I bought a new scale on Sunday. My scale at home was so off from my doctor's scale. What's great about having a non-working scale is you can fool yourself about how much you really weigh. I would go to the doctor and get myself weighed, and the weight would always be higher than on my scale at home. In my denial mode, I attributed the difference to clothing, shoes, coffee, breakfast, etc. What's worse is, I knew I was fooling myself but I didn't care. My scale at home reflected a weight that wasn't too bad and I was happy with that. But I don't want to fool myself anymore.

My scale at home is eight (8) pounds off from my new expensive high tech scale called thinner. The blurb at the store said that the particular scale I bought, called "Thinner" of all things, is the most accurate on the market. I'm telling you though, stepping on the scale yesterday was so shocking. I was so freaked about by how much I actually weighed, I spent the rest of the night in a freaked out daze watching the Witchblade marathon on TNT, never mind that I've seen every show this season and have them taped as well.

As the night wore on, I calmed myself down and forced myself to think about what was happening. When I stepped on the new scale and it was eight pounds higher, I immediately thought that I had fooled myself into believing that I lost 12 pounds last year. How could I have fooled myself about losing 12 pounds and why did I do that to myself? But then I remembered that the weight the nurse wrote down my chart last March was 12 pounds higher than my current weight on the new scale. After realizing this fact, I felt better. Whew!!!

Part of my freak out came from the fact that I tried on a pair of jeans that used to fit me in 1999 on Satruday, and for the first time in years, I could actually button them. They were snug as heck, but at least it didn't hurt to button them or lie down to put them on.

I think this is a good thing, to have my scale at home match my doctor's scale. On the down side, I have way more weight to lose than I thought I did.

On the calorie counting front, for our lunch meeting we went to TGI Fridays. I had a salad. The salad was soaking with dressing, bleu cheese and pecan covered chicken, but calorie wise I don't think it was too bad. The TGI Friday's website didn't have a nutritional information guide, but the salad I had at TGI Fridays is similar to the one I get at La Salsa. I'm estimating the pecan chicken salad I had to be about 800 calories. That's alot for a salad, I know, but it was very filling and I'm still full. If I go home tonight and have a light dinner, I still won't be over my calorie total for the day.

I don't want to worry too much about salads. I ate fuzzy lettuce salads, covered in vinagrettes and chicken last year, and initally lost 20 pounds. I was on a carbo restricted zone type of eating. I tried restricting my carbo count to 10-20 grams a meals. Three months later I lost 20 pounds. I gained about 8 pounds of it back, but managed to to keep the 12 pound weight loss despite going to back to my regular eating ways.

I'd like to lose 30 pounds and then see how much comes back on, when I go back to regular eating. 40% of the weight loss I came back last year once I went back to regular eating. If this ratio holds true, I should gain 12 pounds back, leaving my weight loss at 18 pounds. At that weight, I'd be close to what I weighed in 1995.

My other plan is to lose enough weight until I see a body shape I like, lose 5-10 pounds beyond that weight, and then go back to regular eating. With the extra weight loss, when I do back to regular eating, the weight I end up with should be the weight that is perfect for me.

Just thinking this far into the future is dizzying and freaky for me. I hate the thought that I might be calorie counting for more than three months, but I know if I want to get to the weight I am happy with, I'll have to calorie count for as long as it takes. I wish I'd done this earlier. I could feel my weight creeping up, but I was in such denial about it. When companies I worked for went Business Casual, I didn't freak out so much about gaining weight. When I had to wear a suit every day, a suit that cost $500 and up, I would freak out if my suit was tight. When you wear business casual type clothes to work, replacing a $50 pair of khakis is no big deal. Business Casual clothes are also not quit so fitted, so there's alot of room to hide any weight gain.

Denial is amazing, isn't it?