It was the popcorn!

The Battle, day 15,174
Weight - 208.5lb
Goal - 190lbs
Mood - good

So I get on the scale this morning as first thing in the morning is my usual time to face the music and the scale reads 208.5. Yesterday I was 207. WTF!?!

I had gone over my caloric intake last night taking into account my visit to the gym which was good for burning off about 700 calories. I figure I came in at about 1880 give or take while according to various calorie counters, my body requires anywhere from 2900-3000 per day to maintain my current weight. I came in at a deficit by my calculations. So why is the scale saying I'm a pound and a half heavier???

See, this is why you shouldn't weigh yourself everyday. Your body fluctuates daily, too much salt one day and you're bloated, dehydrated somewhat another day and you're lighter. Have a few beers and BAM! Take a good crap and there could be a couple of pounds lost right there! I've done it! Now normally I don't weigh myself daily, in fact, up until last week I only weighed myself about twice a week. Some medical people who deal in this business suggest throwing your scale away and using your clothes as the determinant of weight or rather size. Others say you should monitor your weight daily to keep a closer eye on it....and in my opinion, reinforce the guilt. The scale is good and bad. It can make you feel so good when you've been working hard and being good but on the flip side, it can be demoralizing causing feelings of despair and a "what's the use?" mentality. Like most, I have a love/hate relationship with my scale.

However, I know what I did yesterday to deserve this. After spending a couple of weeks searching various video stores looking for the first season of OZ (you would not believe how hard it was to find. Only a few stores carried it and the ones that did never had all 3 discs in at the same time. It was maddening), I came across it at the Blockbuster in the mall where my gym is located, go figure. On a lark, and because it was the ony video store in a 10km area we hadn't checked, I wandered in after my workout and voila! There it was. So I picked it up and sat down to enjoy the first episode.

At first, I had grabbed some pineapple, a banana and a pear to munch on but as I sat down, I looked over at Red (*pseudonym) and asked her, "Do you want some popcorn?" Immediately her eyes lit up followed by a very enthusiastic "yes!" See, we used to keep popcorn kernels in the house and once in a while we'd air pop a bowl, throw on some butter for flavour and enjoy. But it had been awhile since we'd done this as we both had lost our taste for it and only recently had we purchased a fresh bag of kernels, at Red's request. I figured since I had been good lately that it wouldn't hurt much. WRONG! After we were done, I was tallying up the calorie count using Google to search the calorie content of butter and air popped popcorn and best we figure it came in at about 1800. Since we both ingested about half the bowl each, there's roughly 900 calories. Sad, very very sad. And most of it was the butter. **Note to self: butter is bad, bad butter, bad!

Anyway, it wasn't the total calories that I think screwed me this morning, it was the butter. Since there's no way I actually gained a pound and a half over one day, I figure the butter caused my body to retain and I'm just bloaty. I'm not too worried about it, I hit the gym first thing this morning and my daily food intake will consist of several pieces of fruit, a salad, a toasted turkey sandwich at lunch, and pork loin with roasted veggies for dinner. I anticipate a change for the better tomorrow morning.

Or a new scale.