Anyway, I've discovered what I think is the problem with why all of my vigorous exercising and water-drinking and fruit-eating isn't doing much for me staying in good shape. I'm sure, overall I'm healthier, but I'm not doing much to reclaim the body I had in college. When you figure that it's only really a 20-25 pound difference, it shouldn't really be that hard to do. Well, at any rate, size 12 was the breaking point for me and in spite of my best efforts, I haven't seen much progress.

Until I figured it out.

I wish I could remember what exactly my weight was when I started on second shift a year ago, because I think that's the key. I know, at least, that I wasn't a size 12 then. My day goes something like this with regards to meals: breakfast within an hour of getting up, unless I get up after 10 or so, then I skip straight to lunch. Lunch happens within an hour of leaving for work, unless I had a late breakfast, then I skip it. Either way I'm starving, usually, by 5pm when my work "lunch" rolls around, so I always have my lunch/dinner around that time. Then, 6 hours later when I get home, I'm starving again, so I usually eat a late dinner with my husband. Overall, I don't think I eat any more than any other average person, 3 meals in a day and not really much snacking, or 4 meals but the two that I eat at home before work are generally pretty small. So given this, I can't/couldn't figure out why I can't manage my...uhg..."vanity pounds," if you can call 25 of them "vanity pounds."

Then I decided to really put a test to something that I've been thinking about for a long time. When I come home, very hungry, from work each day, I eat a pretty average dinner-type of meal. However, it's very late by that time and I'm lucky to be able to stay awake more than 2 hours afterward, usually only about an hour at most. There is a reason, dearies, that they tell you not to eat anything after 6PM and I now know why that is. It seems that my best efforts of exercising, etc., pretty much were just balancing out the problems that I have been creating by eating immediately before bedtime.

So my little experiment this week was to not eat after work, no matter how hungry I was. If it's just an hour or so till bedtime, it's really not that much of a sacrifice, right? So far, all girly things considered, etc., the best I can figure is that I'm roughly 3 pounds below where I would figure I ought to be. If I can keep this up, without chewing my arm off one night around midnight, then I really think that I'll have some proof that I'm on to something here. We'll see about that.

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Before And After

Would I get a discount if I birthed the baby in the store? - 5/16/05
The end is near? - 5/13/05
The progession of me - 5/10/05
Cleaning update - 5/7/05
Pre-nesting - 5/7/05