried many times to change this habit, but I think I'm getting to the point where I really am just using it as a tool and nothing more (most of the time). I'm learning the patterns that happen in my body and I find it pretty interesting. Obviously if I feel the need to write this post tonight it means that the scale is up. We'll get to that.

There are so many things that the scale can't tell you. I am going to tell you exactly what my scale can not tell you about my week.

1) The scale will not tell you that my schedule was completely jacked up this week and I could not
attend any of my usual classes at Living Lean. It will not tell you that because of this I found the time on different days or at different times to be sure I still got 3 days of classes in at LL. That meant that on Monday morning I was at the 5:45 AM class (I HATE getting up that early for workouts). It meant that I went to the Tuesday morning workout which I usually don't do because I usually run that day. Wednesday I worked out at 6:30 PM instead of in the morning. Yesterday, after working a 12 hour day, I came home and ran 4 miles on the treadmill in my fastest time in forever (with no walk breaks). And today, I was not able to attend my normal Friday morning class so I got on the treadmill this evening and once again covered 4 miles even faster than yesterday. And for SURE the scale will not tell you that I came SO close to doing an unassisted chin up in the gym this week. I was able to get about 3/4 of the way up. 

2) The scale cannot tell you that I at least attempted to track all my food on Easter Sunday. I would normally allow myself freedom to not track on a holiday; but I had challenged myself to track for the last 50 days of this challenge and Easter Sunday was day 35/50 so I tracked. I had to estimate since I wasn't in control of my food that day; but I think I did an OK job.

3) The scale won't tell you that even though I had challenges galore this week I fought through them better than I ever have before. The company I work for has to get accredited once every 3 years and our survey was yesterday and today. This means long days and lots of food available. I don't do well when there's a lot of downtime and free food. Thursday was tough. I decided at first that I wasn't going to bother tracking fruit. I figured if I was doing WW still, fruit would be "free" so I would go by

This is a small plate and doesn't look like
a lot of fruit...but I can't even tell you how
many times I had plates of fruit like this. 

that philosophy yesterday. When lunch rolled around I got a salad with grilled chicken on it because I felt it was the best choice I could make. I may have still eaten more of the danishes and muffins (2 of each) than I had originally planned, but I am sure I would have eaten more food in the past. I also know I would have used this as an excuse to eat whatever because it wasn't in my control. Case in point; there is a note on my food log from 2016 when we had our last survey that it was bad timing with me wanting to get back on track and I would just wait until after the survey. And yesterday, after burning 500 calories on the treadmill I decided to even estimate the fruit I ate.

4) The scale will not tell you that I have continued to get a full gallon of water in every day. Well, maybe the scale will actually tell you that 😂

5) The scale may or may not tell you that even though I had to estimate my food, I tracked all week and stayed within my net calorie range. I realize that I may not have tracked accurately and I'm OK with that; but I tried and that's all that matters to me.

So the scale this morning told me that I ate more yesterday than I've been eating. It told me that I'm insanely bloated (hence telling me I did drink all the water still) and therefore registering a higher weight. The scale was up 1.2 pounds today from where it was last Saturday. It's possible that the scale will go back down those 1.2 pounds tomorrow when I have my official weigh in. It's also possible that it's going to go up even more because my calories were still higher than normal today. But it doesn't matter.

Just thought I'd throw this one in here as well.
I love this sweatshirt. I bought it on our 2012 Disney
trip and wear it all the time. It had gotten pretty
tight and now it's so big I may have to stop
wearing it soon.

Let me say that again: IT DOESN'T MATTER

What matters is I worked to get all my exercise in in a week that I totally could have said screw it.
What matters is that I continued to make sure I drank all my water. What matters is that I continue to grow in this journey and find myself running on my treadmill with no walk breaks for 48 minutes. And what continues to matter the most is that I never give up.

So we'll see what the scale says tomorrow, but it ultimately doesn't matter. Will I still be able to hit 175 on May 6th? I don't know. But that doesn't matter either. I will continue to fight and work to get as close to that number as possible. And that, my friends, is what does matter!