Weekly Weigh-In, Week Three

Starting weight: 240
Current weight: 229.5
Change this week: -.5
Total change: -10

Just a small loss this week, though I’m OK with that. My period is here this week, which seems to mean much less predictable things than it used to. When I was younger, I’d get 3 or 4 days of water retention, a day of moodiness and then the start of my period, which would last 3 or 4 days and then be done. Sometime near the end of it I would shed all the water-weight and that would be that. In the last year or so, though, my cycle is completely unpredictable. I occasionally skip a period entirely for no apparent reason, and other times it will come on slowly and meander on for several days.

So I still haven’t figured out if there’s a pattern to the water-retention thing, but I suspect that’s part of what’s at work for me this week. My eating patterns are the same as the past two weeks, and if anything my portions have been a bit smaller because the famed appetite suppressant effect of the Atkins plan has kicked in. Also, I use urine-test strips to monitor levels of ketone bodies excreted so I can get a rough sense of how much fat I’m metabolizing. I know they’re not at all accurate, but they’re pretty motivating for me when the scale itself isn’t helping me out so much on that front. They go from palest pink if you’re just excreting a trace, to deeper and deeper burgundy-purple if there are lots of ketones in your urine. Mine have been almost black all week, which I hope means that I’m still breaking down lots of fat and my body is just doing the camel thing this week. I wonder why we retain water around the time of our periods? In any event, my plan is just to stick to my eating plan, drink lots of water and hope for a whooooosh next week.

In other news, I went out to a bar last night to hear a friend’s band play. I *never* do this anymore, as I’m far too old and my social circle consists mostly of older, sedate people like myself. It was a friendly, hilarious small-town Wisconsin evening of the kind that reminds me why I like living up here. The bar was quite a ways out of Milwaukee, in a little town I’d never even heard of. Once my girlfriends and I were in and situated, the bar owner came over with a tray of shots for us and introduced himself as Uncle Dave. Uncle Dave knew we’d never been in before and wanted to welcome us to his place of business in this most Wisconsin of ways (only in Wisconsin have I ever been to a wedding that featured a tray of various shots for guests to enjoy after they go through the receiving line). He cautioned us that these were not girly shots, but he’d get us something that went down easier if we needed it instead. My knee-jerk reaction to an implied challenge like that is to step right up and show off just how ready I am to play with the big boys, so I grabbed my shot and drank it, as did my girlfriends (nice to know that, mature mental-health professionals that we are, we still crack like an egg to a tiny bit of peer pressure from a man we don’t even know). Wow. It was something called ‘the Knot,’ and it went down smoothly and sweetly but then burned in our stomachs for about 10 minutes afterward. After we grabbed and gulped, Uncle Dave clapped me on the shoulder and said “Good girls! That’s 100 proof!” Never let it be said that I don’t attempt to adapt to my surroundings, whatever they might be.

That, and another couple of mixed drinks, and I’m feeling it this morning. And here’s where all of this has to do with my own attempts to mend my relationship with my body. I was walking up to the grocery store this morning and feeling as if I were dragging a piano behind me. Sluggish, slow, just generally bleh. And for the better part of the walk I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong, but then it dawned on me in one of those DUH moments—honey, you’re just a little hungover. I’ve gotten so good at ignoring my body that I’ve really lost track of the simple law of cause and effect. I’ve let myself believe for years that my body is just going to do whatever it wants, and that I have little to no control over those ups and downs. But DUH. I drank more than I’m used to, and today I feel kinda grubby. No big mystery, and entirely controllable. No more Knots, no more feeling like this on Sunday morning.

Not a huge insight, but good enough to start me out on my week.