"People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."

Abraham Lincoln, supposedly. And more-or-less true, I think.

Some days it's harder to make up your mind to be happy. The trouble with weighing yourself every day, too, is that you start out with this assessment that sets your whole mood. And even when you know that it's not that meaningful, it's still hard not to get hooked into it. My weight is 5 lbs heavier than it was Sunday morning, and there is no reasonable reason for it. My best guess is that it's because I've been taking a lot of ibuprofen, since my back and hip have been bothering me, and this is well-known to cause water retention. Clearly I haven't eaten anything that would cause this sort of weight gain in 2 days. And I know that, but still... that number is just beyond discouraging.

Weight fluctuations aside, it would be nice to see if we could figure out how to speed up this whole process a little. Losing a consistent 1-3 lbs a week is something that I can live with, although it's a little harder for Michael, but... well, it's about 20 weeks since we began this in January, and if you ignore this fluctuation, I've lost 20 lbs. So that's good, I guess... it is a 1 lb/week average... but... well, ok, I can't say "1 lb/week would be ok" and then proceed to whine about it. But there has to be something a little faster here. Something that would just get me below this weight range that I've been hovering at for so long. I'm going to just have to do some things differently. But what? I still think that ultimately, it has to be a combination of exercise and just eating less, whatever the composition of that food actually is.