Boy, I needed that

I had a difficult weekend. I've been stressing over a work deadline for the last week or two, but things are really coming to a head. In fact, I'm beginning to hear that whooshing sound a deadline makes as it goes shooting by me. It won't be the end of the world, as it's mainly a self imposed date, but I'm still frustrated with myself that I haven't been able to make it, so the stress is building. In the past, stress for me has always equalled overeating, so my head hunger has just been rising and rising lately.

Yesterday, it got the best of me. I ate and drank way too many calories. Admittedly not as many as I could have, but still way more than I needed. Knowing that bad news at this point would only make me that much more likely to want to quit, I deliberately did not do my weekly weigh in this morning. I do that every morning right after I get up, after I've gone to the bathroom but before I put on clothes, and I record the result of each Monday's scale readout. Today, I officially took the day off. Of course, I couldn't stay completely off the scale, but I waited a couple of hours and weighed myself with clothes on. That way, I can pretend the number is inaccurate. Of course, the number was up so I started to get down on myself,

Then, I realized something. I hadn't taken any measurements of myself in just over a month. Out came the tape measure. I don't take a ton of measurements, just three that are recorded in MFP, but I'm still really glad I remembered to do this. I've lost 3.3 inches! Knowing that was like a huge weight (no pun intended) lifted off my shoulders, because it means that what I'm doing is really making a noticeable difference. The numbers on the scale can get kind of abstract because they move up and down so easily and are influenced by so many things, like salt and water and TOM, that sometimes it doesn't feel like those losses are real. The ones on the measuring tape, though, those can't be disputed.

I really needed the good news today. It helped me to get my head back on straight so that I can take a deep breath and get back to work, both professionally and with my band. I know this journey won't be quick and it won't be easy, but sometimes a reminder really helps. Once a month measurements, which I had planned to do all along, gave me that reminder today, and boy, I needed that!