All I can say is huh?! I gained nearly a pound and a half from last week.

I normally don’t weigh myself from week to week, but I’ve been experimenting with a way of tracking how well I’m doing with eating a varied diet. So I’ve been writing down generally what I eat each day (no measurements, just what foods) and then checking off how many servings of various categories I eat in a week.

My theory is/was that the closer I stick to this kind of eating, the more likely I’ll see a consistent loss on the scale.

And since I’m getting really close to the 100-lb mark, weighing weekly right now has its advantages. But only if you lose!

As it turns out, even doing such a cursory food journal wound up being useful. When I looked back on last week, I realized two things. One, I wound up eating out and/or doing takeout way too many times last week. And even though some of those items were foods I ate regularly before, I’ve lost enough weight that these just may no longer be good choices on a regular basis (e.g., my Chipoltle burrito in a bowl).

The other thing that occurred to me was that I may be seeing the effect of going back to daily Diet Coke. I had been making my own iced tea at work, but I stopped the tea after hearing that I was still pretty anemic (due to fibroids). I’m taking monster iron supplements, and tea and iron don’t go well.

So, I’m going back to basics and trying to clean up my act. I’m going to see what happens after a week of no Diet Coke (save the four or so I had yesterday) and mostly making my own meals.

I’m also going to exercise. I started today. I’m annoyed with myself, because 12 or so years ago I was skiing double-black runs at places like Sunday River and racing at the Head of the Charles. Today, I pushed myself and did about .9 of a mile in 27 minutes on the treadmill (at a zero incline) before the back pain got to be too much.

Argh.

But you know, I was at this point before. When I did the fast in ‘91, I was at the weight I am now and I refused to start exercising the first week or two of the fast because I didn’t think I could take the stress of both. I don’t remember how long it took, but it wasn’t long before I was doing a three-mile walk, and after that, I built up to doing that three times a day.

Okay, yeah, that may have been too much. I don’t think it was physically demanding, but I think I was bordering on exercise “bulemia” (when I added the stop at the gym on my morning walk to do 30-40 minutes on the Stairmaster, that was definitely too much :).

But I would like to be fit. And I’d really like to do either yoga or Pilates. But I’ve got a long way to go before I’m ready for that. For now, I’m going to try and get back to my <20 min mile. DC in the spring is really beautiful, so I think I’m going to try and get there in time for the cherry blossoms. Walking around the basin in early April sounds like a great way to start the morning!