#21 STUCK, BUT NOT SURPRISED

I'm sorry to admit that I'm stuck again, or plateaued, at 5-6 pounds short of my overall goal. (The indecision about 5 or 6 is caused by my standing so far away from the dial on my scale - after all, it's six feet away - that it's hard to see, and the fact that the dial is so small that complete accuracy is difficult. So, I acknowledge the one pound leeway between hopeful and possible.) I'm not at all surprised. When my friend Dennis came last week to share my birthday, he brought candy - two boxes of it - knowing how much I like it and not knowing I was not eating it. I couldn't resist. So rack up some sugar calories. Further, since Sunday, I've been experiencing a high degree of dizziness (no cracks, please) in response to which my doctor has asked me to go off the Medi-fast program while we try to figure out what's going on in my body. (Maybe an inner ear thing.) So while I've been eating Medi-fast between regular meals in an effort to keep my metabolism percolating, breakfast, lunch and dinner have been off the program. I've tried to keep them lean but I've noticed since being on the program that the whole world, despite hawking low fat food, is subtly  against me. Friends urge me to have just one drink, or try just one French fry, or if I'm at their home for dinner, load up my plate with more food than I want. It's very hard to resist and even more difficult to break the habit ingrained in childhood to eat everything on your plate; remember the starving children in China! However, despite this pause (notice I consider it only a pause), I will lose those last 5 or 6 pounds; it's just taking a little longer than I had hoped and anticipated.

The good news is that I'm no longer dragging around those other 37-38 pounds - imagine carrying four 10-pound weights with you all the time - my lower back no longer aches and I can get into trousers I haven't worn in years (I've lost at least 2 inches off my waist). I focus on that.

Stay tuned.