Weigh and Measure

It’s been a full year since the last time I did a full weigh-and-measure, and the numbers… well, truth be told, they’re not as bad as they could be.

Weight: 195 lbs (on the home scale – up 4.4 lbs from last February)
Bust: 43″ (up 1″)
Chest: 36″ (up ½”)
Waist: 40″ (up 1″)
Hips: 46½” (up ½”)
Upper Arm: 13″ (same)
Lower Arm: 10″ (same)
Thigh: 25″ (up 1″)
Calf: 15½” (up 1/4″)
Neck: 14″ (same)

The good news is that my weight has been on a steady decline since the beginning of the year: I’m down four pounds (according to the Weight Watchers scale), which is an average of 0.7 pounds per week. It’s slow loss, yes, but at least it’s consistent.

I’m taking a kind of carrot-and-stick approach right now: when I reach a weight of 190 (on the home scale), I get to buy a new bathing suit for my Mexico vacation. The snag is, the vacation is at the end of April, so I need to get a move on if I’m going to order my suit online and get it in time. (If I don’t, though, at least I do own a swimsuit that fits.)

On the punishment side of things: if I gain weight one week to the next at Weight Watchers, I have to put money into a savings account. Since I calculated that each pound I gained last year cost me $64.75 in WW fees, that’s how much I’ll put in per pound. (Pro-rated for partial pounds gained, of course.) In the end, I’m going to use that money to buy myself clothes when I reach my ultimate goal of 170… so it’ll be untouchable for a while. Luckily, I haven’t had to pay into that account yet, and I hope to avoid it altogether.

I haven’t been as vigilant as I should be about diet and exercise for some time now. I hit my first plateau over a year ago; I tried pushing through it at the beginning, but the lack of results just drug me further down, until I started just coasting. (At least I didn’t give up entirely, though: things could be much worse right now!)

For now, I’m trying to mix up my food and my activity, fill up on fruits and veggies, appreciate that slightly hungry feeling, get muscle-sore on a regular basis, all those sorts of things that I haven’t been doing.

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

How much can I push myself to lose in the next four weeks?