Is my body rebelling?

Today was the weigh in day for me. In the past week, I averaged 1640 calories a day and I made a conscious effort to get out and walk on 3 separate occasions. There were really good days (calorie-wise 1012) and there were bad days (when I ate an entire bag of almond M&Ms -- a whopping 1470 calories). Overall, I wasn't terribly dissatisfied with myself.

I had always heard that if you multiplied your body weight by 10, that is the amount of calories that you have to ingest in order to maintain that body weight. For me, that would be 1930 calories per day. I didn't sacrifice as much as I could have but I still did take in nearly 300 calories less each day than I had assumed that I was taking in before. Instead of eating whatever I wanted, I ate healthier choices. It wasn't that big of a deal to trade in a hamburger for a turkey sandwich. The one thing that I did not do until today was increase my water intake but all in all, I expected that I would go down and weigh myself and find that I had lost a pound, maybe two if I was lucky.

I guess you can imagine my surprise when I weighed in 4 pounds heavier since the last weigh in. I don't know what I would have done had there not been another person nearby, I was torn between crying and cursing. While I don't know what my options are right now, the one thing is sure, I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet. While I know that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, I can hardly believe that if I take in more calories that I will lose weight. I think that rather than getting depressed, I need to continue to monitor what I put in my mouth, increase my water intake and get used to exercising every day. I will let you know next Monday how it goes.

Average Calories -- 1640 per day.
Exercise -- 3 times in the past 10 days. Approximately 10 miles walking.

A cold hard dose of reality.

About a year ago, I decided to stop in for a free assessment and personal training session at a gym in my area. Everything was fine until I got on the scale and saw that I was 206 pounds. That was a shocking dose of reality. I had not realized that I had let myself go so badly. There were a million excuses that I could have made, but I chose instead to do something about it and started a food diary. I lost 20 pounds by February.

Pretty soon, I was so confident that I could do it on my own that I stopped keeping a food diary and by the time I weighed myself again, the pounds had slowly but surely crept back on. I'm not 206 but I am 193 pounds. I'm not the happy, confident person that I used to be and it has everything to do with my weight.

When I was in high school, I never had a problem weight. I was 115 pounds when I got married and could down more White Castle burgers than any guy that I knew without gaining an ounce. Even after I had my first child I was down to my fighting weight in no time. After my daughter, I held steady at a size 10. By the time I had my third child I had completely lost my weight loss battle. I have been yo-yo-ing between a size 8 and 14. Currently, I am losing the battle with my weight, kind of like Oprah, but like Oprah, I am admitting my failure and starting again. I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck.