By The Rivers of Flabbylon

So - yeeeeeears ago now, my pal Wendy told me a thing about losing weight which, at the time, rather irritated me.
"The first two weeks, you don't lose fat at all honey," she explained. "You lose stored-up water."

Part of me has been wanting to ask pretty much ever since what kind of drought-based emergency my system is striving to protect me from that it feels the need to store up to eight pounds of water in heavy-ass pockets around my flabby frame, but I've never bothered. It does, however, make a degree of sense of a phenomenon that's now well documented, every time I kickstart this thing properly.

Today's first-week weigh-in sees me at 18st 10.75 - that's a full six pounds down on a week ago today. Which, presumably I've sweated and peed away over the course of the last seven days.

Oddly, passing the "six pounds of water" stage has a really motivating effect on me, always - it's kind of like saying to my body "Yeah...now let's play," giving it notice that I'm serious about this weightloss malarkey.

Is there jubilation at being six pounds lighter? No, not really, because all it would take to balloon back up is to stop what I'm doing, and it's mostly water, and I'm still very heavy. A stone from now, there'll be the first real celebration, when I've been able to tell my system "No, really, I'm serious about this shit."

On the upside, having done the first week thinking in a Disappearing frame of mind, it feels like I've shaken off some of the bad habits again, and begun to imprint good, or at least better ones.

That said, went down to Cardiff and my Starbucks "office" today. Had a banana for breakfast - I know, get me. Then, when d joined me down there, we went for lunch at a favourite Japanese haunt. Which means lunch was heftier than I've become used to over this last week, and included a shared plate of gyoza and a shared plate of things in a tempura batter.

"But wait!" I hear you cry. "That's a batter! That's fried, that is!"
Yes. Yes it is. Thing is, it was my main meal of the day, early in the day, which is useful in terms of giving the system time to process incoming calories, as opposed to, say, eating bigger meals later in the day. And this evening will be very very light (possibly even just one more banana, cos it's nearly 8PM as I write this, and I'm still perfectly satisfied). And as soon as I finish updating you on the calorific minutiae of my day, I'm outta here and getting on the bike, to pedal my ass off (an odd thing I've discovered this week - I pedal quite fast and effective and sweaty while reading Frankenstein. But only if I do it out loud. Who knew?). So am I going to freak the hell out and beat myself with sticks and barbed wire? No. I ate lunch. It was fantastic. Moving right along.

Oh and for Greg and his idea of Starbucks coffee being liquid junk food, I had two large de-caff skinny lattes all day, and two de-caff skinny light coffee frappuccinos (did I mention I have all the pleasure sucked out of them?), and that was it.

To the bike! And here's to losing more than greasy water in a couple of weeks time, and seeing my first 17 on the Nazi Scales, ideally before the end of March. I mean, technically, that would mean losing 10.5 pounds in three weeks and two days, which is obviously an average that's more than the recommended two pounds a week when it comes to losing actual fat. But hey - according to Wendy, there's a whole other week of water to purge first. Another six pounds is vastly unlikely, but if I can be in the lower half of 18 stone (anything under 18st 7 lbs) by this time next week, that'd be cool.

Of course, if the Rivers of Flabbylon flowed another six pounds off my ass by this time next week, I'd be mightily thrilled. Might even have myself a mini-whoop. Everyone!
By the Rivers of Flabbylon,
Where we sat down.
Annnnnd we wept,
As we pedalled our assss offf.