It may have been the scale; but when I weighed myself on Friday morening after having an awesome day on Thursday I was down about 5 pounds. My first thought was that the batteries in the scale are dying and we need to get some new ones pronto. But I weighed myself a few more times and figured that it was pretty close to reality. I must have shed a lot of water weight that day.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were struggles - on Friday I didn't plan well and ended up having junk food for lunch and then said "screw it" and had junk for dinner too. Saturday and Sunday are a blur... Then Monday I got my act together and worked out and ate well most of the day. I didn't do too well for dinner but it wasn't horrible either and I luckily had a loss when I weighed myself yesterday morning. Tuesday was another roller coaster type of day; and I did OK but not great. I did end up losing some due to my food for the day being mostly ETL-friendly (but too much pasta and I did have some dairy).

I have been feeling really bad about not being able to get back on plan as strictly as I want to. Then I realized that in the last week the scale has gone down almost 10 pounds (we'll see what it says tomorrow morning). Which, even if a lot of that is water weight, isn't too bad. Actually, it's pretty good and I kind of feel guilty about it!

I know I can do better and these numbers should spur me on to see what I really can do when I actually TRY TO RESTRAIN MYSELF. I can remember in the beginning last summer when I had cravings that I thought were going to drive me crazy but I just let them be and didn't give into them. I asked myself why at the beginning I had so much more resolve and willpower not to cheat, what was different about me then? The answer that I came up with is that last summer I was nearly 300 pounds and I had so much self loathing about it that I had to get the weight off as quickly as possible so I wouldn't feel as much shame as I was feeling about my weight. Now that I've lost 70-75 pounds I don't feel as bad about my body as I did. This is dangerous. I'm closer to my goals of being "normal sized" and being able to wear normal clothes (a shallow motivator I know, but still it's a big one for me). So I need to keep going.

I need to keep going.

I want to keep going.

I will keep going.

I want to feel even better and be able to do even more. I want to continue to get healthier. And I do want to eventually buy these beautiful goal dresses that I keep on looking at and pining over all of the time. I just need to put more coal on the ol' motivational fire.