Unexpected

 259.7

I'll be honest: I didn't see this weight coming today. 

My husband and I went out to dinner last night as a late anniversary date night (our 27th anniversary was this past Friday). We went to a nice Mexican restaurant in town. 

Restaurants have always posed a challenge for me. I don't like bringing food home from restaurants. I'm not much of a leftovers person anyway--things rarely taste as good reheated as they did the first time, and I knew I had leftovers in the fridge from our camping trip. I was raised as a "clean your plate" kid, so leaving food behind if I'm not going to finish it also has a psychological effect. There's also something satisfying about leaving a restaurant stuffed. It makes me feel like I've gotten my money's worth. And the free chips and salsa at Mexican restaurants are a problem because they're so mindless: you sit there and shovel them into your mouth, one after the other, as you look through the menu, and if you run out, they'll bring you more. By the time they bring you your actual meal, you've eaten 300+ calories worth of chips and salsa that your brain doesn't even register.

I deliberately stopped myself as I munched through the chips. I think my husband might have noticed, because he stopped too, and we left about half a basket of chips uneaten on the table. But this was a very conscious decision on my part: I easily could've continued eating. I WANTED to, in fact. 

Then there was the meal itself. I tried to choose something that seemed like it wasn't going to be a giant portion: a combo plate of a taco, a burrito, beans, and rice. Again, I made a conscious decision to stop partway through, although I did feel myself filling up a bit. I tried to eat more slowly, pausing between bites to talk to my husband, look around the room, etc. I ended up only eating a couple of bites of the beans and rice, leaving most of that untouched, and I ate maybe 2/3-3/4 of the burrito and left at least one bite of taco behind. That felt especially weird; like, who doesn't eat a whole taco? 

But I easily could've eaten it all. I know I could've; I strongly considered it. When the waiter asked if I wanted a small box, I said no, because there wasn't enough of the burrito and taco for me to really feel like a meal, and while I love beans and rice, it's not the same when you reheat them. 

I did feel full afterward, but I don't know that it was a strong enough feeling right away to have created an "oh my gosh I can't finish this" feeling in me. 

So while I did think that I had done a pretty good job keeping myself from overdoing it, I still really figured that I wouldn't see a loss on the scale this morning. I figured I'd still be in the 260 range. And now that I'm thinking about it, that was a whole .6 down from yesterday, more than half a pound. Definitely unexpected. 

I'm left wondering, of course, the same things I mentioned yesterday. Is my willpower truly my own? I really felt like eating more. I almost did. But I ultimately did not. Did the medication help me make that decision? I don't know.  I have one more dose at this lowest strength and then it'll up itself the next time, so I'll definitely be waiting to compare that with how things have gone this month.

The week after we came back from our vacation, prior to my taking my first shot, I actually gained a couple of pounds. That first morning after I'd taken my shot, I was at 268.9.  Two weeks and a couple of days later, I'm down about 9 lbs from that. I don't know if that's a reasonable weight loss, something to expect for a while, or if it's going to vary significantly. I'm sure it will vary some. But man, if I could keep this up for the duration of the shots I have (through the end of October) I will have lost close to forty pounds by my birthday, and that would be so amazing. And if I could keep it up past that, I could potentially be close to 200 lbs by the time we go skiing in March, and that would be incredible. 

I need to add in physical activity; that's next on my list.