Splitting The Difference

'You've been doing the whole "unofficial weigh-in" thing again, haven't you?'

'Yep.'

'Thought so. You always go a bit mad when you do that.'

d's assessment, of course, and of course, she's not wrong.

At one deeply unofficial point this week, I tipped the scales at just 17 stone, 10.75, and that without doing much that was particularly different. Since then there appears to have been some recession, whcih means I can report that today's weigh-in has me at 17 stone, 12.25.

In other words, two pounds lighter than this time last week. As I forecast, safely within the 17s, and in fact, precisely the two pounds per week that's said to be the safe amount to lose per week. Also, give or take a quarter pound, halfway between last week's result and the best unofficial result of this week.Splitting the difference of probabilities, I suppose.

It's a fundamental personality test, doing this sort of thing. Is the glass half empty or half full? Do we cheer at the two pound lost, or mourn the additional pound and a half of potential loss that has itself been...erm...lost?

Frankly, on any given day, it's six to five and pick 'em with me. Today though, you find me in a businesslike, getting-on-with-stuff mood, so I find myself able to solidly bank the two pound loss in my brain, having crossed my traditional Rubicon of Disappearing, and feeling like it's real now we're in the 17s. I feel almost like this is no big thing this time around, because of course I started in the 18s, not in the 20s, as previously, but it's still the lightest I've been in quite some while, so yay for that, and it feels like it has a treat in store, which is the notion that if I keep this up, seven weeks from now I'll be in the 16s, which will really feel like a momentous change, and a gut-friendly, heart-friendly, surviving-to-be-a-contemptible-old-crankypants-friendly shift in the dynamic of what I can do.

Seven weeks is the 15th January. That feels like a good date at which to aim.

Of course, between now and then, there's Christmas. I seem to have been Disappearing at Christmas for altogether too many years of my life, given that at times which are not Christmas, and wouldn't therefore turn me into Captain Anti-Social, Captain 'No, I can't, thanks...but you feel free,' I've gone on to be a total gorgemonster. In other words, I've put people through a lot at Christmas time for very little ultimate purpose. If I'm going to be that kind of git, it feels like it should be worth something in the long term, otherwise it's just gittery for gittery's sake.

I really should have thought that sentence through rather more, as I generally have no problem with gittery for gittery's sake, but still - onward, week by week, through Christmas to January 15th!