Weigh-in Wednesday: 12/3/14

As expected, my weight ticked up this week, but not by too much.  I weighed in at 121.4 pounds.  Last year, I gained a pound over Thanksgiving.  I did the Seattle Quadzilla both years, so I expected similar results.  I did the same races and had similar eating habits.  If there was one difference it was my eating habits after the last race.

It’s easy to go into celebration mode after a race.  It’s even more tempting when it’s the last of four in a row.  I was staying in the same downtown hotel as last year, and there’s a pizza place I like that’s across the street.  It was a cold day, and I didn’t feel like walking very far after running in the cold all morning.  Here’s the difference.  Instead of ordering a pizza, I had a veggie burger.  That’s not exactly a splurge meal.

When I weighed myself this morning, it was my first weigh-in in a week.  It’s hard to tell much from any one weigh-in, since daily fluctuations can easily be a pound or more.  That’s why I also keep a five week moving average.  Here’s a graph of my moving average over the last four months.

My moving average peaked at 124 pounds.  That’s when I got serious about losing weight.  I was making good progress at first, but hit a plateau.  My moving average bottomed out at 120.3.  Since then, it’s crept back up to 120.8.  The good news is that I’ve lost three pounds that I’ve kept off.  I still have about three pounds to go.

I gain weight when I travel and lose weight when I’m at home.  Lately, I haven’t been making as much progress at home.  Partly that’s because I’ve been getting complacent.  It’s easy to be gung ho in the first few weeks of a diet, but it’s sometimes difficult to maintain the motivation.  It’s also partly the result of spending less time at home.

This past month, my race schedule had me away from home even more than usual.  Last week, for example, I flew home from Philadelphia on Monday and flew to Seattle on Wednesday.  Tuesday was the only day that I ate all my meals at home.

I’ve been trying to eat more fruits and vegetables.  For several weeks, I was consistently eating salads with at least one meal on days when I was home.  I haven’t been doing that lately, because I haven’t been buying the right groceries.  Fresh produce has a limited shelf life.  It’s a waste to buy kale, romaine or arugula if you’re not going to be home long enough to eat it.  Lately, I haven’t been buying it.

For the next four weeks, I won’t have any more long trips.  I’ll be buying groceries today, and I hope to get back to the healthier eating habits that were working for me.